There are times where we almost have to wonder whether the Transportation Department and the TSA are on the payroll for Amtrak. Many of their attempts to increase security at the nation’s airports have ended up hamhanded or worse. Asking mothers to drink their own breast milk, confiscating miniature rifles from “G.I. Joe” and strip-searching old ladies was just the tip of the iceberg. Now, there is a new arena for the erosion of civil liberties in this nation after Sept. 11, 2001.
Delta Airlines, in cooperation with the Transportation Department, is beginning a pilot program in three undisclosed airports next month that should have every American outraged over its potential for abuse.
The way the program is supposed to work is that a “profile” (our first warning bell, by the way) will be created from every passenger’s credit and bank account reports (our second warning bell) and from that, each passenger will be assigned a color code (bingo!) that assesses his or her threat level. Green-coded passengers will be clear to fly, yellow-coded passengers will get extra attention from security screeners — “take off ze shoes!” Red codes won’t be able to fly at all.
Needless to say, this new initiative from the Transportation Department worries us and raises a whole host of privacy questions. We are appalled that the government is going to be further rooting around in our personal lives wholesale. This is not the police or FBI going into one person’s history to solve a crime — this is a new security apparatus digging around and pinning the tenuous label of “potential terrorist” on people who may very well have done nothing wrong. This is the kind of unfettered access that the Gestapo, or the Stasi, or the KGB could only dream about. This is Total Information Awareness Lite — and this time, there’s nothing that Congress can do about it.
Further, what exactly would trigger a yellow or red code? We don’t know, and certainly, they’re not going to tell us. For all we know, not having a credit history could trigger an alert — which could be problematic then for students and others who may not have credit cards. Or is it those in debt? Or those with “interesting” purchases?
Maybe red codes are given out to college newspaper editorial boards that write opinion pieces opposing this new destruction of civil liberties. Or is it discretionary, left up to the judgment of the officer doing the investigating and his or her biases? Will a first name of “Mohammed” trigger a yellow or red? And is there recourse for those given the scarlet letter if they could prove they’re not threatening?
Finally, there’s no indication how long the information will be kept by the government, and how secure the info will be on their end — that sort of personal information concentrated in one place, especially if it’s not secure enough, could be El Dorado for information thieves.
We are for security, and we believe that the nation has to do things to prevent another Sept. 11. This, however, is more of the expanding government surveillance that will not bring America any closer to catching terrorists. Instead, it makes us wonder in what direction this nation truly is headed.