Posted on 09/09/2003 12:07:52 AM PDT by sarcasm
In the most aggressive -- and, some say, invasive -- step yet to protect air travelers, the federal government and the airlines will phase in a computer system next year to measure the risk posed by every passenger on every flight in the United States.
The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase.
Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded "yellow" and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled "red" and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 13/01/2004)
The Telegraph (UK)
Air passengers travelling to the United States are to be colour-coded to reflect their "threat" to airline security.
Days after US authorities began photographing and fingerprinting millions of foreign travellers on arrival, plans were announced yesterday to demand access to passenger data held on airline computers.
The data collection project will affect anyone flying to, from or within the United States and will tag passengers' computer profile with a "threat" assessment.
A red code will bar a passenger from flying, while being tagged as yellow will force passengers to undergo extra security screening and questioning. An estimated 95 per cent of passengers will be coded as green, or low risk, and allowed to board through normal security channels.
The plan is designed to replace a much-derided computerised system used to detect potential terrorists, which picks out anyone paying cash for a flight or anyone flying on a one-way ticket.
The new system, expected to come into force next month, will collect passengers' names, dates of birth, home addresses, credit card numbers, passport and visa details, and travel itineraries, and compare them with criminal and terrorist watch lists.
Privacy lawsuits have scared US airlines away from volunteering to hand over passenger records during the testing phase. European airlines have been co-operating.
Negotiations between the European Union and the US have resulted in some concessions, including guarantees that all data indicating racial or ethnic profiling would be filtered and deleted as airline information is passed to US databases.
• A passenger with a name similar to an al-Qa'eda suspect failed to turn up for an Air France flight from Paris to Los Angeles at the weekend, for the second time in three weeks.
The name sparked a security alert but French authorities later said it was a case of mistaken identity.
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