Police State

Police State n. -- A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force.

Perhaps you've heard of the new system the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) is rolling out. It's called CAPPS II, which stand for: Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II.

What CAPPS II does is to scan the credit histories, bank statements, and other "public" information about anyone who purchases a ticket for an airplane, and ranks them as a Low, Medium, or High risk. The government says they are only using and gathering data that is already publicly available. Granted, credit history is publicly available, if by public you mean you have to pay a company who tracks credit information to get a boiled down rating of who you are based on the amount of money you have borrowed in the past.

However, are bank statements public? Can I request to find out how much money anyone has in their checking account? Maybe the government (IRS) can do that, but I really don't think that is "public" data.

Regardless, this system does work. 11 of the 19 September 11th hijackers would have been flagged by this system if it were in place at the time...but at what cost does this come?

Robert Johnson, director of communications for the TSA, says "If you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to worry about when you get to the airport. If you are a terrorist, this program greatly enhances our chances of finding you and keeping you off that plane."

I couldn't agree more. As someone with excellent credit history and no financial problems I would hopefully breeze through security and avoid those annoying secondary and tertiary checks. I assume the reason they would check credit and bank records to see if you had any money problems and suddenly had a large deposit...say from a terrorist group for your help in a plot.

But what about the guy who ran up way too much on his credit cards after getting married, lost his high paying job at a dot-com, and had to declare bankruptcy? Since his credit is in the toilet, should he have to go through extra hassle at the airport? Doesn't seem fair...especially if you are that person. You haven't done anything wrong, why should you be targeted as a possible criminal?

As much as the ACLU bugs the hell out of me...this is the reason they exist, to stop the over-reaching arm of government.

I'm just as afraid as most of you out there, but the solution to this isn't the invasion of privacy by the government into every corner of our lives. If people believe that is the solution, then they've already won.

What do you think? Drop us a line at webmaster@simpleprop.com and give us some feedback. Maybe we'll even run your letters in future Gambits. 'The Daily Gambit' is updated every weekday.