The Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday that it plans to require all domestic airlines to turn over the Passenger Name Records (PNR) details on every passenger who flew during the month of June 2004, so the agency can test a new security program, which prescreens passenger names against lists of known or suspected terrorists.

Under the new program, known as Secure Flight, the agency will compare Passenger Name Records (PNR) against expanded and consolidated watch lists held in the Terrorist Screening Database. PNR data varies according to airline, but includes each passenger’s full name, phone number, mailing address and travel itinerary. It may also contain other information like who ordered a kosher or Halal meal, or potentially even who has slept with in whom in a hotel room - all information that is sometimes contain within PRN records, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

“This is an important moment in aviation security; we are advancing a vital tool to combat terrorism and checking off another recommendation from the 9-11 Commission,” said Rear Admiral David M. Stone, USN (Ret.), Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for TSA.

But the ACLU said despite the publication of three new documents describing Secure Flight, many questions remain about the program and it is far from clear that it solves the problems associated with its controversial predecessor CAPPS II.

Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, said that the published notices provided too little detail for the public to determine whether Secure Flight represents a genuine improvement over the predecessor CAPPS II program - and that he feared that many of the problems with the original proposal remain. For example, Steinhardt said, it appeared that security decisions will be made based on frequently inaccurate information contained in secret “black boxes ” maintained at the Terrorism Screening Center that are completely inaccessible to the public and effectively shielded from scrutiny or correction. According to news reports, the Terrorism Screening Center will maintain watch lists that will be used under Secure Flight for identifying passengers to be screened as “selectees” or placed on a “no-fly” list, leaving innocent travelers who are caught up in the system with no fair way to have their names removed, ACLU said.

“Congress needs to step in and require the Government Accountability Office to perform the same objective evaluation of this program — looking at both its effectiveness and its impact on privacy — that it did for the CAPPS II program,” ACLU said.

The government said domestic airlines should begin the transfer of PNR data in late October, allowing testing of Secure Flight to begin in November of this year.

(via Transportation Security Administration)