More than two years and millions of dollars ago, it seemed like a good idea: develop a computerized system that checks airline passengers' backgrounds to make sure they're not terrorists.
But so many people objected to one part of the plan or another that the US government is scrapping major portions of the project, the Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System, commonly known as CAPPS II.
The makeover will include a new name, though that, too, is turning out to be a dilemma for the Homeland Security Department.
The working title, "Secure Passage," was abandoned because it had the same initials as another aviation security program. In a city that loves its acronyms, it's best not to double up.
Dennis McBride, director of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, a research institute that focuses on science and technology, was briefed by Homeland Security officials on CAPPS II's progress last week.
"Getting there from here won't be easy," McBride concluded.
The Homeland Security officials working on the project are likely to get rid of one element that CAPPS II's critics dislike: making sure people are who they say they are by running their personal information against commercial and government databases.
Any new system would probably have a different process for verifying identity, according to Homeland Security officials.
Another problem is how to give airline passengers the ability to correct mistakes if they're wrongly identified as terrorists or suspects.
Homeland Security spokesman Dennis Murphy said the department is working on that.
But what's really needed, say CAPPS II's numerous critics, is for the project's developers to drop their passion for secrecy.
Business Travel Coalition chairman Kevin Mitchell said CAPPS II wouldn't have become a political debacle if Homeland Security officials had been open about how the system was supposed to work. The coalition is an advocacy group that tries to lower the cost of business travel.
"It was badly handled," Mitchell said. "It scared everybody. The lack of transparency and inclusiveness is what really doomed it."
Mitchell said privacy advocates and airline passenger groups might not have objected so strenuously to CAPPS II if they'd been included in the project's development.
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