TSA not collecting passenger data for screening system

No airlines currently provide passenger data for an oft-criticized passenger-screening system, the chief privacy officer of the Homeland Security Department said on Monday.

"At this time, there is no current testing, and there are no airlines currently working with the TSA [Transportation Security Administration]" to provide data for the Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System (CAPPS II), Nuala O'Connor Kelly said.

The privacy officer for Homeland Security also said she is investigating whether employees of the airline JetBlue, TSA or the Transportation Department acted improperly when the airline passed personal passenger information to an Army subcontractor. O'Connor Kelly said she plans to conclude her investigation by the end of the year, and she added that the head of the TSA is "working with the airlines" on other security regulations.

The CAPPS II system under development by TSA would require every passenger to provide names, addresses, telephone numbers and birth dates to their airlines, which then would pass the data to a private-sector contractor for a background check and an identification score to the TSA.

But O'Connor Kelly said the contractors participating in the system would not be exempt from existing privacy law. "I have heard time and time again that there will be a loophole for private-sector actors with CAPPS II or other federal actions," she said. "That is absolutely not the case. Those contractors are bound" by the same terms of the 1974 Privacy Act as the federal government would be if it had collected the information itself, she said.

In a wide-ranging speech about the role of privacy in American law and in current practice, O'Connor Kelly said it is important to "embed privacy as a value and as a structure" within the new department. She was appointed to her position in April, the first congressionally mandated privacy officer in a Cabinet department.

O'Connor Kelly said she attempts to steer a middle course between the demands of privacy and security. "Fear of government abuse of information is understandable, but we cannot let it stop us from using what is right" or necessary to combat terrorism, she said.

She said she had to send some potentially invasive proposals back to the drawing board. Although she declined to identify the Homeland Security agencies involved in those plans, she said that on one occasion she "sent the thing back and said, 'Nope, try again.'"

"What I am heartened by is that no one has ever said no" to her demands, O'Connor Kelly added.