CAPPS II Back From the Dead
Galileo Will Be Opening Up A Dossier On You
To the Department of Homeland Security, you are no longer an American, you are a potential terrorist. Soon, anyone who books a flight through the Galileo Computerized Reservation System will have a nice fat file opened-up on them. In another test of a new Orwellian airline security program by the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration, Galileo will be facilitating background checks on anyone using their system.
What will Galileo do?
4 Collect your full name, date of birth, address and home phone number;
4 Put information related to your travel plans (including your credit card number, frequent flier number and itinerary) into a file and send it to the government.
The more you travel, the thicker the file. The information Galileo sends to the government will link all your travel information into a easily accessible dossier.
The Feds will then:
4 Have private data providers decide if you're really who you say you are;
4 Run a criminal background check on you;
4 Have you arrested at the airport if they think you're potentially linked to terrorism;
4 Assign you your very own Threat Assessment color;
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Greens will pass through security as normal.
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Yellows would require additional screening.
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Reds are not allowed to fly.
How will they determine what color you are?
- Sorry, that's classified.
Will an unpaid parking ticket flag you red?
- Not yet, but there will be a system in place to do so.
If I list my cell phone, will that flag me yellow?
- No one knows.
Can I appeal a Homeland Security decision?
- Sure. Write a letter to a Homeland Security P.O. Box while you're being detained at the airport and they'll get back to you real soon.
How do I know the government's information is correct?
- You don't. The TSA does not require any of the private databases they use to be accurate information to be accurate, just as the Justice Department has exempted their warrant database from being accurate.
Are private databases accurate?
- No. One of the largest private companies running information checks for the federal government, ChoicePoint, played a curious role in the
2000 Florida elections.
Will this system make flying safer?
- No, and
here's why.
Who the heck is Galileo? I thought airlines did reservations.
- Galileo is a Computerized Reservation System (CRS). Airlines, hotels, car rental agencies and others use CRSes to keep their records. Galileo is one CRS. The other CRSes are Sabre, WorldSpan and Amadeus. Think of a CRS as the travel equivalent of a credit bureau.
WHAT WE KNOW
CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Profiling System) is nothing less than a Soviet-style system of internal border controls. An incredible invasion of privacy, the system is un-American and un-Constitutional: not that a pesky thing like the Bill of Rights has stopped the extremists down at Homeland Security. It is our duty as citizens to do the job that the Department of Homeland Security has miserably failed at doing: to protect the US Constitution and stop CAPPS II.
All the information gathered will be stored on government computers for days, but your Galileo travel dossier will be kept as long as they feel like it. The information in your dossier can be sold, bought, traded or given to anyone Galileo wants. Why? Because they can. By providing Galileo mandatory-voluntary information, you'll be helping Galileo turn you into a marketing victim and strip yourself of your Constitutional rights, all in one fell swoop.
What's in your travel dossier? A lot. This dossier is known in the travel business as a PNR, or Passenger Name Record. Until now, it's been difficult to separate John Smith's information from another John Smith. The addition of dates of birth, telephone numbers, and full names makes it easy to tell one Smith from another. Learn more about Passenger Name Records
here.
To be fair, the program is one created by the Transportation Security Administration in a horribly misguided attempt to make flying safer.
It doesn't.
Today, it's just a pilot test running on a single CRS: let's work to make sure this pilot test fails. Until Galileo publicly withdraws from testing CAPPS II and stops treating citizens like criminals, there's only one thing the American people can do: to boycott Galileo and all other Cendant subsidiaries.