The Law of the Sea
Gary Varvel at Marc Brands Liberty - Kerry Speaks Both Languages - cartoon commentary on the hawk and dove sides of John Kerry. Hehe. [smith2004]
# James Bovard at The Boston Globe - Privacy vs. safety in screening travelers - why CAPPS III should be declared DOA. [claire]
SHOULD THE federal government compile a registry of the names and addresses of every airline passenger in America who requests a kosher meal? This could be the reality if the Transportation Security Administration proceeds with a system to build databases of personal dossiers on Americans who take airline flights. In late 2001, Congress mandated that the Transportation Security Administration create a Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, known as CAPPS 2. The first CAPPS system triggered alerts on nine of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. However, Federal Aviation Administration regulations required merely checking their baggage to confirm that they were not carrying explosives on board. Even though the feds had received numerous warnings of an Arab hijacking conspiracy in the works, the FAA did not alert airlines or require additional security procedures for people who triggered computer alerts.
Because the feds screwed up massively, the obvious Washington solution is to sacrifice more of Americans' privacy. CAPPS 2 aimed to create a database including the names, credit card numbers, addresses, meal preferences, and other details for every airline passenger.
# Joan Barron at The Casper Tribune - Dog sniff not a search, court says - in Wyoming, damn it. How soon before we get dogs trained to smell gunpowder "alerting" to guns in our cars? [saltypig]