Boortz raises an interesting point:
Yesterday the federal government proposed yet another version of an airline passenger pre-screening program. It’s called Secure Flight. It will let domestic passengers volunteer to provide their date of birth and gender when the purchase airline tickets.
According to the Transportation Security Administrator, giving these pieces of data will help clarify many of the mix-ups that currently exist … such as infants being banned from flights because a name similar to theirs is on no-fly list. The new program will resolve 95% of the miscommunications.
Congress’ concern has been about the invasion of privacy, initially requiring passengers to give commercial data and be assigned risk scores. In fact, they were so concerned that they banned the implementation of any program until it meets their standards of ensured privacy and accuracy.
In addition, Homeland Security announced that international flights will be required to send the passenger list data to the U.S. government before the plane even takes off. This is will give U.S. authorities more time to identify and remove terror suspects from flights.
As for giving up personal information … come on, it’s a birth date. Your drug store has it, what’s the problem with coughing it up when you fly?
You really do have to wonder what the objection is here. I have long since begun to suspect that the people raising such objections, in light of modern day realities such as what Neal talks about here are either tilting at ghostly windmills , or are actively working toward our being attacked again, or both.
Personally, I drive everywhere I go, anyway. The reasons, however, have shifted some what; they now include the idea that my safety is being held in balance with some mental midgets idea of “civil liberties”. When that kind of nonsense starts occurring, I will simply remove myself from the equation, thank you.
And while I’m on the subject just a quick note to the ACLU : Not in MY name, you blinking morons.
Tags: BitsBlog
