Fergie's Tech Blog

New Airport Security Rules to Require More Personal Information

Jon Hilkevitch writes on The Chicago Tribune:

You may have been patted down at airports or suffered the indignity of having your dirty laundry from a vacation searched at screening checkpoints. Now prepare yourself for security to get a little more personal.

Passengers making airline reservations soon will be required to provide their birth date and their sex in addition to their names as part of aviation security enhancements the 9/11 Commission recommended. The information provided at the time seats are booked must exactly match the data on each traveler's ID.

The new program, called Secure Flight, shifts responsibility for checking passenger names against "watch lists" from the airlines to the Transportation Security Administration. Only passengers who are cleared to fly by the TSA will be given boarding passes.

Personal data on most passengers will be retained for no more than seven days, agency officials said.

But privacy advocates say the changes amount to a system of government control over travel. U.S. airlines carry about 2 million passengers per day. Opponents also have protested that combing through personal information won't result in better security.

posted by Fergie @ 3/08/2009 09:45:00 PM