TSA & CAPPS II

Jerkoffs at TSA should be indicted

for lying to Congress, or some other kangaroo court reason. I am disappointed in American Air for releasing info about me, but just as disappointed to the Transport Security Admin for collecting this data and then lying to Congress about it.

From Wired

Two senators on Wednesday asked the Transportation Security Administration whether the agency violated federal rules by helping its contractors acquire passenger data, and why the agency told government investigators it didn't have such data.

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and ranking member Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) asked the questions in a letter sent to Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson.

The senators also pressed the TSA for an explanation of why it hadn't revealed the transfer of millions of passenger records to government contractors. Senate members had asked TSA officials directly whether they had done so, but the answer was no.

Two TSA agency spokesmen also denied to Wired News that any data transfer had taken place, saying that the project did not need data at the time.

But this week, American Airlines became the third airline to reveal that it turned over millions of passenger records to the government without informing the passengers. JetBlue and Northwest Airlines had earlier revealed that they too had transferred passenger records to government contractors. For the past eight months, TSA officials and spokesmen have repeatedly denied that any data transfer occurred.

"We are concerned by potential Privacy Act and other implications of this reported incident," the senators wrote. "Moreover, TSA told the press, the General Accounting Office and Congress that it had not used any real-world data to test CAPPS II.

"American Airlines has now indicated that it provided over 1 million passenger itineraries at TSA's request, which raises the question of why agency officials told GAO that it did not have access to such data."
...

In the case of American Airlines, the transfer occurred in June 2002, when Airline Automation, a database firm working for American Airlines, gave 1.2 million passenger records directly to four government contractors. American says it only authorized the company to give the data directly to the government, but Airline Automation disputes that claim.

and from the Department of Lamest Excuses Ever (DLEE)

The Department of Homeland Security's chief privacy officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, is looking into whether TSA officials violated federal privacy laws or internal regulations in asking for the data. Two months ago, O'Connor Kelly issued a report about JetBlue's data transfer. At the time she was writing the report, she was not told about the American Airlines transfer, which happened at the same time, she said.

...
In Wednesday's letter, the senators also asked the TSA whether it requested passenger data from any other companies. This was not the first time Lieberman and Collins had asked the question.

As part of confirmation proceedings in November 2003, the senators asked retired Adm. James Loy whether "any contractors working on CAPPS II used any real-world data for testing purposes."...

Loy's written response was, "No. TSA has not used any (passenger) data to test any of the functions of CAPPS II."

Last week, Loy corrected part of his answer to a similar committee question about the JetBlue affair, saying that he relied on the memory of a staffer and that his answer was incomplete.

Now playing in iTunes: Party at Ground Zero, from the album Fishbone by Fishbone (released 1985)