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Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) on Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 00:25:08 --- : Dear Member We Here at PayPal, are sorry to inform you that we are having problem's with the billing information on your account. We would appreciate it if you would go to our website and fill out the proper information that we need to keep you as a PayPal member. Please Update your account information by visiting our updates web site below. http://www.updateaccountstatus.cjb.net Bill Johnson. Billing Updates Center Account Updates Team. Ebay ID Number.HJWFTN We do hope to continue doing business with you. brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrEKSH57 ---
RE: Ronald McDonald's SS
Were you pissed when you found out? -TD From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Ronald McDonald's SS Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 14:51:07 -0800 -- On 24 Jan 2005 at 10:34, Tyler Durden wrote: Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq (news - web sites), Well hell, it's doing such a good job already it should definitely be expanded! Note that the main enemy it is aimed against is the CIA, and it's existence was successfully kept secret from the CIA for this time. (For had the CIA detected it, they would have instantly leaked the information, the same way they have leaked so much other stuff.) --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KsFrtFSMHXcDohroqAdPG4sz0/zlWutoJnTTVx33 4RrZF0Pj1rWQ7L2OUmPyd0vZu4myhO+ICGi7PHb+j
RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
--- Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [airport security] More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a hyper-intelligent super-fascist state. As if. There already is a kind of intelligent super-fascist state in place thoughout much of society. My bugbears of the moment are the police and courts, so you get my take on how they are organised so as to be 'intelligent' without seeming so -- which further enables a whole lot of fraud to masqerade as process and incompetence. The super-fascist part comes about because the system avoids public accountability while also somehow evading any sort of reasonable standard of performance. What's the error rate, that is the false arrest, prosecution, and/or conviction rate of a Western countries' judiciary and police divitions? If it's even ten percent, and it's probably much higher, then there is no reason to respect the operation and perpetuation of the system. And consider how the courts deal with error. After all is said and done, the victim is expected to launch appeals at his own expense to force the system to take official notice of judicial error. We know how dilligent the police are at bringing creativity to their investigations and arrests. Countless examples abound of fraud and abuse of processs. And the population at large carries on as if it doesn't matter. Well in my not so humble fucking opinion, if police and judicial officials in Canada (or the US, or wherever) wish to acquire respect and lend the appearance of legitimacy to their operations, then they should bloody well bring some transparent accountability to their operations and more, should take exacting pains to ensure that they conduct their affairs so as to put their integrety beyond question for anyone who examines their fucking books. And when they *do* err, they should fucking well bend over backwards to correct their god damn mistakes. AND when they catch one of their own abusing his or her position of authority that fucker should be PILLORIED for the least offense. But no, this does not and will not occur because the police and courts have had decades of self-selection in their recruiting processes, and decades of deirected evolution applied to their internal culture and processes. It is considered more proper to rule by fear, than to consider that wageing a de facto war on the civilian population as being even slightly wrong. Since it is considered *normal* for their to be a high error rate, it is only natural for the intelligent special interest groups within the government to exploit the lax standards to crushing competing groups and individuals who might pose a latent threat to the extant corrupt culture. And then there are those nasty writers who won't wedge their ideology into the narrow confines of mass consumer culture, and well there's all sorts of legal ways to deal with *that* kind of trouble-maker. And so on. Petty little tyrants have all sorts of latitude for abuse, but so do real villans like the ones directing your military contractors. State of the art in pulling the strings of government is to view (at different levels, and different levels of abstraction) departments and ministries as black boxes with adjustable inputs. Some inputs are more adjustable than others, of course, and there are levels of access to the inputs, but the approach is sound. I suppose it might take a well-placed CIA agent to subtly adjust CPIC records to suit an RCMP officer's relative's influence peddling, but the nice thing about reciprocal arrangements is that they may be negotiated and traded by fascist and highly placed warmongers. And we don't care because most people are brainwashed into blindly accepting the norm of incompetent ineffiency in all official matters. Indeed, for many it's a game that is only slightly more real than arcade shoot'em-ups but much more sophisticated. Of course no individual is at all required to respect such unnecessary corruption, and I certainly do not. (Why would I, considering the marauding warmongers who have been entirely subverting my ambitions and interests for years, simply because they like the challenge.) And in continuing with the outing, I predict that God was named John by his parents, and has official carte blanche to fuck up the lives of Canadian citizens given to him by his pet dogs in the Canadian government. Gutless weasels. Regards, Steve __ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Everyone an Exhibitionist
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110661672884334854,00.html The Wall Street Journal January 25, 2005 BOOKS Everyone an Exhibitionist By HEATHER MAC DONALD January 25, 2005; Page D12 In the debates over the Patriot Act and other antiterrorist measures, a group of critics has emerged who claim that the entire realm of privacy is in peril. But such privacy advocates, as we might call them, have a problem even bigger than the government: the public. Despite the advocates' warnings about Big Brother, Americans keep scarfing up every new consumer convenience, regardless of how much personal information is extracted in return. Cell phones, credit cards and the Internet record our tastes, purchases and movements in minute detail. And that computerized portrait does not stay put: Anyone who wants to sell us yet more goodies more efficiently can buy it. In fact, people give away personal information even when they don't have to. In 1998, hundreds of thousands of magazine readers filled out an eight-page, 700-item questionnaire about themselves just because Condé Nast was curious about its subscribers' most intimate medical problems and life-style choices. Americans clearly have a far more relaxed view of privacy than the activists who claim to speak on their behalf. Data collection gets more thorough and more common. Should we worry? Yet the doomsayers carry on. In No Place to Hide (Free Press, 348 pages, $26), Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow Jr. warns of a future in which most external aspects of our lives end up in a database, potentially available to corporations and law-enforcement officials. The cutting-edge capacities he describes for tracking individuals -- biometric face-scanners, say, or tiny radio transmitters -- are indeed sobering. But he places too much emphasis on what can go wrong with data collection and not enough on its enormous benefits. Despite its impressive scope, No Place to Hide presents a lopsided view of the information revolution. In fact, it offers a case study in how to generate a good privacy scare: * Refusing to balance costs and benefits. Mr. O'Harrow presents every horror story he can find about a data system gone awry. Florida authorities bar an eligible voter from voting in the 2000 presidential election in Florida after computers falsely identify him as a felon. Police accuse three innocent women of murder because the surveillance camera on an ATM had an inaccurate clock. (The error was discovered before prosecution.) Such misfirings are regrettable, and every measure should be taken to avoid them. But ATM cameras have much more often deterred or solved crimes than generated false charges. The cost to democratic legitimacy of election fraud outweighs the minimal risk that antifraud technology will disenfranchise eligible voters. Virtually every modern discovery that improves life -- from vaccines to automobiles -- carries risks; balancing those risks against the technology's benefits is a skill that privacy advocates seem to lack. * Ignoring privacy safeguards. No Place to Hide chronicles the rise of data warehousing companies, such as Axciom and ChoicePoint, that vacuum up every piece of information about consumers that they can find. After 9/11, these companies offered their databases to national-security agencies to prevent another attack. Since then, federal researchers have feverishly explored how to use such information to track down future terrorists. Mr. O'Harrow worries that the nascent partnership between data companies and the government will result in a surveillance state. But computer experts are just as feverishly exploring how to prevent the misuse of data, such as concealing individual identities until evidence of a crime develops. Mr. O'Harrow is silent on the promising technologies that aim to protect privacy while increasing public safety. * Living in a time warp. For privacy advocates, it's always 1968, when J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was monitoring political activists with no check on its power. But that FBI is dead and gone. In its place has arisen a risk-averse bureau that, in the years preceding 9/11, worried more about avoiding civil-liberties controversies than about preventing terrorism. The red tape that now constrains intelligence-gathering makes a repeat of Hoover's excesses unthinkable. Yet Mr. O'Harrow condemns the most imperative post-9/11 reforms -- e.g., tearing down the Wall that once prevented information-sharing within the antiterror community -- as a dangerous power grab. * Sticking with theory over facts. No self-respecting privacy Jeremiad can do without a reference to the Panopticon, the imaginary prison conceived by philosopher Jeremy Bentham that allows the constant surveillance of its inmates. For privacy scolds, we are already imprisoned in the Panopticon, thanks in part to anticrime video cameras on city streets and in private buildings. According to Panopticon theory, surveillance produces
RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Steve Thompson Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:13 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder --- Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [airport security] More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a hyper-intelligent super-fascist state. As if. There already is a kind of intelligent super-fascist state in place thoughout much of society. My bugbears of the moment are the police and courts, so you get my take on how they are organised so as to be 'intelligent' without seeming so -- which further enables a whole lot of fraud to masqerade as process and incompetence. The super-fascist part comes about because the system avoids public accountability while also somehow evading any sort of reasonable standard of performance. What's the error rate, that is the false arrest, prosecution, and/or conviction rate of a Western countries' judiciary and police divitions? If it's even ten percent, and it's probably much higher, then there is no reason to respect the operation and perpetuation of the system. One chilling data point. Remember a few years ago the (pro death penalty) governor of Illinois suspended all the death sentences in has state? The reason being was that with the introduction of DNA testing, 1/3 of the people on death row were found to be innocent. I don't know how many other innocents the state planned to murder, but presumably there were some cases where DNA evidence was not available. If, in a capital case, where the money to pay public defenders is usually maximally available, and the appeals process, checks, and cross-checks are the more thorough than in any non-capital prosecution, you STILL get at least a 33% error rate, then what is the wrongfull conviction rate in non-capital cases, where there are far fewer appeals, and public defenders are paid a pittance? Peter Trei
RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
If, in a capital case, where the money to pay public defenders is usually maximally available, and the appeals process, checks, and cross-checks are the more thorough than in any non-capital prosecution, you STILL get at least a 33% error rate, then what is the wrongfull conviction rate in non-capital cases, where there are far fewer appeals, and public defenders are paid a pittance? And of course there's the fairly obvious point that lots of those in prison correctly are there for drug-related crimes. Said crimes would almost completely dissappear and drug usage would drop if many of those drugs were legalized and taxed. But God forbid that happen because what would all those policemen do for a living? Prison workers? Judges? -TD From: Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Steve Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:01:26 -0500 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Steve Thompson Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:13 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder --- Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [airport security] More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a hyper-intelligent super-fascist state. As if. There already is a kind of intelligent super-fascist state in place thoughout much of society. My bugbears of the moment are the police and courts, so you get my take on how they are organised so as to be 'intelligent' without seeming so -- which further enables a whole lot of fraud to masqerade as process and incompetence. The super-fascist part comes about because the system avoids public accountability while also somehow evading any sort of reasonable standard of performance. What's the error rate, that is the false arrest, prosecution, and/or conviction rate of a Western countries' judiciary and police divitions? If it's even ten percent, and it's probably much higher, then there is no reason to respect the operation and perpetuation of the system. One chilling data point. Remember a few years ago the (pro death penalty) governor of Illinois suspended all the death sentences in has state? The reason being was that with the introduction of DNA testing, 1/3 of the people on death row were found to be innocent. I don't know how many other innocents the state planned to murder, but presumably there were some cases where DNA evidence was not available. If, in a capital case, where the money to pay public defenders is usually maximally available, and the appeals process, checks, and cross-checks are the more thorough than in any non-capital prosecution, you STILL get at least a 33% error rate, then what is the wrongfull conviction rate in non-capital cases, where there are far fewer appeals, and public defenders are paid a pittance? Peter Trei
Sun rolls out Identity Auditor
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/01/24/04NNsunid_1.html?source=NLC-SEC2005-01-24 InfoWorld Sun rolls out Identity Auditor Software applies identity management for repeatable compliance By Cathleen Moore January 24, 2005 Sun Microsystems (Profile, Products, Articles) this week introduced identity audit and compliance software designed to give IT departments visibility into employee identity and system-access activities. The Sun Java System Identity Auditor can help with the difficult and expensive regulatory compliance requirements of reporting on systems and applications, proving internal controls, and giving auditors data on historical access privileges. Identity - which [covers] who has access to what, who did what, and when - is essential to compliance, said Sara Gates, vice president of identify management at Sun. The problem Identity Auditor addresses is automating compliance processes companies suffer through. Having visibility into identity and access-related activities is a key part of compliance for certain regulations, most notably Sarbanes-Oxley, said Jonathan Penn, principal analyst of identity and security at Forrester Research. It may be that only certain systems or data are important to protect under those regulations. But it is important to have insight into who has access to what and why that access has been granted, Penn said. Sun's Identity Auditor makes it easier to implement controls through functionality focused on access-exclusion policies as well as the workflow dealing with conflicts that may arise between users' access rights and policy, Penn said. -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
PET 2005 Submission deadline approaching (7 Feb) and PET Award (21 Feb)
--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sec-lists: ;, anonymity researchers: ;, David Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 15:05:55 + From: George Danezis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: PET 2005 Submission deadline approaching (7 Feb) and PET Award (21 Feb) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Colleagues, The submission deadline for the Privacy Enhancing Technologies workshop (PET 2005) is on the 7th February 2005. The latest CfP is appended. We also solicit nominations for the Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies by February 21. For more information about suggesting a paper for the award: http://petworkshop.org/award/ Yours, George Danezis 5th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Dubrovnik, CroatiaMay 30 - June 1, 2005 C A L L F O R P A P E R S http://petworkshop.org/2005/ Important Dates: Paper submission: February 7, 2005 Notification of acceptance: April 4, 2005 Camera-ready copy for preproceedings: May 6, 2005 Camera-ready copy for proceedings: July 1, 2005 Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies Nomination period: March 4, 2004 through March 7, 2005 Nomination instructions: http://petworkshop.org/award/ --- Privacy and anonymity are increasingly important in the online world. Corporations, governments, and other organizations are realizing and exploiting their power to track users and their behavior, and restrict the ability to publish or retrieve documents. Approaches to protecting individuals, groups, but also companies and governments from such profiling and censorship include decentralization, encryption, distributed trust, and automated policy disclosure. This 5th workshop addresses the design and realization of such privacy and anti-censorship services for the Internet and other communication networks by bringing together anonymity and privacy experts from around the world to discuss recent advances and new perspectives. The workshop seeks submissions from academia and industry presenting novel research on all theoretical and practical aspects of privacy technologies, as well as experimental studies of fielded systems. We encourage submissions from other communities such as law and business that present their perspectives on technological issues. As in past years, we will publish proceedings after the workshop in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Suggested topics include but are not restricted to: * Anonymous communications and publishing systems * Censorship resistance * Pseudonyms, identity management, linkability, and reputation * Data protection technologies * Location privacy * Policy, law, and human rights relating to privacy * Privacy and anonymity in peer-to-peer architectures * Economics of privacy * Fielded systems and techniques for enhancing privacy in existing systems * Protocols that preserve anonymity/privacy * Privacy-enhanced access control or authentication/certification * Privacy threat models * Models for anonymity and unobservability * Attacks on anonymity systems * Traffic analysis * Profiling and data mining * Privacy vulnerabilities and their impact on phishing and identity theft * Deployment models for privacy infrastructures * Novel relations of payment mechanisms and anonymity * Usability issues and user interfaces for PETs * Reliability, robustness and abuse prevention in privacy systems Stipends to attend the workshop will be made available, on the basis of need, to cover travel expenses, hotel, or conference fees. You do not need to submit a technical paper and you do not need to be a student to apply for a stipend. For more information, see http://petworkshop.org/2005/stipends.html General Chair: Damir Gojmerac ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), Fina Corporation, Croatia Program Chairs: George Danezis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), University of Cambridge, UK David Martin ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), University of Massachusetts at Lowell, USA Program Committee: Martin Abadi, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA Alessandro Acquisti, Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Caspar Bowden, Microsoft EMEA, UK Jean Camp, Indiana University at Bloomington, USA Richard Clayton, University of Cambridge, UK Lorrie Cranor, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Roger Dingledine, The Free Haven Project, USA Hannes Federrath, University of Regensburg, Germany Ian Goldberg, Zero Knowledge Systems, Canada Philippe Golle, Palo Alto Research Center, USA Marit Hansen, Independent Centre for Privacy Protection Schleswig-Holstein, Germany Markus Jakobsson, Indiana University at Bloomington, USA Dogan Kesdogan, Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany Brian Levine, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA Andreas Pfitzmann, Dresden University of Technology, Germany Matthias Schunter, IBM Zurich Research Lab, Switzerland
[i2p] weekly status notes [jan 25] (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net)
- Forwarded message from jrandom [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: jrandom [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:47:44 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [jan 25] -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi y'all, quick weekly status update * Index 1) 0.5 status 2) sam.net 3) gcj progress 4) udp 5) ??? * 1) 0.5 status Over the past week, there's been a lot of progress on the 0.5 side. The issues we were discussing before have been resolved, dramatically simplifying the crypto and removing the tunnel looping issue. The new technique [1] has been implemented and the unit tests are in place. Next up I'm putting together more of the code to integrate those tunnels into the main router, then build up the tunnel management and pooling infrastructure. After thats in place, we'll run it through the sim and eventually onto a parallel net to burn it in before wrapping a bow on it and calling it 0.5. [1]http://dev.i2p.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/i2p/router/doc/tunnel-alt.html?rev=HEAD * 2) sam.net smeghead has put together a new port of the SAM protocol to .net - c#, mono/gnu.NET compatible (yay smeghead!). This is in cvs under i2p/apps/sam/csharp/ with nant and other helpers - now all y'all .net devs can start hacking with i2p :) * 3) gcj progress smeghead is definitely on a tear - at last count, with some modifications the router is compiling under the latest gcj [2] build (w00t!). It still doesn't work yet, but the modifications to work around gcj's confusion with some inner class constructs is definitely progress.Perhaps smeghead can give us an update? [2] http://gcc.gnu.org/java/ * 4) udp Not much to say here, though Nightblade did bring up an interesting set of concerns [3] on the forum asking why we're going with UDP. If you've got similar concerns or have other suggestions on how we can address the issues I replied with, please, chime in! [3] http://forum.i2p.net/viewtopic.php?t=280 * 5) ??? Yeah, ok, I'm late with the notes again, dock my pay ;) Anyway, lots going on, so either swing by the channel for the meeting, check the posted logs afterwards, or post up on the list if you've got something to say. Oh, as an aside, I've given in and started up a blog within i2p [4]. =jr [4] http://jrandom.dev.i2p/ (key in http://dev.i2p.net/i2p/hosts.txt) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFB9r1VGnFL2th344YRAvb5AJ9+Y5l9JZOo5znrnY2sunAr0lOJzgCghHpy W/EO4gPSteZWp+rBogWfB3M= =nnfw -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ i2p mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://i2p.dnsalias.net/mailman/listinfo/i2p - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net pgph7HnXavmo5.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder
More indications of an emerging 'Brazil' scenario, as opposed to a hyper-intelligent super-fascist state. -TD From: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED], osint@yahoogroups.com Subject: Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:19:25 -0500 http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110661076703534640,00.html The Wall Street Journal January 25, 2005 THE MIDDLE SEAT By SCOTT MCCARTNEY Gripes About Airport Security Grow Louder More Travelers Are Stopped For 'Secondary' Checks; A Missed Flight to Atlanta January 25, 2005 The frequency of secondary security screening at airports has increased, and complaints are soaring. Roughly one in every seven passengers is now tagged for secondary screening -- a special search in which an airport screener runs a metal-detecting wand around a traveler's body, then pats down the passenger and searches through bags -- according to the Transportation Security Administration. Currently, 10% to 15% of passengers are picked randomly before boarding passes are issued, the TSA says. An additional number -- the TSA won't say how many -- are selected by the government's generic profiling system, where buying a one-way ticket, paying cash or other factors can earn you extra screening. And more travelers are picked by TSA screeners who spot suspicious bulges or shapes under clothing. It's fair to say the frequency of secondary screening has gone up, says TSA spokeswoman Amy von Walter. Screeners have greater discretion. That may explain why passenger complaints about screening have roughly doubled every month since August. According to numbers compiled by the TSA and reported to the Department of Transportation, 83 travelers complained about screening in August, then 150 in September and 385 in October. By November, the last month reported, complaints had skyrocketed to 652. To be sure, increased use of pat-down procedures in late September after terrorists smuggled bombs aboard two planes in Russia undoubtedly boosted those numbers, though many of those complaints were categorized as courtesy issues, not screening, in the data TSA reports to the DOT. There were 115 courtesy complaints filed with the DOT in September, then 690 in October. By November, the number of courtesy complaints receded to 218. Yet the increased traveler anger at secondary screening hasn't receded. Road warriors complain bitterly about the arbitrary nature of the screening -- many get singled out for one leg of a trip, but not another. For Douglas Downing, a secondary-screening problem resulted in a canceled trip. Mr. Downing was flying from Seattle to Atlanta last fall. He went through security routinely and sat at the gate an hour ahead of his flight's departure. As he boarded, a Delta Air Lines employee noticed that his boarding pass, marked with , hadn't been cleared by the TSA. He was sent back to the security checkpoint. By the time he got screened and returned to the gate, the flight had departed. Delta offered a later flight, but his schedule was so tight he had to cancel the trip. Delta did refund the ticket, even though the airline said it was the TSA's mistake not to catch the screening code. TSA officials blamed Delta. TSA screeners often blame airlines, according to frequent travelers. Ask a screener why you got picked for screening, and they often say the airline does the selection and questions should be directed to the airline. But airlines say they shouldn't be blamed, since they are only running the TSA's programs, and the TSA's Ms. von Walter concurs. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're blaming them, she said. Perhaps some screeners are misinformed in those cases. She also says the TSA isn't sure why screening complaints have risen so sharply since August, although the agency says it may be the result of greater TSA advertising of its contact center (e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call 1-866-289-9673). If you do get picked, here is how it happened. The TSA requires airlines to pick 10% to 15% of travelers at random. Airlines can de-select a passenger picked at random, such as a child, officials say. In addition, the government's current passenger-profiling system, called Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS, picks out passengers. The system, which resides in or communicates with each airline's reservation computers, gives you a score based largely on how you bought your ticket. Airline officials say the TSA has changed the different weightings given various factors, and certain markets may have higher programmed rates for selectees. Passenger lists also are checked against the TSA's list of suspicious names, which has included rather common names and even names of U.S. senators. Interestingly, airline gate agents who see suspicious-looking passengers can no longer flag them for security. Some ticket-counter agents did flag several hijackers for extra security on Sept. 11, 2001, and were
