Air Transport Association Flooded With Calls, E-Mails
Airline passengers
worried about privacy in an age where airlines and the government
are sharing their personal information have been calling the Air
Transport Association, as the government continues to move toward
using information like credit reports to weed out potential
hijackers.
And there doesn't appear to be an easy answer on the
horizon.
ATA members met with Nuala O'Connor Kelly Friday. She's the
chief privacy officer at the Homeland Security Department. But the
meeting apparently didn't yield much in the way of solutions to the
thorny issue of balancing privacy with protection.
"The only thing that came out of this meeting was a very useful
discussion with Nuala O'Connor Kelly and a recognition that we need
to do some more work," said ATA spokesman Doug Wills.
At the heart of the
issue is the government's CAPPS II program. It's designed to gather
a wide range of information from government and private sources, in
hopes of spotting a terrorist before he commits a terror act.
Included in the vast array of database information that is supposed
to fall under CAPPS II is credit reports (often notoriously
inaccurate), criminal checks, and government intelligence
reports.
Privacy advocates have been in an uproar over CAPPS II was
announced last year. In fact, one such advocate, Bill Scannell,
sent more than 100,000 emails to people on his contact list,
notifying them of the DHS-ATA meeting and urging them to voice
their concerns.
"It's important they feel what's at stake here," said Scannell,
who added that the airlines would likely lose business from
customers concerned about their privacy. "I think people should
consider investing in video conferencing companies if CAPPS II goes
through."
Government officials
have promised that they won't actually be able to see the contents
of personal information gathered on air passengers. Instead, the
software would generate a "threat assessment level," a sort of flag
that would single out a particular passenger for additional
scrutiny.
Public outcry has further damaged the airline industry, still
suffering the aftershocks of the 9/11 attacks, the SARS outbreak
and a worldwide economic slump. Delta Airlines participated in a
CAPPS II pilot program last year, but pulled out when threatened
with a boycott.
Northwest Airlines and JetBlue now face class-action lawsuits
over their participation. Northwest, stung by recent revelations
that it sent as many as 10 million passenger records to NASA as
part of a test program -- in spite of the airline's denials -- now
says it will participate again if required by law to do so. But
airline executives say they'll recommend "a data protection
protocol addressing privacy concerns should be developed before any
further aviation security research with passenger data is
conducted."