There's a good article in Wired News today, Data Dump Required Before Flights, about the revised CAPPS II program. Basically the plan is the get more personal information (address, phone, date of birth) from passengers and match it to various databases, including credit reporting services, to ensure a person is who she says she is. Now I'm not particularly comfortable with that idea to begin with, and then when I read this quote — from an anonymous Transportation Security Administration official — I was even more annoyed.
"The new provisions are narrowly focused to violent fugitives," said the official. "It's there to protect passengers from sitting next to an ax murderer."
What kind of bogus scare tactic is that? An ax murderer on an airplane? First of all, he wouldn't even have the ax, you can't bring an ax through security! Second, I don't recall hearing about a single ax murder onboard a commercial flight, ever. Those things always happen at girls' camps in the woods, or at remote snow-bound mountain cabins. What we really should fear are nail-clipper murderers, because I hear they're letting you take those things in your carry-on again.