CAPPS 2 And Civil Rights

The other issue that came up during the debate that I thought was interesting was that of CAPPS 2, an experimental screening system that Northwest Airlines was assisting the government in testing. It apparently was proving to be pretty effective until word got out the NWA was participating. Then the ACLU and privacy people came out screaming and threatening until NWA withdrew from the program (a good business move for NWA).

As I understand it (and possibly I'm wrong here) CAPPS 2 was taking general information: name, address, itinerary - all the basic stuff that you tell the airline in order to buy a ticket - and runs it through essentially an agency check. They compare your name against a number of databases and critereon in order to better focus our security resources to identify terrorists and other threats.

I'm sorry, but I really find it hard to believe that for the airline to share manifest information - information you have already freely and willingly parted with as a condition of travel - in an effort to make your travel experience more pleasant (relatively speaking) and more safe (hopefully) is part of some great Orwellian plot by the government to direct your life.

There is a lot of information I don't want the government collecting about me. But I don't mind them running information against existing security threat databases. It only makes sense. If they start collecting the information and maybe handling the accounting for the airline frequent flier programs then I'll have a problem.

CAPPS 2 is not Big Brother. It is a legitimate governmental activity and expense as a quick comparison of information against known threats is an issue of national defense. Everything in life is a matter of balances. Security must be balanced against privacy and liberty. CAPPS 2 does not push that balance out of whack.

Even if the ACLU says it does.