Says Innocent Travelers Are Being Harassed

It's no secret that the TSA is keeping a list and checking it twice, hoping to find who's naughty or nice. And as far as the American Civil Liberties Union is concerned, therein lies the rub.

The ACLU Tuesday sued the TSA on behalf of seven airline passengers the civil liberties group says have been wrongly placed on the so-called "do not fly" list.

"Many innocent travelers who pose no safety risk whatsoever are stopped and searched repeatedly," the ACLU said in a statement issued prior to Tuesday's filing.

The TSA actually keeps two lists and, while their existence is no secret, their contents are. One list contains the names of people the TSA says can't fly.

The second list contains the names of "selectees," those who are given that extra special attention during security screening. How does a name get on one of those lists? You generally have to be referred by a law enforcement or intelligence agency.

At this point, no one knows just how to go about getting off such a list. So says David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "There doesn't seem to be any reliable way to resolve the problem that these people continuously confront."

The TSA admits its name-matching technology isn't perfect. Some people with the same names as those on the lists have run into extra screening and outright flight bans, according to Sobel, even though they themselves have done nothing to warrant the extra special attention.

In such cases, the FBI says you should call law enforcement or the Bureau itself to clear up matters. But some passengers say, even after repeated attempts, they still face the same grueling ordeal at the airport whenever they try to fly.

But the ACLU says, if you think it's bad now, wait until CAPPS II is implemented and the number of names on the lists jumps into the hundreds or thousands.

FMI: www.tsa.gov, www.aclu.org