US in test allowing armed pilots

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US in test allowing armed pilots

The US will test a policy arming commercial pilots, reversing its previous opposition to guns in the cockpit.

One plan would see as many as 1,400 pilots armed.

The previous Transport Undersecretary said in May he would not allow pilots to carry guns.

He said reinforced cockpits and armed air marshals provide enough protection against terrorists who try to take over an aeroplane.

But in July, Congress voted to allow commercial pilots to carry guns, and the new Undersecretary said he would consider the proposals.

The government has already strengthened cockpit doors, bolstered airport security and is adding air marshals.

Airlines have generally opposed plans to arm pilots, but the pilots' union and the National Rifle Association have backed them.


http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_664300.html?menu=



"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

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Air Security Focusing on Flier Screening

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 4, 2002; Page A01



From the moment the Transportation Security Administration was formed, agency officials have been consumed by the idea of a vast network of supercomputers that would instantly probe every passenger's background for clues about violent designs.

The agency has spent millions of dollars and innumerable hours studying how the secret profiling system known as CAPPS II could enable them to "deter, prevent or capture terrorists" before they board an airplane, government documents show.

In recent months, the agency hired four teams of technology companies that have honed their expertise in profiling for casinos, marketing companies and financial institutions. Their mission was to demonstrate how artificial intelligence and other powerful software can analyze passengers' travel reservations, housing information, family ties, identifying details in credit reports and other personal data to determine if they're "rooted in the community" -- or have an unusual history that indicates a potential threat.

Now transportation and intelligence officials believe that CAPPS II -- short for the second-generation Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System -- will form the core of a new framework in aviation security: a far more intense focus on people rather than baggage. They intend to extend its use to screen truckers, railroad conductors, subway workers and others whose transportation jobs involve the public trust.

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, who oversees the TSA, recently described CAPPS II as "the foundation" on which all other far more public security measures really depend.

But after a nine-month-long crash program, CAPPS II remains a promising yet unfulfilled idea that won't be ready for live testing until next year, months later than agency officials had hoped. It is still unclear when the system will have a meaningful impact on security at the nation's airports. "We're still between the conceptual and the reality," one senior government official acknowledged.

The CAPPS II program demonstrates the extraordinary challenges facing the nation as it overhauls its aviation security system -- and the lengths to which government officials believe they must go in examining the lives of ordinary Americans to avoid a repeat of the security and intelligence failures of Sept. 11.

Few details about the program have emerged publicly because officials worry that the more terrorists know about it, the less effective it will be. Indeed, even before Sept. 11, security specialists had concluded that the integrity of the current, far less sophisticated CAPPS system had been eroded because of disclosures about how it assesses passengers for risk -- examining, for example, those who pay for a ticket in cash or travel one-way.

A review of documents and interviews with people close to CAPPS II show that the project has been hindered by the daunting complexity of the task -- in effect, the creation of the nation's largest domestic surveillance system. Agency officials have been unable to decide on the technology and companies that can make CAPPS II work. They have moved forward deliberately, officials familiar with the project said, because they do not want to waste time and money on the wrong approach.

The agency also has not resolved key questions about the system's impact on civil liberties, although officials have wrestled with the issue and acknowledge that the system would be intrusive if used inappropriately. A host of other policy issues that might need congressional input, such as limits on law enforcement agencies' access to the system for criminal profiling, have not been formally broached on Capitol Hill.

Given the immense importance of CAPPS II to the new air security framework, officials argue, the extra few months are worth taking. Not only will CAPPS II protect passengers, these officials say, it will make life easier for travelers at the airport because screening will be more efficient.

In a first concrete step, transportation officials plan to begin working this fall with some technology companies and at least one major airline on an electronic watch list that would more swiftly communicate the names of terrorists and suspects who should not be allowed to fly. That system, if successful, would become a key element of the more sophisticated CAPPS II network.

"It's probably the most important security tool we have in our arsenal -- if we develop it intelligently, which we will do," one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The official added that the TSA intends to begin buying software for the watch list this month. "What we now have is a chance to build a significantly more powerful tool."

Some lawmakers are uneasy that the TSA has not begun a pilot program, saying they worry about the nation's vulnerability to another attack.

"I'm totally frustrated by it. It should never have taken this long," said Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee's aviation subcommittee. "It's very serious. It leaves us exposed. We don't have a thinking system."

At the same time, civil liberties activists warn that privacy issues could embroil CAPPS II in controversy and undermine its effectiveness if these issues are not publicly resolved before the system begins operation.

"This is the last thing that should be done in secret," said Mihir Kshirsagar, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which sued the TSA for more information about the project this year. "It's the kind of change that will always be with us."

Katie Corrigan, a legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union in the District, questions whether it can work and said she worries that innocent but offbeat or politically radical travelers will be swept up in the system. "This system challenges core values, such as privacy, the right to travel and the right to engage in certain activities," she said.

Connecting the Electronic Dots


The plan for the new passenger-profiling network intends to piggyback on the data-collection revolution of the 1990s. Marketers and data services were able to take advantage of leaps in computer power and networking technology to compile demographic, public-record and consumer files about virtually every adult in the United States, documents show.

The TSA wants to devise a virtually new data-driven system, according to the documents, which would electronically absorb every passenger reservation, authenticate the identity of the travelers and then create a profile of who they are.

Under the plan, passengers would be required, when making their reservations, to provide identifying information -- a name and address, plus such things as passport, Social Security and frequent-flier numbers. Those details would be used by private data services, such as ChoicePoint Inc., an identification and verification company, to supply more information about the individual.

TSA computers would then use artificial intelligence and other sophisticated software, along with behavior models developed by intelligence agencies, to determine whether the passenger is "rooted in the community" -- whether he or she is well established in the United States -- and find links to others who might be terrorists, according to government documents and interviews.

The aim is to create an "automated system capable of integrating and simultaneously analyzing numerous databases from Government, industry and the private sector . . . which establishes a threat risk assessment on every air carrier passenger, airport and flight," according to a government document.

"This is about the government electronically connecting the dots," one official close to the project said, noting the system will be run by the government, not the airlines.

Mineta said the profiling will be based on behavior, not race or ethnic characteristics. "People are saying, 'Mineta's against profiling.' That's not the case at all," Mineta said in a recent interview, suggesting that he understands the need for profiling because he was once an Army intelligence officer based in Korea. "This is the foundation for the aviation security system."

A Glut of Proposals


The overall vision of CAPPS II has evolved as officials have learned more about the capabilities of available technology.

In December, the government called for a system that would predict risk by drawing on information from all airlines, public and private data sources, and watch lists of known or suspected terrorists.

A more refined proposal emerged in January, when the TSA decided to test a prototype in Salt Lake City during the Winter Olympics the next month, according to a document describing the scope of work.

In that plan, private companies were supposed to crunch information from commercial databases, state driver's-license agencies, telephone numbers, deceased-persons files, airline reservation systems, the FBI and the Secret Service to develop a risk "score" for each passenger.

But the Salt Lake initiative faltered. Agency officials lost confidence that it could be quickly implemented, according to people familiar with the process. One of the vendors complicated matters by expressing concern about its legal liability for making a mistake, according to an e-mail obtained by EPIC.

"We weren't satisfied we were going to get the most bang for the buck," one official said.

At the time, the TSA was bombarded with unsolicited proposals from technology companies, government agencies and Congress.

Former national security adviser John M. Poindexter, now the director of the Information Awareness Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), offered his services. His office, created by the government in January, aims to achieve a system capable of "total information awareness," using the Internet, databases and other technology "aimed at exposing terrorists and their activities."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration proposed a system that would depend in part on examining passengers' brain waves with "neuro-electric sensing" devices to assess risk, documents obtained by EPIC show.

"At some point, you just run out of hours in the day to listen to people who are smart," one official said.

In February, agency officials decided to run a comparison test of systems. A March 8 request for "white papers" required companies to demonstrate they had experience with the financial industry, fraud detection, risk assessment and the authentication of individuals. It also required the companies to describe how they would handle "Privacy Rights and Interests/Civil Rights/Confidentiality."

Two months later, four teams received grants. Officials from the companies declined to publicly discuss their roles in CAPPS II, saying they were warned by the TSA that such disclosures might undermine national security.

The companies included Austin-based Infoglide Software Corp., which says in promotional materials that its software "makes it easy for the user to find relevant connections between people, places, and/or events, thereby uncovering possible incidences of fraud and threat." It received a $253,450 grant for the project, according to a government document.

Infoglide is partners with Language Analysis Systems Inc., a Herndon firm that until recently worked so closely with intelligence services that it could not publicly acknowledge its own existence. The company, which specializes in name-recognition software, helped track some of the Sept. 11 hijackers to Florida.

Ascent Technology Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., was awarded $225,587. It specializes in the integration of a wide array of technology, including artificial intelligence, to improve security, track flights, assign optimal parking positions for airplanes and otherwise maximize the allocations of resources at airports.

The giant military vendor Lockheed Martin Corp. received a $469,179 grant for its effort. It's not clear what kind of system the Bethesda-based company is proposing. But industry officials said Lockheed is working with the Las Vegas company Systems Research & Development (SRD), which has received funding from In-Q-Tel Inc., the CIA venture capital arm.

Using a system called Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness, SRD can sort through oceans of data in real time, seeking links among people. It also can determine when an individual has transposed names or intentionally tried to obscure details about himself. That's what SRD has done for MGM Mirage Inc. and other Las Vegas casino companies worried about card counters and organized gangs of cheaters.

SRD founder and chief scientist Jeff Jonas said the company is "particularly good at putting people into context" through the use of software that can learn and that relies on "fuzzy logic."

"We're talking about instant, perpetual, real-time analysis," he said.

HNC Software, now a part of Fair, Isaac & Co., won the largest grant, $551,001. HNC is a risk-detection specialist that works for credit card issuers, telephone companies, insurers and others.

It works with several other companies that have access to seating records of virtually every U.S. airline passenger or that collect such information as land records, car ownership, projected income, magazine subscriptions and telephone numbers.

HNC employs neural networks, which can discern subtle patterns and relationships by processing millions, or billions, of records. The company, which has received funding from DARPA, uses its software to profile the activity of millions of credit card owners, telephone callers and insurance beneficiaries for fraud.

About the time of the Salt Lake initiative, HNC proposed a prototype that would allow authorities, based in control rooms, to examine potential threats across the aviation system. One computer screen included a "prioritized passenger list" that ranked passengers on a flight from the highest risk to the lowest. The same screen displayed a box with the names of other travelers the computer had somehow linked to a high-risk passenger. Other screens showed an aggregate threat for planes, airports and the entire system.

Officials at the TSA declined to discuss whether they have chosen finalists from among the four teams.

The TSA has received $45 million for fiscal 2002 and has asked Congress for $35 million to fund CAPPS II's development next year, but it does not have clear estimates of how much it will cost to build and operate the system.

'Sensitive Intelligence'


Finding the right companies and technology is only one of several tasks facing the TSA. Another is selling the program to Congress and to passengers. According to knowledgeable sources, TSA officials plan to brief Congress and the White House about the program in more detail this fall.

The agency also intends to conduct some sort of public outreach, including discussions about civil liberties. TSA officials, for example, plan to ask Congress to restrict the use of CAPPS II by other law enforcement agencies.

"This is not about finding deadbeat dads," one official said. "We're telling our law enforcement colleagues, 'This is not a universal law enforcement tool.' "

The TSA will also spell out how it intends to design a system that, while profiling passengers universally, retains little information once they are cleared to fly, the official said. At the same time, the agency plans to seek authority to gather and maintain more information about foreigners traveling the United States.

Once those efforts are made, however, the TSA intends to treat the system as a sensitive matter of national security and probably will not discuss it much after it begins operation. "This is going to be classified," one official said. "What's inside that box contains some very sensitive intelligence."

Critics are fearful those efforts will not give them enough information to assess whether the system will be intrusive -- or even work as promised.

Corrigan, the ACLU counsel, said there is no question the government has a compelling interest in improving security. But it should not do so in the dark, she said, particularly when creating a surveillance infrastructure that could dramatically expand authorities' power to peer into the lives of ordinary Americans.

"The government needs to make the case to the American public, first of all, that this will be effective and make air travel safer. And second of all, [that] this is the least intrusive approach," she said. "There's no independent public oversight. There's no public discussion."

Transportation Secretary Mineta acknowledges these concerns and says that is why the effort will take some time. "It's never quick enough in terms of getting done. On the other hand, what we're trying to do is be deliberate enough to leave no stone unturned," Mineta said.

"What is the government's responsibility to the citizens? It's really to protect them. That's what we're trying to do here," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34738-2002Sep3.html
c 2002 The Washington Post Company


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Bush considers program to arm pilots

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration plans to adopt a small-scale test program of arming commercial pilots, reversing its previous opposition to guns in the cockpit.

The administration is modeling its plan after similar proposals that circulated in Congress this summer. One such plan would have armed as many as 1,400 pilots, about 2% of those flying.

One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration was on the brink of announcing the decision.

Transportation Undersecretary John Magaw, who headed the new Transportation Security Administration until July, said in May he would not allow pilots to carry guns. Reinforced cockpits and armed air marshals provide enough protection against terrorists who try to take over an airplane, Magaw said.

"The responsibility of the pilot is to control the aircraft," Magaw said. "The use of firearms aboard a U.S. aircraft must be limited to those thoroughly trained members of law enforcement. Our position is make that cockpit as safe as we can, control that plane and get it on the ground."

Having thousands of armed pilots in airports would mean thousands of weapons that could fall into the wrong hands, Magaw said at the time. "We just don't want to subject the transportation system to additional firearms," he said.

But the House in July voted 310-113 to allow commercial pilots to carry guns, giving the proposal momentum, and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said soon afterward that he was re-examining the issue.

The administration is striving to reach a compromise between two camps - those who strongly oppose arming pilots, arguing, as Magaw did, that the government has already strengthened cockpit doors, bolstered airport security and is adding air marshals - and those who want all pilots armed, a government official said. NBC first reported the administration plan Wednesday night.

The airlines generally opposed plans to arm pilots, while the pilots' union and the National Rifle Association backed such proposals.

It wasn't clear Wednesday night how the government would decide whether to expand the program.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002-09-04-guns_x.htm


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878