Your luggage isn't the only thing being tracked at the airport.
First we got color codes from the Department of Homeland Security. Remember when they raised the terror alert to orange and urged us to clear the store shelves of duct tape? (By the way, did you know that almost half of the duct tape in this country is suspiciously made by one Ohio company whose owner happened to be a big Republican donor?) Now, the Transportation Security Administration, created after 9/11 with the intention of protecting us in the air?and which is under attack for spending lots of money while still showing alarming lapses in safeguards?has decided to color-code each and every one of us the moment we buy a plane ticket. You won't know it, but they'll be assigning you a hue, color-coding your name in a computer soon after you trudge into the airport. Think of it as electronic tattooing or high-tech branding, all in the name of the war on terror.
If you're what the TSA deems a no-risk flier, you'll be colored "green" and will be free to go about your business?including if you actually are a terrorist who's easily duped them, taking on someone else's identity with fake i.d. that you can buy on 42nd St. for a few bucks. If the TSA thinks you're somewhat shady, you'll be "yellow," and you'll be more thoroughly tracked at the airport, and that includes things like rummaging through all of your baggage. And if they decide you're "red," there ain't no way you're getting on the plane. Oh, and you may also be arrested.
Unlike in the case of your credit report, however, it doesn't appear that you'll be able to learn your color code, nor does it appear that you'll have any recourse regarding changing it. And how do they decide whether you're green, red or yellow? According to the Washington Post last week, that will be determined "based in part on [your] city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase."
The new system, called Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II (CAPPS II), which will go into effect next year, will have the airlines sending all of your personal information to the government, which will then check you against databases of private companies that collect information on your shopping habits, which will supposedly help the TSA confirm that you are who you say you are. I'm not sure how that is exactly supposed to work. Perhaps they're going to look at your shoes and see that they are Prada, and then look at your shopping activity in the database and see that you actually buy at Payless. "Sorry honey, you've been colored red," the nice ticket agent may tell you. "Guards, haul his ass off to jail?but get those shoes first!"
After your shopping-habit identity check, you will then be matched against government databases, checked to see if you committed any crimes. What other criteria the government will use is still rather vague. For all we know, if you've ever been arrested, say, in a protest, or if maybe you're just a bit suspicious for other reasons?like having an Arabic name, though you grew up in New Jersey?you might not make it to grandma's for Thanksgiving, sitting in the slammer at the airport.
"This system is going to be replete with errors," Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU told the Post. "You could be falsely arrested. You could be delayed. You could lose your ability to travel."
The TSA is entering the realm of law enforcement on a grand scale, admittedly taking on the role of a secret police, becoming another arm of John Ashcroft's Justice Department.
"[CAPPS II] will provide protections for the flying public," TSA spokesman Brian Turmail told the paper. "Not only should we keep passengers from sitting next to a terrorist, we should keep them from sitting next to wanted ax murderers."
Of course, it's not the TSA's job to protect us from ax murderers?that's what we have local law enforcement and the FBI for. Besides, how many ax murderers can there possibly be? The TSA estimates that most passengers will be coded green, while up to eight percent will be coded yellow and one to two percent will be colored red. Kevin Drum, a blogger who authors a popular site called Calpundit, estimates that if there are 200 million adults in America, the TSA is expecting to bar two to four million people from traveling by air.
"Color me skeptical that we have several million wanted murderers in the United States," he notes.
Airport security is of course of paramount concern, and there's no question that we need much tighter controls. That's what makes this scheme all the more scary. CAPPS II is window dressing?just like the terror alerts?by a government agency that is second only to the airlines themselves when it comes to inefficiency and bumbling. The TSA has spent billions of dollars and, still, federal screeners have been hired without proper criminal background checks; baggage has gotten onto airliners without bomb screening; x-ray machines that are supposed to detect "shoe bombs" don't do a damn thing; and non-passenger cargo isn't screened at all for explosives.
Pilots, flight attendants and passengers must walk through metal detectors, but a lot of other people who walk on, off and around planes do not.
"Why aren't we physically searching the workers who handle the baggage and cargo that goes on planes?" New York security consultant Charles Slepian asked in the San Francisco Chronicle last week.
And a few weeks ago, three teenagers in a rubber raft beached themselves at Kennedy during a storm, right under the TSA's nose. They scrambled around on runways for an hour, until they eventually found a cop?rather than the other way around.
The way the airlines can't seem to get your bags from one place to another intact?let alone get flights to take off on time?and the way the TSA can't seem to get its head out from up its butt, do we really want them embarking on electronic tattoos?