Friday, July 22, 2005

Flying under the radar

For those wondering whether coordination with the U.S.' no-fly list would be that big a deal from an information standpoint: yes, it would be:
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration violated privacy laws by secretly collecting personal information on at least 250,000 people, congressional investigators said Friday.

The Government Accountability Office sent a letter to Congress saying the collection violated the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from compiling information on people without their knowledge...

The GAO letter noted the TSA also said originally it wouldn't use and store commercial data about airline passengers. It not only did that, it collected and stored information about the people with similar names.

The information-gathering might well have been reasonable if disclosed in advance, though the "similar names" part of the project seems like a ready recipe for a lot more Brandon Mayfields based on even less evidence.

More importantly, though, do we really need more examples of how much contempt the current U.S. administration has for both individual privacy and proper process in general?

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