'NO FLY' ON STEROIDS

Under Homeland Security's 'Secure Flight,' Your Union Card or Reading
Preferences Could Help Keep You Off a Plane.

Don't look now -- by which, of course, I mean do look now.

Look at all the ink and airtime lavished on the titillating stories
about Southwest Airlines threatening to boot a couple of passengers
off flights unless they tidied up their ensembles. A student/Hooters
waitress had to tug her miniskirt down and pull up her neckline, and
a man flying home to Florida had to turn his T-shirt inside out to
hide its "Master Baiter" joke tackle-shop logo.

While we were all getting some giggles out of that, the Department of
Homeland Security and its Transportation Security Administration have
been going ahead with something that could keep a lot of blameless
people off planes, no matter what they're wearing, and might fill up
dossiers with stuff they have no business knowing. Never mind
cleavage top or bottom: Someone may be taking note of what we do in
the sack, who we travel with, what we read and whether we belong to a union.

"Secure Flight" is the latest remake of a TSA program that's
undergone as many changes as Britney's hair. This time it would,
among other things, make it the government's job -- not the airlines'
- -- to check passengers' names against watch lists and then clear them
to check in and travel.

Haven't heard of Secure Flight? That's the way they like it in D.C.
But some of the people who do know about it are not pleased.

Canadians are peeved: Some airline flights that merely fly over the
United States, without so much as touching a wheel to U.S. soil,
would have to fork over more information about passengers, and do it
as much as three days before the flights take off. Canada already
worked with the U.S. to craft its own no-fly list and security
policies. "What's the point of this cooperative approach if our list
isn't deemed to be good enough for the United States?" asked Air
Transport Assn. of Canada Vice President Fred Gaspar.

The AFL-CIO is peeved: A July 26 letter from Homeland Security chief
Michael Chertoff to the head of the Council of the European Union
raised alarms. Detailing new air safety policies, Chertoff outlined
privacy safeguards for any personal data about EU passengers that
reveal "racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or
philosophical beliefs, trade union membership and data concerning the
health or sex life of the individual." Since when is union membership
- -- not to mention the sex lives of French, Dutch, British or Italian
tourists -- a terrorist risk factor?

Edward Wytkind, who heads the AFL-CIO's transportation trades
department, is dumbfounded: "We don't think collecting data on union
membership has anything to do with running homeland security or
weeding out security risks . . . it really crosses over into a very
dangerous place."

Privacy advocates, already peeved by no-fly list mix-ups, are
dismayed by Chertoff's letter and Secure Flight. They wonder: Could
all that EU data collection apply to Americans too? Race, health, sex
life, political opinions? We're mostly just flying to see our
mothers, not applying for work at the CIA. Who's gathering that info,
and how would they get it? Would they get it right?

I'm happy to say some U.S. senators are peeved too: They ragged on a
TSA official but good this week -- why is the agency not inspecting a
jet's cargo as rigorously as it inspects its passengers and their
toiletries? Why no security checks for foreigners repairing U.S. jets
in places such as Egypt and Singapore? The sarcasm in Missouri
Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill's voice jumps off the page: "I hope
you can be as righteously indignant about the foreign repair stations
as you are about mascara."

Finally, businesspeople and the travel industry don't seem thrilled,
judging from Web discourse. The 72-hour government security check and
requests for yet more passenger data will apply to more than just
Canadian overflights. When someone says "government," the word
expeditious doesn't come to mind. What will befall the last-minute
traveler? With all this going on, the one thing we shouldn't do is
put our tray tables up and bury our noses in any old bestseller. Bill
Scannell is with the Identity Project, a privacy-rights group funded
by IT rich guy and civil libertarian John Gilmore. He told me that
customs and border records he's seen for five Identity Project
sympathizers noted that one carried a book called "Drugs and Your
Rights." Another file noted chattily that the passenger had been
traveling for about a month, had gone to a computer conference,
visited friends and is -- in quotes -- a computer software
"entrepreneur." Which, when you put it that way, sounds more alarming
than "union member."

Oh, am I busted. On my recent home-to-mother flights, I read Susan
Faludi's new book, "Terror Dream," about post-9/11 America; the New
Yorker with a piece on Jenna Bush's first book; and a comic volume
called "Unusually Stupid Politicians."

TSA is accepting public comments on Secure Flight's latest plans; the
deadline is Oct. 22. Be careful what you say, unless you don't mind
getting home for Christmas . . . in January.