San Francisco, CA, and Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a video entitled "Monsters of Privacy" to mark the first Congressional hearings on the status of a controversial airline passenger profiling system and to help educate the public about a broad range of threats to personal privacy.
Developed to identify passengers who may be a security threat, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) would force U.S. citizens to surrender more private information than ever before in order to travel by air, yet the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has failed to put necessary privacy safeguards in place. Even worse, CAPPS II is only one of several federal and state programs that lack these essential safeguards.
In some instances, the U.S. government has continued to pursue these programs even after resounding public defeat, as it did with the Terrorism Information Awareness project, formerly known as Total Information Awareness (TIA). In others, government agencies have secretly asked companies to turn over citizens' private information, as NASA did when it requested that Northwest Airlines provide it with passenger records for surveillance research -- violating the privacy of millions of people.
"The growing trend toward unchecked government and corporate 'data-veillance' must be stopped," said EFF Activist Ren Bucholz. "By shedding light on the privacy threats that we all face, EFF hopes to galvanize the public to join us in the battle to protect the rights and freedoms we hold dear."
EFF previously led a diverse coalition of public interest groups and helped concerned citizens send over 25,000 letters calling for Congressional hearings on CAPPS II. The hearing of the Aviation Subcommittee, chaired by U.S. Representative John L. Mica (R-FL), is scheduled for 10:00 a.m., on Wednesday, March 17, in Room 2167 of the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, D.C.
Ren Bucholz
Activist
Electronic Frontier Foundation
ren@eff.org
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/
