CAPPS II: Government Surveillance via Passenger Profiling

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  <h1>CAPPS II: Government Surveillance via Passenger Profiling</h1>
  <h2>Why EFF Is Concerned About CAPPS II</h2>
  <p>The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (<a href="/Privacy/cappsii/">CAPPS II</a>) would force you to surrender more of your privacy in order to travel
    by air -- with little, if any, increase in security.&nbsp; If the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) succeeds
    in implementing CAPPS II, the many personal details about you that have been
    collected in both government and commercial databases would be an open book
    to travel authorities.&nbsp; How much of your private life should the government
    be allowed to examine before you can exercise your right to travel freely?</p>
  <p>CAPPS II could also misidentify you as a terrorist, criminal, or other security
    threat requiring heightened government scrutiny.&nbsp; Personal details about
    you, correct or not, could repeatedly trip the security wire, yet there would
    be no effective way for you to access your own CAPPS II file to correct the
    mistake.&nbsp; Meanwhile, airport personnel would squander valuable time
    and resources on you and other CAPPS II "false positives" rather than on
    real terrorists.&nbsp; </p>
  <p>Worst of all, CAPPS II could come to serve as an all-purpose dragnet.&nbsp; Originally,
    CAPPS II was meant to serve as a tool to prevent foreign terrorists from
    boarding flights.&nbsp; Then the government decided that it would also be
    used to profile "domestic terrorists," employing a fuzzy definition that
    could apply to legitimate political activists.&nbsp; Then CAPPS II was once
    again expanded, this time to include screening for people wanted for violent crimes
    or for flouting immigration laws.&nbsp; </p>
  <p>All of this "mission creep" has taken place before CAPPS II has even been
    implemented.&nbsp; How many more classes of people will CAPPS II target once
    it is installed and operational at airports across the country? &nbsp;And
    how many other modes of travel will eventually fall under the CAPPS II purview? </p>
  <h3>How CAPPS II Would Work</h3>
	<ul><li><strong>Step One</strong>:&nbsp; Collecting Personal Information About You</h</li></ul>
  <p>Under CAPPS II, airlines and travel agencies would be forced to collect
    personal information that they currently do not require:&nbsp; each traveler\'s
    name, birth date, home address and home phone number.&nbsp; No matter how
    young or old, no matter how law-abiding, every single person who chooses
    to fly would be required to submit to a CAPPS II background check. </p>
  <p>This extra personal information, your "name plus three," would be added
    to your Passenger Name Record (PNR).&nbsp; Your PNR is the electronic file
    that your airline or travel agency creates about you every time you travel.&nbsp; PNRs
    include your travel itinerary and credit card information, as well as other
    private details such as who you are traveling with, what hotel you are staying
    at and whether or not you are sharing a hotel room with someone else.&nbsp; If
    you\'ve ordered a special meal for the flight, your PNR could also be interpreted
    to indicate what religion you practice. </p>
  
	<ul><li><strong>Step Two</strong>:&nbsp; Checking Your Identity
    Against Government and Commercial Databases</li></ul>
  <p>After you make a reservation, your PNR will sent to the government, and
    then, through the CAPPS II system, to commercial database companies.&nbsp; These
    companies will check your "name plus three" against personal information
    they have mined from your credit report, voter registration card, real estate
    transactions, driving records, marketing profiles and more -- the average
    adult American is in at least 50 commercial databases that can be shared
    with the federal government. &nbsp;After comparing your PNR data with this
    information, the companies will generate a numeric score indicating whether
    they think you are who you say you are.&nbsp; </p>
  <p>There are, of course, plenty of reasons that innocent people would fail
    this I.D. check.&nbsp; For example, if a credit agency has your address wrong,
    or if you\'ve recently moved and haven\'t yet applied for a new license, you
    would likely be tagged.&nbsp; CAPPS II would also discriminate against those
    who haven\'t generated enough data to verify their identities -- i.e., those
    who don\'t have driving or credit records, or who don\'t own a home.&nbsp; As
    a result, the poor and working classes would unfairly be targeted for extra
    scrutiny, as well as would younger travelers who haven\'t yet "shed" enough
    data for commercial mining.</p>
	<ul><li><strong>Step Three</strong>:&nbsp; Secret Profiling &amp; Color
    Coding</li></ul>
  <p class=MsoBodyText>After your identity is verified using the methods described
    above, travel authorities will feed personal details from your PNR into the
    CAPPS II system, and then will use secret criteria for a "threat assessment" process
    to determine whether or not you are a danger to aviation security.&nbsp; First,
    they\'ll check your name against terrorist watch lists.&nbsp; But that\'s not
    all -- they plan to check criminal and immigration records, too.&nbsp; </p>
  <p>The government won\'t say exactly what types of personal information they
    will use to classify you.&nbsp; Responding to pressure from privacy advocates,
    TSA indicated in a 2003 Privacy Act notice that it will not use
    sensitive medical or financial information.&nbsp; However, this assurance
    appears in the supplementary section, not the main text of the notice.&nbsp; As
    final regulations will be drafted from the main text, this is a disturbing
    omission.</p>
  <p class=MsoBodyTextIndent>After assessing your threat level based on secret
    criteria, the government will assign you a color.&nbsp; GREEN means you are
    not considered a threat and are free to board your flight.&nbsp; YELLOW means
    you may be a threat; law enforcement will be called, you will be detained,
    searched and questioned and you may not be allowed to fly.&nbsp; RED means
    that you cannot fly at all.&nbsp; You may also be arrested.&nbsp; </p>
  <h2>Your Right to Privacy</h2>
  <p>CAPPS II would profoundly violate your right to privacy:&nbsp; first, by
    demanding that you hand private information over to the government every
    time you fly; second, by sifting through the personal details about you contained
    in commercial and government databases; and finally, by applying secret criteria
    to your data profile to determine your relative "fitness" for air travel.</p>
  <p>CAPPS II won\'t only invade your privacy by accessing the information in
    existing databases -- it could also lead to the creation of new databases
    that could be used to track your movements.&nbsp; For example, the extra
    personal details that CAPPS II would require you to hand over would enable
    the airlines and reservation companies easily to index all of your reservations
    into a lifetime travel dossier, which they would then be free to use for
    marketing purposes or to sell without your permission.&nbsp; This dossier
    could also be made available to any government agency upon request.</p>
  <h2>False Positives and Illusory Security</h2>
  <p>The quality of the data that TSA will use for CAPPS II screening is very
    much in question. </p>
  <p>TSA claims that the commercial databases with which it contracts would have
    to meet a &quot;very high&quot; standard before being used for CAPPS II.&nbsp; Unfortunately,
    TSA hasn\'t explained how it would ensure that these databases are accurate.&nbsp; And
    whether or not the information in these databases turns out to be correct,
    TSA will also use government databases, which are notoriously unreliable.&nbsp; Indeed,
    a senior program official told the General Accounting Office (GAO) that TSA has no indication of the
    accuracy of information contained in government databases.</p>
  <p>The result is that you could be grounded, placed on a government watch list,
    or made subject to repeated security checks due to information that is false,
    old, or incomplete (such as an arrest that never led to a conviction).&nbsp; You
    could also be forced to endure "second class" travel because true facts about
    you -- for example, that you\'re of Arab descent, or Muslim -- might serve as
    the grounds for unjustified inferences.&nbsp; Worse, you won\'t be able to
    review the database records upon which your security score is based.</p>
  <p>And what happens if you find yourself misidentified as a terrorist or criminal,
    repeatedly barred from flying or flagged for further scrutiny?&nbsp; Your
    only avenue for redress is to write to the CAPPS II Passenger Advocate with
    a complaint.&nbsp; Not only is this method slow and inefficient, there is
    no deadline by which travel authorities must abide to correct any errors
    they have made.</p>
  <p>These kinds of "false positives" aren\'t only unfortunate for those who are
    misidentified; they are bad for our overall security.&nbsp; If CAPPS II uses
    faulty data in screening passengers, the number of false positives goes up.&nbsp; With
    a sufficiently high ratio of false to true positives, security personnel
    might become conditioned to false positives and as a consequence, more lax.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>
  <p>The "security" offered by CAPPS II is illusory because using identity for
    threat assessment is a deeply flawed approach.&nbsp; Such profiling can fail
    in two very dangerous ways.&nbsp; First, as previously discussed, it can
    misidentify innocents as evildoers and divert important security resources
    away from the real threats.&nbsp; Second, and even worse, it could misidentify
    evildoers as innocents, mistakenly tagging armed terrorists as "greens" who
    do not require additional screening.&nbsp; The more practical and effective
    approach to enhancing our aviation security would be to scrap CAPPS II in
    favor of random but thorough searches for bombs and weapons.</p>
  <h2>CAPPS II as All-Purpose Dragnet</h2>
  <p class=MsoBodyText>Mission creep is an all-too-common problem with government
    agencies.&nbsp; Despite the fact CAPPS II was designed specifically to identify
    terrorists, TSA has already admitted that it will use the program to screen
    for violent criminals and illegal immigrants.&nbsp;&nbsp; There is no guarantee
    that once in place, CAPPS II won\'t continue incrementally to expand its mission
    in ways that threaten the basic civil liberties of air travelers -- especially
    those deemed "suspicious."</p>
  <p class=MsoBodyText>Already, an envoy of Moroccan lawmakers on a goodwill
    tour to the U.S. was detained at Portland International Airport after travel
    officials mistook them for possible terrorists.&nbsp; The incident made headlines,
    but under CAPPS II, this sort of discrimination in the name of security could
    very well become commonplace.&nbsp; If today there is a problem with "driving
    while black," tomorrow the problem could be "flying while Arab/Muslim." </p>
  <h2>Congress Gives CAPPS II a Failing Grade</h2>
  <p>Congress\'s investigatory arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO), reports
    that as of January 2004 the TSA has failed to meet seven out of eight Congressional
    requirements for CAPPS II.&nbsp; Specifically, TSA has failed to:</p>
	<ul>
	<li>adequately assess the accuracy of information in the
	databases that will be used for CAPPS II;</li>

	<li>stress test the CAPPS II system and demonstrate its
	efficacy and accuracy;</li>

	<li>install safeguards to protect CAPPS II from abuse;</li>
	
	<li>install security measures to protect unauthorized access
	to travelers\' personal data;</li>
  	
	<li>establish effective oversight of the system\'s use
	and operation;</li>

	<li>address privacy concerns regarding CAPPS II; and</li>

	<li>create redress procedures for passengers to correct
	erroneous information.</li>
	</ul>

<p>Thankfully, Congress does not intend to release funds for the system\'s implementation
    until TSA has satisfied the above criteria.&nbsp; However, President Bush
    has made it clear that he believes these requirements to be merely advisory
    and, as such, will not serve to prevent TSA from proceeding with implementation
    as scheduled.&nbsp; Hence, the fight over implementing CAPPS II is far from
    over.&nbsp; </p>
  <h2>Coming Soon: The "Trusted Traveler" Program</h2>
  <p>In addition to CAPPS II, TSA is working on a "Trusted Traveler" program
    that would allow some people to opt out of airport security screening.&nbsp; Under
    the program, travelers who submit to an extensive background check would,
    after paying a fee, receive an ID card allowing them to skip extra airport
    screenings.&nbsp; </p>
  <p>The danger here is obvious: if a terrorist discovers how to game the system
    and successfully register as a "trusted traveler," he can bypass otherwise
    unavoidable searches for bombs and weapons.&nbsp; This leaves every passenger
    more, not less, vulnerable to a stealth attack.&nbsp; </p>
  <p>Apart from the problem of trading real security for the illusion thereof, "trusted
    traveler" ID cards could have a number of unsavory unintended consequences.&nbsp; These
    include opening up a new market for identity theft, creating a <i>de facto</i> national
    ID card, and establishing a form of "class structure" based on the level
    of trust that the government affords a cardholder.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>
  <p>The bottom line is that by treating each of us as a suspected criminal
    or terrorist, CAPPS II would rob us of our most fundamental rights as U.S.
    citizens without proof that it will make any of us any safer.&nbsp; TSA should
    abandon CAPPS II and put our valuable security resources into programs that
    strike an appropriate balance between providing enhanced safety and protecting
    the freedoms central to American life.&nbsp; </p>
</div>
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