DHS modifies airline passenger information program
DHS wants international airlines to help it check for suspected terrorists who try to board U.S.-bound planes, and for domestic airlines to provide it with lists of all passengers getting on board; DHS checks the lists thus provided against the department’s no-fly watch-list and alert the airlines; trouble is, the no-fly list contains so many inaccuracies that this checking procedure has resulted in many delays – and even in planes being forced to go back to the port of origin, only to discover that a suspected terrorist on board was not a terrorist after all; DHS is now giving airlines more time to implement an improved system
The U.S. government will revise a planned early-warning system aiming to keep suspected terrorists off flights. The reason: A concern that travel is being disrupted because of poor communication between airlines and DHS. DHS will today announce a proposal which will give airlines more time to collect passenger information and pass it on to the department for cross-checking against a federal watch-list of known and suspected terrorists and criminals.
Many argue that the present system has not worked, saying that airlines have been forced to divert aircraft after passengers have been incorrectly identified as being on the no-fly lists. Civil-liberties groups on both sides of the Atlantic have argued that the system amounted to an unwarranted invasion of privacy.
Michael Jackson, deputy secretary at DHS, said the department would not change the level of information which carriers operating in and out of the country had to file (there is another problem here, as the European Court of Justice ruled last month that the information-sharing deal between European airlines and the U.S. government was illegal).
DHS’s new plan calls for automating and streamlining the current system to cut down on the number of misidentified passengers. Currently airlines send passenger information to DHS fifteen minutes before take-off, but the new proposal would see most of the passenger information collected an hour before an aircraft leaves the gate, with data on late-arriving passengers accepted fifteen minutes before it departs.