Secure Flight @ Home
Prof. R. H. Anssen of the Univeristy of Florence, Colorado working under a Department of Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects grant has released a new paper discussing improvements to SecureFlight that make it much more scalable, while adding in grid-computing and privacy-friendly aspects as well. Expanding upon the ideas of K. P. Hilby and J. W. Alker, Prof. Anssen and students have created a “glosses-based” security authenticator. This new mechanism combines statistical meta-analysis and secure multiparty computation to be able to identify problem flyers with zero false-positives.
Their software system is called SecureFlight@Home, and uses the background computations of potentially millions of computers to create the meta-analytic glosses which identify problem travelers. Additionally, individuals who have an e-Passport from the USA or any other e-Passport-issuing country can use their e-Passport to authenticate themselves to the SecureFlight@Home network and determine if they are on the international no-fly list. Version 0.9 of the SecureFlight@Home client is available from http://www.secure-flight-at-home.gov/
“What the TSA fails to realize is that without adequate protections, the contents of the no-fly list are accessible to millions of people, ” said Prof. Ian Goldberg, noted privacy researcher at the University of Waterloo. “Worse, those people potentially have the power to modify the list as well. Hmm. How do you spell ‘Hawley’?” he added.
TSA administrator Kip Hawley stated “some privacy fundamentalists have raised privacy questions, but we’re confident we can address those after the system is up and operational on April 1st.”
argh! sure, lets address the privacy issues at some indeterminate time in the future after the system is up and running, because privacy and data integrity are v.2 features. Do they even have a way to track breaches in the meantime? Do they not think that motivated individuals won’t take advantage of this window of opportunity to modify the list and add/remove people at their whim?
I hate april fools day.