Punishing Collaborators Redux

Architecture and Background

Bill Scannell - Punishing Collaborators Redux: CAPPS II, Passenger Profiling, and the Boycott of Delta Air Lines Punishing Collaborators Redux: CAPPS II, Passenger Profiling, and the Boycott of Delta Air Lines Just when you thought Total Information Awareness was dead, The Department of Homeland Security rolled out plans in February of this year to introduce an Orwellian airport passenger profiling system called CAPPS II. The plan originally called for running checks on credit, banking, and criminal records every time a citizen flew on a commercial aircraft.

Vulnerability Analysis

Bill Scannell didn't feel like being asked 'papers, please' every time he traveled, so he targeted the only airline participating in the testing of CAPPS II: Delta Airlines. The resulting Delta boycott and millions of dollars in negative publicity caused Homeland Security to pull the plug on the program pending a privacy investigation, and for Congress to withhold all 2004 funding.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Bill Scannell has been active in the cypherpunk and privacy community for a number of years. A former US military intelligence officer turned foreign correspondent turned publicist, Scannell launched some of the most important privacy projects of the last few years, including HavenCo and MojoNation.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Together with Paul Holman, he launched a successful boycott of Adobe Systems in 2001 in response to the arrest of Dmitry Slylarov at DefCon that year. His latest successful project is