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More Data, Safe Skies
Opinion · January 25, 2004

When I was a summer intern in Chicago, I opened an account with the power company for an apartment I wanted to rent. But when my plans fell through, I forgot to tell Commonwealth Edison, leaving less than $1 on my bill.

Not long after that I applied for a credit card and was rejected. Turns out the utility company had sent my invoice to a collection agency and had shared my delinquent status with every credit reporting company. On paper, I looked like a deadbeat.

As soon as I discovered the error, I paid up and cleared my name.

It should be that easy for suspicious airline passengers flying under the new CAPPS II regimen. Apparently, it won't be. The new government security program, or Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, begins testing in February and is expected to be in place this summer.

CAPPS II will cull information from terrorist watch lists and other sources, review your flight itinerary, and issue a color-coded security profile - green if you're good, yellow if you're suspect and red if you're dangerous. You'll also be assigned a score based on this information, allowing airport screeners to spend more time with the high-risk passengers and presumably letting the greens just go.

What if you don't agree with your color? Sorry, no appeals. Want to improve your chances of going green? Good luck; the scoring criteria are a secret.

Details of CAPPS II couldn't have come at a worse time. Revelations that Northwest Airlines gave information on millions of passengers to clandestine government air-security project have given well-meaning privacy advocates fodder to denounce the entire screening system before it's even had a chance to work.

How shortsighted.

It's clear that careful passenger screening is necessary - just as it's obvious CAPPS II needs to be tweaked. The question is, how?

Maybe the answer is to collect more data.

Under CAPPS II, the government would create a security profile and then discard it after a passenger's trip ends. But previous ratings would be valuable information, because over a time they can more clearly establish your risk to a flight. The government seems to be tossing this information in an effort to please the privacy lobby, when, in fact, the only passengers who wouldn't benefit from keeping the information are the criminals they are trying to stop.

The database by which we're judged also needs to be more complete. Merging the terrorist watch-lists is a good start, and so is collecting booking data. CAPPS II reportedly also will include addresses, birthdays and home telephone numbers. But why stop there? Why not also give the government the information it needs to assure it we aren't going to blow up a plane - information that might include travel history, your place of employment or your latest tax return.

All of this might sound a little Orwellian until you consider that the government already has most of those records.

It is what the government does with the data - and more importantly, doesn't do - that's critical. The security database must only be used to screen travelers. Passengers should be able to access the information the government keeps about them, the same way you can review your own credit report. If there's information that is likely to trigger a closer screening, then you should be allowed to add an explanation to the record, as you would with a credit report.

The Transportation Security Administration, the agency in charge of airport security, is taking small steps in that direction. It's already developed a "frequent delayer" program for passengers who are chronically given the once-over at the airport. The feds send you forms that will help you verify your identity and "alleviate future problems," according to TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield. It is also developing a "trusted traveler" program, under which passengers would voluntarily share information with the government.

But CAPPS II won't work unless all travelers know what information the government is keeping about them and how it's being used.

And it will be a failure - perhaps even a catastrophic failure - if the government doesn't have enough information to determine who among us is a terrorist.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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