The Transportation Security Administration is
the all-knowing, all-seeing federal agency in charge of taking our shoes
off at airports — and our heroic leaders there have recently rooted
out a treasure trove of invaluable data. Unfortunately, it’s not
information about some secret cell of terrorists — it’s a trove
of your personal information and mine.
If you flew in June 2004, TSA snoops now have a
file on you — even though Congress specifically told them not to
collect such data. Agency officials promised that they wouldn’t, but
TSA secretly did it anyway, amassing such passenger records as our names,
phone numbers, and credit-card info.
Worse, the TSA contracted the data tabulation to
a private corporation, which used other databases to compile full profiles
on us, including home addresses, spouses, and — be very worried
— the exact latitudes and longitudes of our homes! There’s a
law against secret government databases, and TSA earlier pledged to
Congress that it would not store commercial data on air passengers —
but there the info is, stored in TSA computers.
Not to worry, say the Bushites in charge, for
this is just a test of a new ID-verification system. Even if the TSA broke
its promises, tried to circumvent the law, and failed to produce a system
that won the required approval of the Government Accountability Office, the
Bushites insist that they can be trusted with people’s personal data
because the ID system “is built on an airtight privacy
platform.”
Do you have “sap” written on your
forehead? These people thumbed their noses at Congress; why would they let
some bureaucratic privacy code stop them from ransacking our personal
information? Instead of being trusted, they ought to be prosecuted.
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2005.
