Airlines Go From Friendly Skies to A Flying Police State

Printer-friendly versionSend by email"The travel industry and civil liberties groups are sharply objecting to government plans for a new airline passenger screening program .... . The proposed program ... would involve electronic checking of the credit records and criminal histories, along with checking whether the passenger is on watch lists of suspected terrorists. The screening would be done by the federal Transportation Security Administration. ... Based on the results, each traveler would be assigned a risk level. Those deemed to pose a danger would be barred from flights. The critics worry how the information about other passengers - whose risk rating will appear in encrypted form on boarding passes - will be used and protected from abuse. ... The program has so angered some passengers that a movement is brewing on the Internet for a boycott of Delta if it carries out the test of the system, known as CAPPS II, for Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System."