[Infowarrior] - U.S. will determine who can board some Canadian flights

[Richard Forno]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/gets+which+Canadians/2639893/story.html

U.S. will determine who can board some Canadian flights

By Kevin Dougherty, Montreal GazetteMarch 4, 2010

QUEBEC — Starting in December, some passengers on Canadian airlines  
flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing  
there, will only be allowed to board the aircraft once the U.S.  
Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.

Secure Flight, the newest weapon in the U.S. war on terrorism, gives  
the United States unprecedented power over who can board planes that  
fly over U.S. airspace.

Secure Flight applies to flights to, from or over the United States,  
from Canada to another country. Flights between two Canadian cities,  
that travel over U.S. airspace, are excluded, but about 80 per cent of  
Canadian flights to the Caribbean and other southern points and to  
Europe fly over the U.S.


The program, which is set to take effect globally in December 2010,  
was created as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism  
Prevention Act, adopted by U.S. Congress in 2004.


Parliament never adopted or even discussed the Secure Flight program —  
even though Secure Flight transfers the authority of screening  
passengers, and their personal information, from domestic airlines to  
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.


When asked about the program, Transport Canada, the federal department  
in charge of Canadian airlines, deferred to Public Safety Canada.


After refusing to comment on Secure Flight or the federal government's  
position on the U.S. program, David  Charbonneau, a Public Safety  
Canada spokesman, said "Canada works in partnership with the United  
States, as well as with other allies on aviation safety and security.


"Canada's approach will continue to balance the privacy rights of  
travellers with the need to keep the public safe from terrorist and  
other threats to the air transportation system."


Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper,  
referred all questions on the Secure Flight program back to the office  
of Transport Minister John Baird, who oversees Transport Canada.


The European Parliament, on the other hand, has consistently voiced  
objections to the Secure Flight plan.


Canadian airlines already check their flight manifests against the  
U.S. no-fly list, which is compiled by the FBI and distributed to  
airlines around the world. It contains the names of about 16,000  
people the U.S. government says are suspected of terrorism. The names  
and why they are on the list are not disclosed for reasons of  
"national security."


The U.S. Transportation Security Administration says Secure Flight  
will reduce the number of false positives — people with the same name  
as someone on the no-fly list — who now are stopped at airports.


Under Secure Flight, the TSA, a branch of Homeland Security, will have  
access to all U.S. government databases.


As part of Secure Flight, Canadian airlines will transfer personal  
information of travellers to Homeland Security, preferably 72 hours  
before takeoff. Then, the TSA will use Infoglide, a package of 50  
"identity resolution" algorithms and such complex mathematical  
formulas as search engines to extract and aggregate information from  
several sources, to check passenger identities.


"If necessary, the TSA analyst will check other classified and  
unclassified governmental terrorist, law enforcement, and intelligence  
databases — including databases maintained by the Department of  
Homeland Security, Department of Defence, National Counter Terrorism  
Centre, and Federal Bureau of Investigation," notes Secure Flight  
Final Rule, the U.S. government document that defines the program.


The General Accounting Office, an U.S. institution similar to Canada's  
auditor general, is concerned this sweeping check could cause new  
problems.


"More individuals could be misidentified, law enforcement would be put  
in the position of detaining more individuals until their identities  
could be resolved, and administrative costs could increase, without  
knowing what measurable increase in security is achieved," the GAO  
said in a January presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives  
committee on Homeland Security.


Andrea McCauley, a Homeland Security spokeswoman in Washington, D.C.,  
said the TSA is confident there will be fewer false positive results,  
branding innocent travellers as potential terrorists, than under the  
current no-fly list system.


"We have designed this program to ask for the minimum amount of  
personal information necessary," she said.


If the search of U.S. databases, which will also contain data  
collected in Canada such as police records, turns up "no match"  
between and passenger and the watchlist, Homeland Security will inform  
the airline it can issue a boarding pass.


Personal information will be purged from the system after seven days,  
McCauley said.


"If you are a potential match, it would be retained for seven years,"  
she said, explaining that "a potential match is someone who has been  
determined not to be an exact match but has the potential to match  
some of the data elements."


If the search returns a positive match, personal information will be  
kept by Secure Flight for 99 years.

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