Asking permission…
I have a story in The Register today about new rules proposed by the TSA. The basis is that the operation of the no-fly and watch lists is supposed to transfer to the TSA from the airlines, so the TSA’s idea is that airlines would have to submit passengers’ names and identifying information 72 hours before the flight takes off, and each passenger will only be issued a boarding pass if the TSA comes back with an OK. There was a public hearing in DC on September 20, and I listened to the audio on the Web. Comments are still being accepted until October 22, and there are instructions on Ed Hasbrouck’s site about how to find the proposal and comment on it. The privacy objections to the proposals have to do with essential rights and freedoms, specifically the right to assemble, which is guaranteed under the First Amendment, plus concerns over the amount of data that’s going to be collected by the airlines, and retained by them as well as being forwarded to the TSA. (There’s a secondary issue wrt this data, which has been reported on by the Identity Project. The airline industry objections revolve around logistics: the cost to the industry, the feasibility of the schedule TSA has in mind. Qantas did ask why it was necessary, citing Australian practices that focus on preventing the wrong people from boarding the plane rather than receiving a boarding pass. The really key players - the computer reservations services who manage all the data for the airlines - did not testify in public.
While I was writing that piece for the Reg, it occurred to me that what the TSA wants to do is something the British ID card could also support: transform a default yes into a default no. Given the high-techery that will be present in the ID card, it’s easy to imagine the development of a permission-based society, especially since over time increasing amounts of checking versus the database can be done online (you don’t need to carry the card if everything is keyed to your name and fingerprint, or your number and fingerprint) - and this is what I wrote in net.wars.
While the TSA proposals are new to us, they weren’t any surprise to Ed Hasbrouck, who says that at last year’s ICAO meeting on machine-readable documents (which sounds like the event to catch if you want to find out what’s coming in travel security/practice) it was clear that this was the direction they wanted to go in. The conflict between this and the First Amendment and other laws seems not to have been considered.
wg
October 13th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Well, the U.S. often leads in worst practice examples. Just as a practical matter, it would have a real impact on business travel. More importantly, the right to travel freely (not, IIRC, mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, is pretty fundamental, not to be trifled with.
Fear makes bad policy. A desire for total control makes bad policy. It is my sincere belief that the current wave of technological innovation makes clamp-down total control impossible.
October 13th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Fear *does* make bad policy. But where the physical world is concerned I’m not sure technological innovation can do much: what technological innovation (other than hacking the database) could physically get me on a plane if someone has decided I’m not to fly?
Re the Identity Project’s documenting all the information TSA is keeping about passengers (the books they’re carryhing, where they say they’re going), I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that I’m asked more stuff going into the US than I used to be. They always ask where I’m going, etc., which I’ve always rather resented, since I’m a US citizen, and all they need to know is *that*. What *is* noticeable to me also is that they don’t actually read the forms we fill out on the plane, because they almost always fail to spot that I live overseas, so they generally ask what the purpose of my trip *was*, rather than what it *is*.
wg