DHS Passenger Scoring Almost Certainly Illegal 181
Vicissidude writes "At the National Targeting Center, the Automated Targeting System program harvests up to 50 fields of passenger data from international flights, including names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and uses watchlists, criminal databases and other government systems to assign risk scores to every passenger. When passengers deplane, Customs and Border Protection personnel then target the high scorers for extra screening. Data and the scores can be kept for 40 years, shared widely, and be used in hiring decisions. Travelers may neither see nor contest their scores. The ATS program appears to fly in the face of legal requirements Congress has placed in the Homeland Security appropriations bills for the last three years." From the article: "Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he was unaware of the language but that it clearly applies to the Automated Targeting System, not just Secure Flight, the delayed successor to CAPPS II. 'Bingo, that's it -- the program is unlawful,' Rotenberg said. 'I think 514(e) stands apart logically (from the other provisions) and 514 says the restrictions apply to any 'other follow-on or successor passenger prescreening program'. It would be very hard to argue that ATS as applied to travelers is not of the kind contemplated (by the lawmakers).'"
Will congress simply legalize it? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Will congress simply legalize it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meet the new congress ... same as the old congress.
The last part of your complaint really puts things in perspective, doesn't it? I could have voted for a republican candidate if he had been willing to shrink the powers of our government. I could have voted for a democrat who was willing to do that. Sadly, I've never seen a serious candidate for national office (except Ron Paul) who could plausibly claim that he was willing to reduce federal power in any practical way.
I hope that over the next two years, we will all learn that, just as voting republican in 2000 didn't solve our problems with government, voting democrat in 2006 and 2008 won't either. I wish that we had a viable alternative, but I'm afraid that we won't see one until after we all see that we need one.
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Before you hope that people learn their lesson, why can't you hope that voting democrat might solve your problems?
Umm.... because it never has before? Just like voting Republican never has before. Einstein's definition of insanity applies here. If you keep doing exactly the same thing, and keep expecting different results, that's insane. For people who really want change to occur, the only hope is to do something different. Vote for the candidate that actually comes closest to representing your views, not for the one you think most electable that you can barely stomach over the other guy. I don't care if you
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The previous set did most of the dirty work, all that talk about frogmen plotting to poison our water supplies or how some guy somewhere might be thinking about trying to blow up or otherwise damage or hijack an aircraft using maybe a gel or liquid possibly concealed in some ev
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Don't fly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Traveling by bus, train, or car is not as fast or comfortable, but at least you can do it with some of your privacy intact.
Just say no.
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And what planet do you live on?
With our wonderful 90%+ incumbency rate in federal and state elections (more likely to be indicted and "retire to spend more time with family" than to actually lose an election), this is the old Congress!
I mean, in 1994, there was a net change of 54 seats out of 435, slightly more than 10%, and they called that a "revolution." So what will we call this shift of ~30 seats, a "civil war?" Perhaps a "military coup?" And t
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Note that much of the support for the erosion of our personal liberties occured while this country was in a patriotic & fearful frenzy. Anyone in congress that took a moment to say, "um, could we talk about this for a minute?" was attacked by:
- president bush & his administration
- senate & house leaders
- media pundits
- etc
- about 50 million americans
Re:Will congress simply legalize it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dripping sarcasm notwithstanding, there's a fundamental point here. Can the intrusions in liberty be justified by reduced risk of hijackings or whatever? Or, perhaps, do they increase the risk? Some evidence would be apropos.
Suppose that the numbers above were true. The toll in deaths and ruined lives would still be lower than, say, the carnage on the highways. An orthogonal issue? I don't think so. Just think of what you could do with the billions of dollars wasted on building the police state. Highway safety is not even the most effective use to which these dollars could be put, but its orders of magnitude better than whatever DHS does with it.
But don't let my digression distract you from the fundamental point: there is not one iota of evidence that wiretaps, no-fly lists, torture, profiling, etc. make us safer. There is plenty of evidence that they directly diminish our quality of life, and indirectly divert our resources from more worthy pursuits.
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I'm still stuck on the question of if an airline turns information we have already given them into a security risk score, can that act be justifiably called "an intrusion in liberty"? I am disinclined to agree that it can.
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> 1 or 2 hijackings and maybe a couple planes into a couple buildings every 6 months or a year or so.
> We can live with that, eh?
Free. Safe. Choose one.
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Re:Will congress simply legalize it? (Score:4, Informative)
Denies rights based on secret laws (Score:1)
WTF.
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Re:Denies rights based on secret laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow I find that rather scary.
Okay... How can this be used (Score:2)
It is publicly available or is it only available to the government?
Re:Okay... How can this be used (Score:5, Insightful)
>
>For Hiring?
> Is it publicly available or is it only available to the government?
It's a government database, much like the databases that hold criminal records, etc. Access to it is sold to data brokers such as Choicepoint.
When Company X wants to hire you, they ask Choicepoint if you're "a good risk".
Choicepoint crunches the numbers by means of a proprietary formula, one of the ingredients of which your credit rating (for sale by other data brokers), another of which is your criminal record and/or arrest history (for sale by other arms of the government), and another of which is now your Terrorist Score.
Neither you (nor Company X!) ever finds out what your Terrorist Score is. Company X takes a look at Choicepoint's evaluation and combines it, with your resume, and how well you did on the job interview, and whatever else it wants... and decides whether or not to hire you.
So if your Terrorist Score is too high, you might not get the job, because Choicepoint or the other background-checking firms have decided that it's important enough to make you a risk... or maybe not. You'll never know. That's both a feature (everyone has plausible deniability, so nobody can get sued), and a bug (you may be denied a job because of a bogus data point in your Terrorist Score, just as you can be denied a job due to bogus data on your credit history -- but you can at least fix the errors in your credit history.)
Now that that's out of the way, can we stop calling it a Terrorist Score? If I keep using that term, your score goes up. Probably the only way to fix a bad Terrorist Score is to start calling it a Freedom Score. At the rate I'm going, I'm gonna have to donate at least $1000 to both the RNC and the DNC before I can get hired again, let alone fly anywhere.
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That would be stupid, because that's something that's easy for someone rich like Bin Laden to guess and to employ. (Obviously not Bin Laden himself, because that would be too risky, and besides, he needs a dialysis machine, but someone funded by him.)
Won't be too long (Score:4, Insightful)
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Getting? Please. It's been more than "way out of control" for longer than I can remember. There shouldn't even be any fucking discussion about this sort of shit. People who "may" be locked up currently shouldn't have to wait for the lopsided Supreme Court to overturn this.
It's a sad time for our nation.
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Re:Won't be too long (Score:5, Insightful)
Dissent is what founded our country.
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You are not correct. Revolution is what founded this country.
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Revolution is a byproduct of dissent.
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If crime-fighters fight crime, and fire-fighters fight fire, what do freedom-fighters fight?
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Does this system still function.... (Score:5, Funny)
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Nobody! (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is it that you guys are getting the idea that the rule of law applies to this administration? That wouldn't be in their interests at all. And since they're in charge of enforcing the laws they break...
And if you think that Congress, aside from a couple of freaks like Feingold and Leahy, are going to do anything about this at all... well, I hope you're right, but I'd bet against it.
PS: I like those freaks. I wish they weren't the exception.
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"Hey, all of this monitoring stuff the bureaucracy's lusted for for years sounds like a great idea".
Now supposedly Congress is going to grow a set? I'll believe it when I see it. They won't give a damn until this is used against one of them as a political tactic (not if, when).
I've seen this before (Score:2, Interesting)
positive matches (Score:5, Insightful)
Paul Rosenzweig, a high-level Homeland Security official, told Congress in September that the system had "encountered 4801 positive matches for known or suspected terrorists." However, it is unclear how many of those were correct matches.
No, it's very clear. Zero. Zilch, none, nada. If there were any correct matches, they would trot them out and use them to demonstrate the "success" of the program.
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think some sort of new check and balance needs to be put in place against the executive branch. We're supposed to have the Congress and the Supreme Court to protect us from potential abuses, but they haven't obviously served us very well in the past 6 years...
What we need, I'm not sure. But we need something.
-B
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The one bright spot to all of this (Score:5, Funny)
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Sure, the REPORT is free... (Score:2)
pet peeve (Score:3, Funny)
Jesus, when did the airlines have such a low opinion of their passengers that they think that they don't know what disembark means?
Seriously, deplane? Sound more like delouse. AAAAAHHHHH, get these planes off me!!!
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Chris Mattern
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Next they'll be attempting a sea landing... oh. Wait.
Re:pet peeve (Score:4, Funny)
Deplane sounds like what I do to a piece of paper when I make it into a ball and throw it in the rubbish, or deform any other planar surface so it is no longer a plane.
Or, as the parent poster suggested, it sounds like we are being cleansed of an infestation of tiny parasitic planes. Deice - remove ice, degauss - remove gauss, delouse - remove lice, deplane - remove planes. Makes more sense to me.
Deplane! Deplane! (Score:2)
What was the name of that show again? That's the only appropriate use I can think of. Or maybe it's the opposite of the verb "to plane" as used in carpentry. Instead of leveling a wooden surface, you gouge it and make it wavy.
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can't see it? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Profiling is a good thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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All of them - just check the database.
All of them - just check the database. And don't tell me you can't!
All of them - just check the database. And don't whine about it being exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. After all, we're protecting our country... or at least all except for the statistically insignificant number who are
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Now, take those numbers, add them up and get a total. We'll call it WhitieCaused.
Add up how many white people committed these crimes. We'll call that number Whities.
How many did on 9/11, and the first WTC bombing. We'll call that number MuzzieCaused.
How many Arab/Muslim males caused it? We know the number to be 19.
Finally, factor those numbers with number of the particular profiles.
Let's say th
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If you want to factor these numbers in to further my case, that's fine with me. By my quick math, that means that Muzzie terrorists have killed 150 people to every person killed by a Whitie, while only ha
A) Doesn't change the screening logic... (Score:2)
and B) I hope you're familiar with the concept of over-generalization? I.e., you can't extract very much meaningfully predictive information from a single example.
Normally, I'd be happy to argue the actual politics with you (rather than just the logic), but I know it would be fruitless (and that's not intended to be an insult in any way - it's admittedly fruitless in both directions), and I'm a little tired.
Not that I really expect the logic/math argument to be that much more successful... :)
Just to argue logic (and no politics)... (Score:2)
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Next, I was trying to point out to the OP that even though there are white terrorists, when you factor in the number of white people that live here, the number is insignificant to the number of Arab/Muslim terrorists when the ratio is factored in. While I think that profiling should be used only sparingly (see the recent Muslim Cleric story in Minnesota for a good example of when profiling sh
I think you totally misread my first statement (Score:2)
I said we should argue the logic (i.e., the lack of meaning in the denominators) rather than the politics since we definitely won't agree on the politics (at least not completely). If there are X terrorists of type A, and Y terrorists of type B, then the proper sampling would be X/Y regardless of how many total people there are of types A and B - unless you have additional information that we didn't even discuss.
Here's the basic logic: let's assume you have the accurate P(T|A), where T=person is terrorist
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Timothy McVeigh was not a "radical Muslim". Plus, as has been pointed out repeatedly, once you start profiling, the terrorists will just start to pick people that don't "fit" the profile.
Profiling also potentially violates the rights of people who may fit the profile but not be involved. Just because most people who commit violent crimes are black males doesn't mean we start jailing all black male men in the US. Peopl
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Just the word "profiling" is offensive to African-Americans because of their extensive history in being "profiled" in the past. For example, the Florida State Police were prevented from such "profiling" back in the 1980's. They had identified a trend that expensive cars being driven at high speeds by African-Americans had a strong correlation to there being significant quantities of drugs in the car. This was viewed as completely unethical and such profiling was ended
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"In the event some lunatic stands up in the aisle
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Now tell me - how do you tell a radical Muslim from a just somewhat nutty muslim? How do you tell a radical Muslim from a radical nut? How do you tell a radical Muslim who is planning on bombing you from Joe Zaki down the street?
Profiling is a great idea. However, profiling based on racial characteristics or common choices like meal selection and prayer habits is fuck
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With over 1 billion Christians in the world and somewhere south of 1,000 terrorists, or say even 10,000 in "supporting roles" you've just narrowed your search down from 1 in 500,0000 to 1 in 100,000 -- not really effective when you consider it is at the cost of aggravating the other 99,999 non-terrorist Christians.
Even worse, since you really need those other 99,999 Christia
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One other problem is the base rate fallacy (look it up).
The conclusive problem is the fact that our enemies are adaptable. If they see dark-skinned people getting screened, or people getting yanked off airplanes for praying, then they'll simply send the
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You've got to make sure that at least some of your screening is random, though.
Otherwise, if you only screen the Arab guys (yes I know Arab != Muslim, but you can see Arab, and can't see Muslim, so that's the way profiling would actually work), if The Terrorists recruit one white guy, he slips right through.
Domestic versus International Flights (Score:2, Interesting)
Once again ignorance is no bar to blanket assertions of illegal acts.
DHS preserved the Constitution? (Score:3, Funny)
The Department of Homeland Security actually wrote something that would PRESERVE our Constitutional rights?!?!
Who are you and what have you done with our fascist overlords?
link to comments and text of law (Score:3, Informative)
The Identity Project comments, including as an appendix the text of the relevant law, are at:
http://hasbrouck.org/IDP/IDP-ATS-comments.pdf [hasbrouck.org]
Those comments also expain how the "Automated Targeting System" would include information on domestic flights and travelers, in addition to international travel records.
There's more background on my blog, and the Identity Project blog:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001184.html [hasbrouck.org]
http://papersplease.org/wp/2006/12/05/every-trave
Don't Like It? Tell them! (Score:2)
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6 Imans (Score:2)
Lost in translation (Score:3, Funny)
a) DHS is an airline (or similar),
b) one of their passengers got lucky, but
c) they got busted.
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Hopefully, they do get busted.
Something everyone is forgetting here: (Score:3, Insightful)
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False. Counterexamples include Amendments II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, and XXII; additionally, a number of others deal only tangentially with what Congress shall or shall not do, granting particular individual rights, often enforceable against the states, but stating that Congress shall have the power to enforce the provisions of the amendment by appropriate legislation. Come to think of it, the
Call me crazy... (Score:4, Insightful)
But wouldn't it make more sense to give those high scorers extra screening before they got on the plane?
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Damn... (Score:2)
BTM
Re:Dupe...? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's things like this that I like about slashdot. Posting multiple articles from different sources about the same subject allows for both a healthy debate by us and tends to provide more then one side to a story. Instead of just getting the bias of one publication we get to see the subtle shades of bias and decide for ourselves who makes sense, who we want to agree with or believe.
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A single link to Google News with the appropriate keywords appended would accomplish the same thing.
This is mostly a dig @ repor
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Next thing you know, he'll have NASA purposely direct meteors at America so he can show how prepared for any disaster he is. Enormous clouds of dust will rise up out of the craters of midwest cities and George Bush will be flying over head in a helicop
Re:Of Course, We Could Just Round Up all the Musli (Score:2)
But then, you know, there are Americans out there, not me and not you of course, that can't tell the difference between a good m
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On the bright side, my amulet protecting me from terrorists seems to work - since I bought it, I haven't been killed by a terrorist. Maybe I should sell it to the president, so that he can save billions by dissolving the TSA and DHS
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No? Oh.
Racist.
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Silly moderators don't understand a good pun when the see it.