Was I sarcastic enough?

"Relying on the government to protect your privacy\
is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds".
- John Perry Barlow, Cyberlibertarian

What follows is my posting this week in my current class "Computer Literacy" we are discussing the Computer Aided Pre-screening System (now called Secure Flight) used by TSA at an airport near you. I was attempting to be sarcastic with it but I'm not really sure if I pulled it off. Please leave your comments and let me know what you think, thanks in advance.

Secure Flight

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, describes a London that is landscaped with posters bearing the words, "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING", also filling both the public and "private" spaces of the population is a two way television known as "the Telescreen" that was both a receiver and transmitter designed to monitor your movements and words. In a paranoid post 9/11 world that is becoming more and more Orwellian, we must submit ourselves to the scrutiny of the government who deems if we can or can not travel via airplane from point A to point B.

The system originally begun in the 1990's as the Computer Aided Passenger Pre-screening System (CAPPS) is now known as Secure Flight, which is adminsitered by the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The process is actually quite simple, when you make your reservation with the airline of your choice you give them the following information:
Name (first and last)
Address
Phone number
Driver's Licence or state ID number
Date of birth
and of coarse your airline gives TSA your intinerary

Once TSA has all this information they make sure your not some sort of evil doer felon on the lamb, a known terrorist, a suspected terrorist (at this point I seem to recall something about due process or some such we had at one time, could have just been a utopian dream I had once), on the no fly list or the dreded selectee list (which means your extra special and get the new and improved enhanced screening). Once TSA put you through the ringer, so to speak, they send information back to your airline which tells them to mark your boarding pass with their super secret TSA code that tells the TSA screeners at the airport how fast you get to go through security.

Now there are two major problems with these lists. First is that the only people that actually know who is on the list is TSA. Second is that TSA will not tell the American public what the criteria is for being put on the list. What I find disconcerting about this is, when Adolf Hitler was in power in Germany in the 1930's and WW II, the Nazi's kept secret lists of peoples names that were being singled out for "special treatment" and it was not a good thing.

Is Secure Flight an infringement on my privacy? I think it is, in fact the entire boarding process since 9/11 has become a joke that is one major infringement of personal privacy and a waste of tax dollars. If I go somewhere I no longer fly because of it, I take Amtrak or drive instead. Why, you may ask? Because I know that if a terrorist is determined to make himself a martyr it does not matter how many layers security you have, he will find a way to do it.

http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/cappsii/background.php

http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/secureflight/index.shtm#howitworks

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/secureflight.html

http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/foia/watchlist_foia_analysis.html