if you read nothing else today, read this.

[sophiaserpentia]

lady_babalon, I might be joining you in that boycott of air travel. Thanks to ravenia for the link.

Data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau came from respondents to the 1990 census and included "information on both households and individuals," the NASA study said. The NASA experiment used 5 million census records from each of two data sets it created, "one that stores household records and another that stores person records."

... However, Mr. Steinhardt, who sits on the Census Advisory Committee, said releasing information on households and individuals is "a major breach of trust." "The advisory board specifically asked this question, whether they were providing data to any other government agency, and the answer was 'no,' " Mr. Steinhardt said. "We will have to look carefully at what they provided NASA and why."

.... The Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS II) system under development by the Homeland Security Department will use passenger records that include name, address, phone number and date of birth. The information will be used to confirm the passenger's identity and will be compared with criminal and terrorist watch lists. A color-coded threat assessment will be assigned to each passenger: green for standard security, yellow for additional screening and red to prevent the passenger from boarding a plane. Security officials estimate the error rate at 4 percent to 8 percent, which Mr. Steinhardt said "means 4 [million] to 8 million Americans will mistakenly be labeled as terrorists."

from Study used census information for terror profile

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It comes out of their bottom lines -- unless Congress props them up again with another bailout.

[johns-life.livejournal.com]

I know.

The last bailout (or the one I am thinking about anyhow) wasn't really blatant. The reason most airlines didn't go for it was due to the extreme conditions like giving up control of X amount of the airline, etc.

Of course you may be thinking about other things ...

[discoflamingo.livejournal.com]

Anothe bailout is unlikely, given what most of the airlines were able to accomplish with the previous bailout (and they have been told as much by the Appropriations committee). The smaller airlines have managed to turn a profit (or go out of business), while the larger airlines are holding out their hands for more. From a business perspective, it has been nothing but good for the industry - from a consumer's perspective, we have to wait til the retrofitted cockpits on existing planes (and new planes like the 7E7 and A380) come out before a "secure" plane is considered standard - probably around '07 at the earliest.

Chances are better than average that foreign airlines will expand service through the US if the major airlines fold. They have experienced very little of the economic backlash post-9/11, since restrictions on flying anywhere outside the US were relatively unaffected by the administration's scare-mongering.