Don't color outside the lines

In an article about how the US's new color-code security system will affect Canadian air travelers, the January 15 Toronto Star says that

[d]omestic U.S. airlines carried 612 million passengers in 2003, according to the Census Bureau. [U.S. Transportation Security Administration rep Mark] Hatfield said the current system sees about 15 per cent of them flagged as security risks. He says the new system will lower that number to 5 per cent.

Okay, let's do the math again. Five percent of 612 million is 30.6 million. Since these travelers will include both citizens and foreign visitors, let's assume a universe of 50,000 terrorists on the watch lists, which I think a safely liberal estimate. Let's also assume that each of them flies in the US three times in a year. That's 150,000 passengers. That means 150,000 accurate flaggings out of a total of 30.6 million - or over 200 cases of wrongly accusing someone of being a security risk for every time they're right. And that's also making the bold (and wrong) assumption that the watch lists are accurate.

Do anybody really think this is going to do anything more than piss people off? Does anybody really think this is about actual security rather than political posturing?

Footnote: From the same article.

"CAPPS 2 is nothing less than a Soviet-style system of internal border controls," said the U.S.-based privacy group dontspyonus.com. "An incredible invasion of privacy, the system is un-American and unconstitutional, not that a pesky thing like the Bill of Rights has stopped the extremists down at Homeland Security."

Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union said the "incredibly invasive system" will collect information that will be used for purposes well beyond airline security.

The info at DontSpyOnUs seemed a bit outdated, perhaps not surprising in something moving this fast, but worth checking out. And if you're not in the ACLU, join.