The Plaintiffs Want Nothing To Do With CAPPS II

In a land where there are few roads, airplanes are the de facto means of transportation. And perhaps that's why four Alaskans are suing the TSA, hoping to gut the electronic passenger screening system known as CAPPS II.

"Ultimately what is offensive and objectionable is the development of regulations that will determine if I can fly in absolute secrecy, outside the purview of my legislators and outside my ability to address it in court if I were to be victimized by it adversely," said Bering Strait School Superintendent John Davis. He was quoted by Wired News.

With the backing of a civil liberties group called "Alaska Freedom," Davis and his co-plaintiffs want to gut CAPPS II, saying "airplanes are for flying, not spying." CAPPS II would assign color codes to passengers based on the TSA's assessment of their risk. In other words, it's passenger profiling.

Receiving a green designation would mean you can fly without additional screening at commercial airports. Yellow would entail a more intensive search of baggage and person. A red classification calls for the passenger to be detained by airport security for arrest by local or federal authorities.

While the plan might work for civilians in the lower 48 states, the plaintiffs and Alaska Freedom say it just won't work in the Land of the Northern Lights.

Davis's school district is roughly the size of Minnesota. "I live in environment where if I can't fly, I can't travel," he said. "I don't have access to an automobile, and even if I did, I couldn't take it anywhere outside of my community because there are no roads. I don't have any other option but to fly for business and to take care of serious medical problem"

Sally Huntley, another plaintiff in the suit, has another take on the issue. She doesn't want to collect information on her clients just so it can be turned over to the TSA.

"These clients have become my friends," she said. "This isn't about security, this is about a violation of our rights. And if they think they are going to set my customer base up for some bizarre thing like this, they are nuts. For someone up here to be flagged red and to live in Barrow or Nome, it's a jail sentence. Everybody here flies."

Frustrated by the likes of Davis and Huntley, as well as a lack of cooperation from the airlines, TSA honcho James Loy has threatened to issue a secret directive that would enable CAPPS II. The directive would theoretically absolve airlines of any liability. The net effect on passengers would be about the same.

"Security directives only involve prescribing mandatory security measures in response to specific threat assessments," said another plaintiff, James Harrison. "Flight so-and-so is going to be targeted -- that's specific. Here we have a situation where they are implementing a whole system to conduct wholesale data searches on all passengers -- that's not a specific security threat in my book. This administration's efforts to prevent judicial review of laws generally applicable to all US citizens, relating to their right to travel, is more dangerous to the security of the United States than any external threat. All we want to do is to prevent them from pulling a fast one and give us a clear target to bring these challenges."

FMI: www.alaskafreedom.com, www.tsa.gov