Jul. 16, 2004 - 18:08 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Tapps for CAPPS ?

An editorial in this morning's Rocky Mountain News is good news for a change, I think, or hope it is.

A privacy threat bites the dust

"The Department of Homeland Security, which has an unfortunate way with names, is about to pull the plug on CAPPS II, an acronym for Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System."

"The idea was that every airline passenger would be obliged to turn over to Homeland Security his or her full name, address, telephone number and date of birth, which the department would then run through a variety of goverment and private databases. In short, if you wanted to fly on an airplane, you would have to give Homeland Security the right to learn everything about you."

"Passengers would then be color-coded according to their potential threat."

"Green would be OK, going through the normal security. Yellow would be pulled aside for extra searching and frisking. And red wouldn't be able to fly at all."

"The criteria for each category were always murky, and the department never could say how people wrongly classified could quickly and easily get the mistake rectified."

"The department should concentrate on faster, more efficient and less intrusive airport screenings and do away with the idiocies in the current system. Do elderly retireees really need to shuffle barefoot and beltless through security to visit their grandchilden ? And if you're going to make people take off their shoes, shouldn't you provide them someplace more comfortable where they can put them back on ?"

"Since the outset of discussion regarding CAPPS, we've warned that if it were ever put in place, there would be pressure to expand the net to include deadbeat dads, tax defaulters, illegal aliens, traffic scofflaws and others."

"In the end, the marginal improvements in security CAPPS II might have provided were not worth the potentially gross loss of passenger's privacy."

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My Opinions. So how exactly would they determine someone a threat to security from what they would find in a data base ? Do our credit bureaus and others always put out the right dope ?

Seems to me that all along the line the poohbahs have been using terrorism threats to scare us into admitting ourselves into the data base of most anybody, Doctor's records, Dentists records, bank and financial institution records, school and college records, traffic records, medical records, mental treatment center records, you name it -- they want it in their precious data banks, and the ability to tune in on private data banks also.

One way or another I fear they will have the legal ability to look at everything about us, and legally take action to do what they will in whatever twisted way they want to.

Will 2004 become an actuality of the story, "1984" ?

I hope this puts all of that stuff in limbo, but I will bet you that some federal gremlin is figuring how to sneak a surveillance system over that will have all us completely in the government database -- including the possiblilty of voting in place of a citizen ? Paranoid, I suppose, but that is only my opinion. Will it be Taps For CAPPS ? . . . . . . . . . . . .

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