The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has announced plans to implement
CAPPS II, a controversial passenger profiling and surveillance system that would
require you to give your birth date, home phone number, and home address before
you can board a U.S. flight. Under CAPPS II, travel authorities would check
these and other personal details against the information collected in government
and commercial databases, then "tag" you with a color-coded score indicating the
level of security risk that you appear to pose. Based on your assigned
color/score, you could be detained, interrogated or made subject to additional
searches. If you are tagged with the wrong color/score, you could be
prohibited from flying.
First of all, this system doesn't make us any safer and it is a complete breach of privacy since they are ranking people based off of information that is never made public, information that may not even be accurate.
3 comments:
I suppose I am a little surprised at a lot of reactions to the different security measures the government has been taking lately, specifically the Patriot Act. CAPPS II would allow "profiling" based on personal background--my question is, hasn't the government already been doing things like this? Is it naive of someone to think that before the government came out publicly with these acts they weren't already doing it? I think so. Take the Patriot Act. This allows our cell phones calls to be monitored, our emails, IMs, and other communication devices. Before the Patriot Act came into play, the NSA needed warrants and reasons to monitor these. The NSA was granted these warrants by a special court. The thing, though, is that most of the time the NSA DID NOT EVEN BOTHER GOING THROUGH THE SPECIAL COURT. They just did it and were told not to do that again. But I'm sure we're all familiar with bureaucracies and the enforcement of rules...anyway, my point is, why are people so surprised and outraged? The NSA has been "spying" and labeling people ever since it had the technology to do so. Perhaps people should have been upset many years ago... Maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist, but I think this CAPPS II thing and the Patriot Act are just a means to cover their butts publicly.
So this is responding to why people are so upset…It could be true that the NSA has been monitoring people for years, but significant thing is that it wasn’t public. Most people aren’t conspiracy theorists (not that you are) and most likely didn’t even think about this until it was made into an “issue.” Average citizens can sit around forever and speculate about all the sneaky things the government might be doing, but they won’t have a lot of proof. It’s easier to think that it our privacy isn’t being invaded. When people get upset about things like the Patriot Act, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are naïve. Even if they did think the NSA has been monitoring communication all along, they still might not like it. They might worry about what implementing these kinds of policies might mean. When the government makes monitoring communication a public thing, it must mean that they feel the public is now willing to accept it. That’s what I feel is upsetting about things like the Patriot Act or Capps II. It might not be that bad now, but how much personal freedom and privacy will we be willing to give up for security?
I just have to say that this has to be one of the worst plans for security that I have heard of yet. One of the problems I can see with this program is that it would be so easy for information to be skewed or misused. For instance, I would not doubt that members of my family would be marked higher than they would otherwise because of our family name (Our family name is Samaha, my grandfather changed it to Herald in the 60's, but my brothers have it as a middle name. This name is very very middle eastern and is a common name within the government over there.). Although my brothers and I are only 1/4 middle eastern, I have no doubt that our blood heritage alone would be grounds for a higher level. This brings me to another problem with the system, it would be fairly easy to change your information to appear "less dangerous" (for instance, change name to a more American sounding name). Lastly, I would assume that this program would be relied on way too much. Security officers would probably have a tendency to look only at the color tag and take action from there. They would not use the methods they use now to help them pick out suspicious characters and action. All they would care about would be the color of their tag. (For instance, "oh, they have a green tag, they look a little mysterious, but I'm sure they're fine if they are only green.") So if someone received a color that was not actually equivalent to their danger level, that could actually put the passengers in more danger than before. It seems that this process may work if you could judge a person by their name, address, and prior criminal record, but there is just no way that there could be a standard that would make this possible.
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