CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System) is a new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is using to check personal details of every passenger boarding U.S flights in order to combat terrorism and prevent hijacking airplanes.

You are required to give your name, address, home phone number and birth date to be checked. CAPPS II uses this information to check the passengers’ background information and personal details to check it against commercial and governmental databases. After they check the passengers’ details, the profile is “tagged” with a colour-coded score indicating the level of security that you appear to have. Based on the colour or score of the profile, the passenger could be detained, interrogated or have an investigation done. If the score indicates you are a potential hazard for the U.S you can be prohibited from flying and entering the U.S. this process is commonly known a Computer Profiling because it creates a profile of every passenger according to the stereotype their information matches the most with, for example, a Muslim passenger would probably be colour coded as someone potential dangerous, and would be detained for further questions and research.

Technology in this case makes the recollection of data and the checking of information more accurate because it follows a systematic method and it checks every little aspect of the person. Biometrics analyses and stores the passengers physical aspects such as fingerprints, iris, voice pitch etc… Meaning that in case there’s a need to check the reliability of the passengers’ information, the biometrics would make this easier and more accurate.

Computer profiling has raised a lot of controversy because many people think it goes against your fundamental right of privacy and your fundamental right to travelling.

Right of privacy is violated because your personal information is stored in a governmental database for further research. Other information such as recent purchases, credit card history, bank account balance, family phone number, place of work etc… is obtained from commercial databases where all this information has been stored for other purposes. The information is saved for a lifetime in a open book to travel authorities. This could represent a potential problem because no one ensures every citizen that there’s not going to be a leach of information, or that the information is not going to be used for purposes other than governmental purposes. Furthermore, it is a violation of privacy because personal details are saved into a database for a lifetime meaning that every travel authority would have access to your personal info. Meaning that if someone would want to kidnap, rob or plan an attack, they would have all the information they need.

Security issues arise in the moment personal and sensible information is stored in open book to travel authorities. As said before, no one will give an explanation in case the databases are hacked or if someone uses this information for other purposes. This could also lead to some corruption. The reason of this is because in case a travel agent wishes to change information to keep someone form

entering the country or leaving they have all the information they need. Technology in this case makes this process easier because the database is open and available at anytime inside and out of governmental facilities. Databases keep the records in order and most of them are kept up-to-date because they are fed by public and commercial databases. So information like, bank accounts, personal likings and other information is constantly being updated.

Reliability of the system represents another important issue because CAPPS II could easily misidentify someone and tag him or her with a red label, making them terrorists or criminals, disabling them to travel in air. This “false positive” not only means that the passenger is psychologically affected but the government would waste valuable resources and time. On the other hand “false positives” is a big problem because it comes into conflict with every persons right of travelling and privacy. To what extent should every personal detail of your life be analyzed, stored and become material for scrutiny only for travelling purposes?

A list of people misidentified is one of the biggest concerns that people have over this system. What will happen to the list of names that were misidentified? Who will guard this list? Will these people be able to see this information and under what parameters they were identified as being potential danger?

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Some solutions for the issues described above are: Implementation of a Data Protection Act. The DPA gives you the right to choose

who is permitted to view and alter information. If the TSA would like to regulate this, they could eliminate the idea of an open book to travel authorities and only have it open for FBI agents or agents with permission too view this database. It would eliminate the possibility that anyone changes the information for personal purposes; also it would enhancing the security factor because personal information would only be available only for those who really need it to check details and to ensure the security to the nation and not for public view.

Antivirus and firewalls would enhance the security of the database making it harder for hackers to hack this information. This means that everyone who is in this database should not worry about their personal information being hacked and read by everybody, even worst, they would not worry about their security.