Printer Friendly Version

Washington – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) today won Senate Commerce Committee approval of an amendment to require Congressional oversight of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) being developed by the Transportation Security Administration. Concerned that the CAPPS II program could violate the privacy and civil liberties of the flying public, Wyden introduced the amendment to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to report to Congress within 90 days on what impact the CAPPS II program will have on the privacy and civil liberties of United States citizens including how individual information will be used and what safeguards will be implemented to protect the public’s rights. The language is now part of S. 165, the Air Cargo Security Bill, which is expected to be taken up by the full Senate in the near future.

“I’m all in favor of finding ways to be smarter about aviation security and to target aviation security resources more efficiently,” said Wyden. “But a system that seeks out information on every air traveler or anyone who poses a possible risk to U.S. security, and then uses that information to assign a possible threat ‘score’ to each one, raises some very serious privacy questions. It’s a matter of good public policy for the privacy and civil liberties implications of this program to be reported to Congress.”

The proposed CAPPS II system would institute a computer search on each airline passenger or any person who poses a possible risk to U.S. security to determine who should be subject to more security scrutiny or who should not be allowed to board a plane at all. According to a notice in the January 15, 2003 Federal Register, the computer search would analyze information from “risk assessment reports; financial and transactional data; public source information; proprietary data; and information from law enforcement and intelligence sources.” Information gathered from these sources would aid the computer system in assigning a numerical score to each passenger to indicate his or her perceived level of security threat. The data could be held by the government for as long as 50 years.

The Wyden amendment will require a written report from Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, in consultation with Attorney General John Ashcroft, to the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Specific issues that must be addressed in the report include:
• how long collected data will be maintained and who will have access to that data;
• how TSA will treat the scores obtained on individual travelers and under what circumstances, if any, the scores will be shared with entities outside TSA;
• the role of the airlines and other private companies in implementing the system, and their access to information on individual passengers;
• what safeguards will be in place to guarantee that the information will be used only as officially intended;
• what efforts will be in place to mitigate errors and what procedural recourse will be available to passengers who believe they were wrongfully barred from a flight; and,
• what oversight procedures will be in place to guarantee that privacy and civil liberty concerns will be a priority as the program is installed, operated and updated.

A copy of the Wyden amendment can be accessed online at:
http://wyden.senate.gov/leg_issues/amendments/capps_amendment.pdf

###