Oddball Update

A long, long time ago, on my old website, I reacted to then-news of the day which told of a color-coded passenger screening program being instituted for air travelers in the U.S. This was another one of those terrorist responses that, as usual, went too far in its analysis, ignoring more common telltale terror factors and instead checking your credit history, among other things, to determine how likely you are to go jihad on an aircraft.

Well, today nearly two years later, I’m happy to report that the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, has been dismantled due to privacy concerns, and the fact that it was too impractical. The system would have involved a manual method of doing background checks on every single airline passenger; your personal details would have been verified for accuracy against—get this—mail marketing lists. Wow. Now that’s pretty scary, to think that if I booked a seat on an airline, the TSA would check with Publisher’s Clearing House to see if my name was correct. How often do you get presorted mail with your name spelled wrong on it?

Anyway, I’m glad to see this stupid-ass program bite the dust. They say it may be replaced with something else, but who knows and who cares. At least this is one bad idea which actually didn’t make it to prime time.

Categorized as Headlines