Thursday, January 17, 2013

Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line

Sternstein, Aliya. "Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line." Nextgov, January 16, 2013. 

From the article: "The Transportation Security Administration is considering screening passengers based on behavioral profiles generated by commercial data brokers, according to new contracting notices.
The agency potentially could use such computations to let consenting passengers with positive assessments bypass certain airport security inspections, officials said.  

For a moment, set aside fears about TSA peering into your gun-buying habits or pharmacy purchases. Are commercial data aggregations even accurate? No one knows. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. Not the data brokers. And not the people being profiled -- they often aren’t allowed to see their own records." Read more