Regarding my six-year-old daughter being added to the CAPPS list:

COMMENT (1/12/04 9:50am): I just read about your plight on boingboing.net and thought I would quickly comment, especially after another reader commented that you were partly at fault for not having renewed a driving licence. This sounds bogus to me. Why should an expired driving licence flag you up as a potential problem (as happened to your wife)? I work in the US on a visa, but I don't even have a driving licence (I use my passport when making internal flights). Does that make me more suspect?

There's also a flaw in the thinking that because the licence has expired,
it is no longer valid identification. Even though a document has expired, there's no reason that it can't still function as identification of you. Clearly at some point it was deemed valid to issue documentation that the photograph, name, date of birth etc. corresponded to the same person. The expiry of the document doesn't invalidate that assertion. As time goes on, the photo may no longer resemble you, but I was travelling legally on a ten year passpot when I was 25 with a photo of me taken when I was 14. -- G

COMMENT (1/12/04 9:50am): Because of fears that the CAPPS2 system would be seen as ethnic profiling, it was designed to randomly select a few passengers and give them a permanent "Security Risk" or "Cannot Fly" status.  You can appeal your status, but as you found out they cannot tell you why you have a certain status, they are afraid someone will use that information to figure out how they are profiling the passengers.

BTW: you might find it interesting to read what some of the best annalists at MIT thought of the new system: http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_barnett072803.asp

COMMENT (1/11/04 3:27pm): Though I am from Europe and can't help with advice I was astonished to see a significant amount of justifying this kind of screening process.

May I encourage you to be upset about what happened to your daughter. It was right that you posted it and I hope that this post is a little puzzle piece to getting our freedom as well as safety back.

Since I started this e-mail anyway: I was glad you were so open about the way you ended your island experiment (as well as providing the coverage while it lasted) and am looking forward to more essays on it. I once had planned a three months study related trip to india from which i returned after only 6 weeks and apart from all the hassle of rearranging things there might be some feelings of defeat(?) In there as well. So, all the best for your resettlement in LA -- M

COMMENT: Most comments on your list see this episode as an example of high security, but you could also see it as the quite opposite; if security control can't tell the difference between a six year old all American girl and a (presumably) Arabian terrorist – well it isn't worth much, is it?

Here in Europe we have lived with tough security on airlines for decades. Eight years ago my then three year old son had packed his bag pack on his own for flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm. At the security check I was surprised that the customs officer picked out his bag for security control. It turned out that he had a water pistol in the bag, which had to be packed in a box, because it wasn't allowed in the cabin.... :-)

We had a laugh, and at the end of the day we were quite happy that security is working. -- H

COMMENT: Did it occur to you that a bad person(tm) may well use a child to carry a weapon?

Apparently it _did_ occur to someone, and that's why they made this check. Personally I think it's a good thing that they're covering all the possibilities and the everyone's safer for it.

It's a shame your little girl (like everyone else) didn't like the experience, but maybe next time she'll be more used to it. I can see why the security people behave like you describe - every bag could be a bomb or gun & when discovered, they'd be the first to suffer the consequences.

Please don't think I'm being harsh, or terse. This is just one the things people have to live with nowadays. -- P

COMMENT: Tell your wife to renew her driver's license.  The whole episode could have been avoided had she of done this before flying. Here in FL you can even do it online.

Sorry it happened, but the more you raise caine about it, the more frightened your child will be of it. -- C

COMMENT: Dunno if this helps you, but while I was a regular flier from Boston to New York on the Delta Shuttle I got "randomly picked" no less than 12 times in a row. It became a joke beacuse I would "predict" that I was going to be targeted every time. And every time they would tell me "Sir, it's random." Once I asked the attendant "Do me a favor and look up my history of 'random' scans. I know you can." She said she couldn't, and I walked away. But she then did, and my coworker who was right behind me in line heard her say "Wow, he's right."

It all started when I showed up for my tickets talking on a cell phone. The attendant said that I had to turn it off, and rather than promptly doing so it took me 15 seconds to wrap up. I swear that she put me on some sort of list.

I got off it by getting into their frequent flier program. I'd rather not think about exactly how they are connected (Delta is easing security in order not to piss off their good customers?) but the simple fact is that once I started putting my frequent flier number on the ticket, I stopped getting "randomly" chosen.

In the meantime, not sure how it works at other airlines/airports but I did find that since I knew I was going to be scanned that when boarding call began I could just walk over to the screening desk and "volunteer". Was going to happen anyway, and by volunteering I actually often got into the plane earlier than I would have anyway.

Good luck! -- D

COMMENT: Isn't it better to be wrong being too careful, as told in your story?

I wonder what your story would be if security would be wrong being too uncareful?

You try to make it sound like you were wrongly treated, or your daughter was wrongly treated in some way. The understatement of your story is that you are uncomfortable that new security measures are in effect. So, who gives? Deal with it. It's a new world for all of us. That includes you.

Rather than bitching on Homeland Security you would have been more effective in addressing those people, those people that stay up to watch over you while you sleep and ask them correctly (i.e. politely) to fix what you feel is wrong with the way they work.

COMMENT: Hey there! I'll just tell you what I tell ALL Americans - Europe's really spacious these days.

My country, with an area almost that of Japan and an economy that's roughly equal to it, has only 4,5 million inhabitants. Getting a working permit should be easy enough. Just make sure you pretend to be Canadian until people get a chance to know you.

As a bonus, your daughter would only have to go through the regular security checks here, and we have more than two political parties with any power, though they're all equally stupid. Also, a beer costs like a thousand dollars.

I'll see you in Europe! ;) -- D

COMMENT: _______ here, friend of Cory's (and fellow parent and big fan of your Mad Professor book, which my 8-year-old son loves). Read your post about your security experience.

As I understand CAPPS (based on some work-related research, albeit as to the original, pre-PATRIOT ACT iteration), it has a few ways it generates names for extra screening (of checked luggage, carry-on luggage, and person):

1. Matching names in the airline database against watch lists provided by the feds.

2. Generating suspect names based on information about the passenger in the airline database alone. (a) Behavioral info deemed suspect, e.g., buying a one-way ticket with cash at the last minute. (b) Profiling based on passenger characteristics, which can be kind of weird. For example, I recall reading in my research that for a period of time, at least, one suspect class was pregnant women traveling alone (presumably based on some specific threat info that existed at one time). When I traveled over the holidays during the recent Orange alert, I noticed that women in their thirties seemed to be getting singled out -- when we went through in Austin en route to SFO, my wife was in a line of such women getting the pat-down by the ladies from the female prison movie. Caused me to wonder whether there wasn't specific threat information about women of a certain age, itinerary, class, etc.

3. Randomly selecting people for extra screening.

Can't promise all this is correct, but I would guess your daughter got tagged based on either (2) or (3). (3) seems most likely. When I looked at it, CAPPS only used info the airlines had about the current flight, so the dB presumably would not know about past travel (i.e., time spent in the islands should not be factored in).

That's for what it's worth, which may not be much -- the above is dated and based on my general recollections. I'm sure there are more detailed explanations of the system out there in the public record.

Good luck. -- C

COMMENT: The answer to your question "Why can't Homeland Security tell the difference between Al Quaeda and my six-year-old daughter? "

... is that there is no difference. Your daughter may not be an evil terrorist, but in the eyes of DHS, -anyone can be a terrorist-.

So to them, there is no difference.

Americans should take more responsibility for the state of their politics. It is for *this* reason (no responsibility) that 9/11 happened, and it is for this reason that your daughter ended up on CAPPS, or that there is even a CAPPS list in the first place.

I hope your daughter grows up safe, and I hope she votes and does everything in her power as a citizen to ensure that her daughters get the same treatment. The daughters of America's enemies may not suffer the same fate, alas. -- J

COMMENT: Hello from the frozen wasteland to the north.

You know I can drive accross the border with minor headaches.. show passport, talk, drive... seems ok. But prebording my flight to Seattle from Vancouver Canada took 2 hours and the same stupid security rules applied to us. SO I took off my stinky shoes and tossed them on the machine which promptly threw a fit and said i had some toxic substance in then. So the bottom line..

Get rid of BUSH next election... and eventually everything will return to semi-normal...

I am sorry if this seems obvious..

ps: i lived in the usa for 11 years and loved it and the people.. but currently cant stand the current load of government people. -- A

COMMENT: As long as the current regieme exists, there's no way out for your daughter. She will always have been listed. In general, this is why the gun nuts really hate registration. There's no guarantee what the information will be used for in the future, or with whom it is shared. The only protection is to not have the data collected in the first place.

Your best bet for the future is to convince the political powers that be to stop the CAAPS program and tell most of the screeners to go home.

Bruce Schneier seems to have a number of level-headed thoughts on the subject of security... He runs a newsletter called Crypto-Gram with musings about the sorry state of affairs. Cryptome.Org is also good, though it seems quite rabid from time to time. PolitechBot from Declan McCullagh is good as well. Cryptonomicon.Net has interesting stories on ocassion. Supporting the usual suspects is probably a good idea as well: EFF, CDT, EPIC, FAS, etc. -- A

COMMENT: Sorry to hear about the hassles for you and your daughter. The ACLU recently handled a case in Pennsylvania where a woman who was mistakenly on the list was for all intents and purposes unable to travel by plane as a result. The ACLU threatened to sue TSA, and they got a *very* quick response. The best thing to do is to start by calling the lawyer who handled the case - Stefan Presser (___-___-____). He can put you in touch with the right people in the So. Cal. ACLU office.

Good luck! Please let me know how it goes. -- M

COMMENT: It's sad that you and your daughter had to go through that screening process. :( I believe your daughter's first name is what actually triggered the screening. They ran it through SOUNDEX-like algo and the name was flagged as possibly being muslim name. Do some google searches using her first name to see what I mean. Unfortunately, there's a lot of Turkish dancers that use that name.

Regards and hope you sort this out -- M

COMMENT: You might want to get in touch with the authors of this article. Perhaps they can put you in touch with someone who already has first-hand insight into this problem. Plugging David Nelson CAPPS into Google will get you a lot more similar stories. Good Luck. -- T