GERMS, BITS, AND PAPERS

- The Transportation Security Administration is about to order 72 U.S. airlines to turn over passenger data for a new terrorist-screening system, says Wired News.- The New York Times profiles the Pentagon's plans for a Global Information Grid, and manages to confuse it with a whole bunch of other Defense Department networking and reconnaissance projects.- Homeland Security Department and the World Health Organization okay a plan to manipulate of the smallpox virus in the name of biodefense. It's a possible first step to "creat[ing] threats where none existed before," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists observes.