August 10, 2005 | Fear Not, Report Not

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff says Americans should not worry having to give their date of birth when buying an airline ticket as part of a new proposed airline screening system, according to a Thomas Frank USA Today story.

Chertoff said there is too much worry over a plan by the Transportation Security Administration to collect passengers' full names and birth dates before they board.

"The average American gives information up to get a CVS (drugstore discount) card that is far more in-depth than TSA's going to be looking at," Chertoff told reporters and editors at USA TODAY's headquarters in McLean, Va. "But I actually make that case that giving up a little bit more information protects privacy."

"Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," he said, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag and they're going to ask you a lot of personal questions in the full view of everybody else?"

Chertoff vowed to implement Secure Flight, a plan by the federal government to screen out potential terrorists by scrutinizing the backgrounds of passengers. Under the plan, passengers will be encouraged - but not required - to give their full names and birth dates when reserving a seat. The TSA hoped to begin testing Secure Flight this month but that timetable is in doubt.

I'm dumbstruck by Thomas Frank's absurdly lousy reporting.

He gets a chance to interview the head of Homeland Security and then writes up this press release?

First, the government hasn't yet even announced that airlines would have to start collecting dates of birth, but Frank allows Chertoff to pretend that its the main issue about Secure Flight.

Yes, the requirement been talked about for a while and is widely acknowledged by those familiar with the program to be a necessity if watchlist checking is going to be done in D.C. and not by airlines (How else would a government agent tell the difference between the senior senator Ted Kennedy from a watchlist entry Ted Kennedy, age 25?)

But the travel industry, not Americans concerned about privacy, are the strongest opponents of the birthdate requirement, since they will, at their own expense, have to revamp the second largest computer network in the world to accommodate this request.

If Frank hasn't been paying attention as he is paid to, the main issues with Secure Flight are:

• How good are the watchlists?
• How do people accidentally snagged by the lists get off the list?
• How much will Secure Flight cost?
• Will it be effective without being overly intrusive?
• Should commercial databases be used and if so, for what purpose? To verify identity? To do background checks?

Frank didn't include anything in his story about these questions, and instead let Chertoff set the agenda.

Furthermore, Frank let Chertoff chide the American public about privacy concerns about Secure Flight, without even mentioning that the program just got caught violating the Privacy Act in its latest round of testing.

That was done by an agency that has already been involved in 14 separate secret transfers of sensitive travel records, totaling more than 2 million reservations.

The TSA has also been busted by Homeland Security's own Inspector General for making false statements to Congress under oath and misleading the media and the American people about what it was doing with their personal data(.pdf).

Meanwhile, there is a behind-the-scenes fight in Congress over prohibiting Secure Flight from relying on commercial data brokers such as Choicepoint.

But Frank doesn't even ask Chertoff what he thinks about Secure Flight employees intentionally making an end run around the Privacy Act, let alone get Chertoff on record about his thoughts on previous TSA privacy scandals or the fight in Congress?

What a joke.

Chertoff might have had something interesting to say, but one would be hard pressed to find it anywhere near Frank's pathetic effort.

Posted by Ryan Singel at August 10, 2005 10:23 AM

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