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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Not be taken as an endorsement of its underlying scientific basis. I.1 TOTAL/TERRORISM INFORMATION AWARENESS (TIA) I.2 COMPUTER-ASSISTED PASSENGER PRESCREENING SYSTEM II (CAPPS II) AND SECURE FLIGHT In creating the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Congress directed that it implement a program to match airline passengers against a terrorist watch list. CAPPS II was intended to fulfill that directive. It was defined as a prescreening system whose purpose was to enable TSA to assess and authenticate travelers’ identities and perform a risk assessment to detect persons who may pose a terrorist-related threat. However, it went beyond the narrow directive of checking passenger information against a terrorist watch list and included, for instance, assessment of criminal threats. According to the DHS fact sheet on the program, CAPPS II was to be an integral part of its layered approach to security, ensuring that travelers who are known or potential threats to aviation are stopped before they or their baggage board an aircraft.2 It Suggested Citation:"Appendix I: Illustrative Government Data Mining Programs and Activity." National Research Council. 2008. Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12452. × was meant to be a rule-based system that used information provided by the passenger (name, address, telephone number, and date of birth) when purchasing an airline ticket to determine whether the passenger required additional screening or should be prohibited from boarding. CAPPS II would have examined both commercial and government databases to assess the risk posed by passengers. In an effort to address privacy and security concerns surrounding the program, DHS issued a press release about what it called myths and facts about CAPPS II.3 For instance, it stated that retention of data collected would be limited—that all data collected and created would be destroyed shortly after the completion of a traveler’s itinerary. It also said that no data mining techniques would be used to profile and track citizens, although assessment would have extended beyond checking against lists and would have included examining a wide array of databases. A study by GAO in 2004 found that TSA was sufficiently addressing only one of eight key issues related to implementing CAPPS II.4 The study found that accuracy of data, stress testing, abuse prevention, prevention of unauthorized access, policies for operation and use, privacy concerns, and a redress process were not fully addressed by CAPPS II. Despite efforts to allay concerns, CAPPS II was abandoned in 2004. It was replaced in August 2004 with a new program called Secure Flight. Secure Flight is designed to fulfill the Congressional directive while attempting to address a number of concerns raised by CAPPS II. For instance, unlike CAPPS II, Secure Flight makes TSA responsible for cross-checking passenger flight information with classified terrorist lists rather than allowing such checking to be done by contracted vendors. Although the possibility of using commercial databases to check for threats is still included, the use of commercial data is now precluded.5 Other differences between
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