[ OUR OPINION ]
FEDERAL transportation officials have been hesitant in endorsing a proposal to allow "trusted" travelers to submit background information so they could pass through express lines at the nation's airports. Now the government has gone too far, charging ahead with an involuntary system that would violate passengers' privacy rights. Any plan for special treatment should be voluntary. Security plan invades
air travelers’ privacy
THE ISSUE The federal government has assigned Delta Airlines to test a new security program.
A system proposed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, would allow frequent travelers, mostly business people, to submit to background checks to qualify for high-tech identification cards. The cards would include unique "biometric" identifiers such as eye, finger or hand characteristics. Participants would pay $100 to enroll and $25 to $50 for annual renewal, according to airline industry estimates.
The Department of Transportation instead has assigned Delta Airlines to begin testing an involuntary plan for air security that will include such information as passengers' credit reports, bank account activity, housing information and family ties gleaned from numerous government and commercial databases. Delta will begin testing the plan, called the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System II, or CAPPS II, at three undisclosed airports this month, and a comprehensive system could be in place by the end of the year.
House and Senate conferees agreed earlier this month to put severe restrictions on a Pentagon program involving a database on personal information, but the DOT project seems be the same kind of Big Brother. Based on the information, Americans will be assigned security risks of green (subject to normal checks), yellow (extra screening) or red (can't fly).
People would not be able to find out how they have been labeled. Information from the file of a person listed as yellow could be shared among federal, state and local governments, including intelligence agencies and foreign governments.
The system proposed by Hutchinson would not infringe on travelers' privacy rights, while allowing speedy screening of people willing to subject to background checks. Conversely, CAPPS II would create a needless invasion of privacy on Americans.
"CAPPS II threatens our liberty, but its security benefits are far from clear," says Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It will leave security screeners at sea in an ocean of private data. Some of that data will be fraudulent, and much of it just plain wrong."
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OUTRAGE about a cult's claim to have cloned human beings probably played a role in the approval by the U.S. House of a ban on all human cloning, a measure that would seriously impede medical research. The Senate refused to take up a similar House-passed bill in the last session of Congress and should do so again. Congress instead should prohibit reproduction cloning but allow research to resume. Cloning ban should
let research continue
THE ISSUE The U.S. House has passed a bill that would ban the cloning of human beings for both reproduction and research.
The House bill would impose a $1 million fine and up to a 10-year prison term for human cloning, for reproduction or research. It would criminalize an important area of medical research aimed at finding treatment for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, heart problems, diabetes and other ailments.
A study published two years ago by scientists from the University of Hawaii and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology determined that clones of animals from embryonic stem cells are unavoidably abnormal. Mice cloned by a UH research team turned out to have increased body weight, overgrown placentas and and respiratory problems. Dolly, the sheep cloned in Scotland, recently died prematurely from lung infection.
Those problems and ethical concerns justify a ban on reproductive cloning, which consists of implanting genes from an adult cell into a human egg from which all genetic material has been removed. The egg is then cultured into an embryo and implanted in a womb, producing a baby duplicating the cell donor.
The Raelians, a cult that believes space travelers created the human race, recently claimed to have produced the first human clone, but that is believed to be a hoax. Congress should not be driven by such theatrics.
Researchers hope to use stem cells that can be culled from cloned embryos with genetic matches capable of being transplanted into patients to overtake cells that are damaged by disease. Those embryos, which the White House wrongly describes as "nascent human lives," have no chance of becoming babies.
Nancy Reagan, the wife of former President Ronald Reagan, who has Alzheimer's disease, recently wrote a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who supports stem-cell research. "Orrin," she wrote, "there are so many diseases that can be cured, or at least helped, that we can't turn our back on this. We've lost so much time already. I can't bear to lose any more."
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Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, Publisher
Frank Bridgewater, Editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, Assistant Editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, Assistant Editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.comMary Poole, Editorial Page Editor, 529-4748; mpoole@starbulletin.com
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