Act Four, Heathrow and Environs
According to CNN, This Is London, and Reuters, a British Airways flight had a little problem. Somehow — and American officials blame BA — a man whose name was on the Do Not Fly list boarded a flight from London to New York City. This was not discovered until the plane was over international waters.
American officials refused to allow the plane to land as scheduled, instead demanding that the plane land at Bangor, Maine. Thus, the situation could be dealt closer to the middle of nowhere than to New York City. Instead, the airline decided to have the plane turn around and land at Heathrow, avoiding international incident.
This turned out to be a very lucky break for the gentleman in question. It turns out that the man merely had a similar name to someone who might be connected to Moroccan terrorists, that he was “not under investigation for carrying out any terrorist act.” In fact, he was questioned by Scotland Yard and then released.
238 passengers were delayed over 6 hours because one guy, who turned out to not be a terrorist.
Air Travel in the United States could be crippled by putting J. Smith on the Do Not Fly list.
Act Five, DHS Headquarters
In Act Four we learned that determining a person’s identity is not the same as determining whether or not they are a threat. This is to say nothing of the mental gymnastics we must use to see the logic in a list of people so dangerous they must not be allowed on an airplane, but yet are so innocent that there is no grounds to arrest them.
This simple logic has no place here at the DHS.
Mere hours ago, Tom Ridge announced enhanced expediting of international visitors through JFK Airport, the very airport that BA jet was to have landed. Here’s how it works: someone who wishes to visit the United States essentially completes a customs check before arriving, then checks out at a JFK kiosk when they arrive. Part of this pre-clearance process involves an iris scan so the kiosk can tell the same person did the interview as actually arrived. Assuming the smart-card on which this data is stored is not damaged going through the scanning equipment. I am not sure what this is supposed to prove.
Mr. Ridge would also like to see fingerprint information on every American passport. His reasoning is that we require it of other countries, so what’s fair is fair. Critics point out that it will be expensive to put that information on the passports, and even more expensive to have the information read. Do you prefer having a forensics expert at every international airport, or an expensive machine reader?
If the expense is not enough to make you blanch, let’s talk about the civil liberties. The Fifth Amendment says you have the right not to incriminate yourself, right? Except now to get a passport they are talking about wanting to have a complete set of fingerprints. We have no assurance that these prints will not be checked against a database of prints from unsolved crimes. “I’ve got nothing to hide” is not a good enough answer. Just because you did not commit a crime is no insurance that you will not be questioned; maybe you happened to touch something in a place where a crime later occurred; maybe you just happened to have a false positive. Which brings me to my final point.
Fingerprint scanners can have a false positive rate of up to 2% and a false negative rate of up to 7% Think about the number of international travelers there are every day. There were 239 people on that BA flight in Act Four; we are talking about having to question as many as 16 of them as the result of a false negative. A Boeing 777-300 seats 550 people. We are talking about potentially having to do an expanded security check for 38 people who are falsely singled out as not matching their own fingerprints. On one flight. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport had 4,429,005 international passengers in 2003. Seven percent of that is over 310,000, about 850 false-negative passengers every single day, 35 every hour.
Strike one, it’s expensive; strike two, it doesn’t work; strike three, it doesn’t actually identify who might be a threat.
Why exactly are we talking about doing this?