U.S. Department of Transportation Proposes Massive Surveillance Database of All Air Travelers

PrivacyActivism and Coalition of Civil Liberties Groups Submit Comments Criticizing Plans as "Eviscerating Civil Liberties"

For Immediate Release - February 24, 2003

Contact:
Deborah Pierce, Executive Director, PrivacyActivism
dsp@privacyactivism.org
415-225-1730

San Francisco – PrivacyActivism, in coalition with Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and advisor Mike Stollenwerk, the Cyber Privacy Project, and CASPIAN, has filed comments with the U.S. Department of Transportation, strongly opposing a proposal for a database containing extensive information about every air traveler. Highlighting the extremely broad scope of the proposal, and its neglect of fair information practices such as adequate notice, access, and safeguards, the comments argue that the system would eviscerate civil liberties and that it is unconstitutional.

"The proposal puts virtually no limits on what information would be tracked or how it would be used, and does not even give individuals the right to see what data has been collected and stored about them," explained Deborah Pierce, Executive Director of PrivacyActivism. "Not only that, many of the sources of data included in the proposal may have very high error rates, so this database would not even be useful for its intended purpose."

In addition, the comments point out that the database appears to be a key part of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) system, and sharply criticize the attempt to evade the public debate that is currently taking place regarding secret data systems.

"The Pentagon's 'Total Information Awareness' program opened people's eyes to the dangers of government data-mining," said Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney at EFF. "CAPPS II poses the same problems and is moving along much faster."

PrivacyActivism also encouraged individuals to file their own comments. "When people are aware of and understand this proposal, they are outraged. We want to help them make their stance known - because in the past, public outrage has led the government to back down on such proposals," noted Pierce. She cited the example of the FDIC's 1999 'Know Your Customer' proposal, which was withdrawn after it received over 200,000 comments, virtually all of them negative.

The full text of the comments is available at http://www.privacyactivism.org/Item/69.

About PrivacyActivism

PrivacyActivism (http://www.privacyactivism.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose goal is to enable people to make well-informed decisions about the importance of privacy on both a personal and societal level.

Links

This media release is available online at http://www.privacyactivism.org/Item/71.

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Last updated September 29, 2003

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