NASA-Northwest redux

"NASA-Northwest" were awarded the prize for Privacy Villain of the Week back in August 22, 2002. (The Privacy Villain of the Week and Privacy Hero of the Month are projects of the National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group. The discrepancy is the frequency is undoubtedly because there are currently more villains than heroes.) I guess you just can't keep a good villain down! Because"NASA-Northwest redux" is Villain of the Week for January 23, 2004! The press release reads:

"After two years, the public has finally learned that Northwest Airlines did indeed give the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sensitive consumer data for use in a bizarre research program that combined data-mining and"brain-monitoring" technology. There was a more naive time when it seemed the 21st-century total federal takeover of airport security would merely involve swarms of overpaid, un-fireable federal employees harassing hapless harried travelers with interminable baggage and body searches. But the dangers of"mind-reading" technology didn't occur to even the most strident skeptic. Or did it? Maybe we need to ask NASA.

It was revealed back in 2002 that scientists from NASA asked Northwest Airlines for"system-wide Northwest Airlines passenger data from July, August, and September 2001." The data was to be used in the still-mysterious program the federal space agency was working on with a commercial firm -- the idea was to use both data-mining and"brain-monitoring" technology installed at airport terminals to somehow identify"threats." The proposed brain-monitoring technology would detect EEG and ECG signals from the brain and heart and then have that data analyzed by software, in combination with previously-floated plans to cross-reference passengers' travel history, credit history, and other information from hundreds or even thousands of databases as part of the Computer-Aided Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS) program.

In a press release, Robert Pearce, the Director of NASA's Strategy and Analysis Division, disavowed the report, assuring the populace that"NASA does not have the capability to read minds, nor are we suggesting that would be done." Yet another NASA spokesman, Herb Schlickenmaier, confirmed that reading the brainwaves and heart rates of airline passengers was a goal of NASA's -- the thinking being that such data combined with body temperature and eye-flicker rate could make a sort of super-lie detector. However, the PowerPoint presentation delivered by NASA to Northwest in December, said NASA has"Non-invasive neuro-electric sensors under development as a collaborative venture between NASA Ames and commercial partner." This contradicts the NASA statement that"We have not approved any research in this area." If this is how NASA assembles policy, it's little wonder their hardware assembly has a dismal track record.

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