Airport cops' database includes your reading material

John Gilmore and Bill Scannell have used Freedom of Information requests to show that the US airport screeners are creating records of the race, personal possessions and reading material of the travelers they pull over for secondary screening.

The Identity Project filed Privacy Act requests for five individuals to see the data stored on them by the government.

The requests revealed that the PNRs also included information on one requester's race, the phone numbers of overseas family members given to the airlines as emergency contact information, and a record of a purely European flight that had been booked overseas separately from an international itinerary, according to snippets of the documents shown to Wired News...

One report about Gilmore notes: "PAX (passenger) has many small flashlights with pot leaves on them. He had a book entitled 'Drugs and Your Rights.'" Gilmore is an advocate for marijuana legalization.

Another inspection entry noted that Gilmore had "attended computer conference in Berlin and then traveled around Europe and Asia to visit friends. 100% baggage exam negative. Resides 554 Clay Street , San Francisco, CA. PAX is self employed 'Entrepreneur' in computer software business."

Link

[#1 posted by Dale Cruse , September 20, 2007 4:16 AM]

Slip that Harry Potter slipcase over The Anarchists Cookbook. Seems like quite an opportunity to "reality hack."

[#2 posted by CC , September 20, 2007 4:30 AM]

Or perhaps a selection of DIY PDF pamphlets which you print out yourself and carry through security, with titles like 'These Security Measures Aren't Doing Much For Your Public Relations, You Know' and 'Could You Work Harder At Making This Screening Process More Efficient And Effective Please?'

Sort of like a bug report.

[#3 posted by Nora Rocket , September 20, 2007 6:33 AM]

Times like these I'm nearly pleased that the only reading matter that can keep my anxious self calm on a flight is lesbian and trans erotica...

[#4 posted by dculberson , September 20, 2007 7:14 AM]

I love how they put entrepreneur in quotes (and capitalized it?) when it's frikkin' John Gilmore. Uhm... this isn't a guy offering computer repair to the old people in his neighborhood, guys.

[#5 posted by Anonymous , September 20, 2007 8:02 AM]

"I love how they put entrepreneur in quotes (and capitalized it?) when it's frikkin' John Gilmore."

At first I thought: they probably think there's something suspicious about being an entrepreneur.

At second thought: whoever input the data had probably just never seen a word that long before.

[#6 posted by CC , September 20, 2007 9:38 AM]

Here's a selection of DIY pamphlets:

[Link]

Why not make your own, print out some open source book you've been wanting to read? A flight, and the necessary long wait in a security line, is the perfect opportunity.

Roll your own titles. Always smile.

[#7 posted by CC , September 20, 2007 9:41 AM]

Hm. Comments killed the link.

http://files.filefront.com/ABookToRememberzip/;8600850;/fileinfo.html

[#8 posted by fancyfeast , September 20, 2007 10:41 AM]

I'm surprised by all the pro HLS comments on Wired. They look suspiciously planted.

[#9 posted by Anonymous , September 20, 2007 11:12 AM]

Is it really surprising that security is making a record of what "suspects" are reading? Look at what happened to Neil Godfrey in 2001--he was detained and prohibited from flying because he was carrying an Edward Abbey novel:
http://www.abbeyweb.net/articles/mwgmovie/

[#10 posted by Anonymous , September 20, 2007 2:35 PM]

It shore would be nice if the government would make public the TSA policies for capturing information about people who are screened so that we could have an informed public debate about whether those policies are the right ones to get the job done, and whether this type of monitoring is really worth all the hassle.