Homeland Security Pushes Changes to Secure Flight Program
As reported previously, on July 22, 2005, the Government Accountability Office issued a report stating that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) violated the Privacy Act during testing of the Secure Flight program by exceeding the scope and objectives of the commercial data testing described in their Public Disclosure Notices. Despite this violation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is proposing changes to next year's homeland security funding bill that would allow the Secure Flight program to use background checks and profiling to help determine if an airline passenger is a terrorist, even if he or she is not on a terror watch list. The proposal would also allow the Secure Flight program to be implemented in U.S. airports after approval by the Head of DHS (the current bill requires independent congressional investigators to evaluate it).
Posted by Brian Bennett