If you flew on a plane in June, your personal information is about to be dumped into the Department of Homeland Security's new terror-screening database.
"The Transportation Security Administration will use passenger data from June 2004 from 77 domestic carriers to test the Secure Flight program, which is designed to check airline passenger names against a centralized terrorist watch list," Defense Tech pal Ryan Singel writes.
The program is a scaled-back successor to CAPPS II, which the TSA scuttled after months of criticism from privacy advocates and disclosures that early CAPPS II contractors secretly got data from major U.S. airlines.
Secure Flight will expand on the current use of watch lists by using a centralized terrorist watch list run by the Terrorist Screening Center housed at the FBI.
The center's director, Donna A. Bucella, told Congress in March the list is now 120,000 names long.
The data poured in Secure Flight "will vary by airline," the Times notes. "It will include each passenger's name, address and telephone number and the flight number. It may also include such information as the names of traveling companions, meal preference, whether the reservation was changed at any point, the method of ticket payment and any comment by airline employees, like whether a passenger was drunk or belligerent in encounters with airline personnel."
