US seeks passenger flight data to test antiterrorism system

Those lists include names of people to be selected for additional screening, known or suspected terrorists, and people prohibited from flying because they pose a direct threat to aviation.

Airlines now check passenger names against watch lists. Because intelligence information is classified, however, airlines don't have access to names of all known or suspected terrorists. The Sept. 11 commission, in its July report, urged the government to take over the task of checking the lists.

Secure Flight replaces a previous plan that would have checked passenger names against commercial databases and assigned a risk level to each. That plan, which cost $103 million, was abandoned because of privacy concerns and technological issues.

Justin Oberman, who heads the TSA office that's developing Secure Flight, said he hopes to implement the program by spring.

Air Transport Association spokesman Doug Wills said airlines are reviewing the plan and will comment formally later. The airlines, he said, consider the Secure Flight concept a "smarter way to separate the good guys from the bad guys." However, they still have the same problems that they had with the previous plan about privacy and mechanics of how the plan will work, said Wills, whose group represents major airlines.

The airlines will have 30 days to comment on the proposed order, which Congress gave the TSA authority to issue in post-Sept. 11 laws. Air carriers will then have 10 days to turn over data called "passenger name records."

The amount of data in passenger name records varies by airline, but it typically includes name, flight origin, flight destination, flight time, duration of flight, seat location, travel agent, and form of payment. It can also include credit card numbers, travel itinerary, address, telephone number, and meal requests.

Privacy advocates say the new plan has many of the same problems as the one that was scrapped.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the system is too intrusive. And he said the system still will result in people being misidentified as terrorists.