New changes in passenger screening will include the TSA taking over control of checking domestic passenger lists against watch lists, removing the airlines from that responsibility.

For international flights, air carriers flying to and from the United States will have to provide manifest information about passengers — either 30 minutes before departure or as each passenger checks in.

That information would then be checked against watch lists. Previously, the federal government was not receiving that information until planes were en route.

Passengers, however, will still be excluded from seeing why they are subjected to extensive searches, kept off flights, or attempt to rectify incorrect information about themselves.

The DHS claims that airlines weren’t performing these tasks consistently or effectively, forcing them to take over control of the operations.

Chertoff, during his press conference, defended the program. “I want to be very straightforward about this: Secure Flight will not do any harm to personal privacy,” he said. “It’s not going to rely on collecting commercial data; it’s not going to assign a risk score to passengers; it’s not going to try to predict behavior. It’s only designed to collect a minimum amount of personal identifying information so that we can do an effective job of matching the traveler to a person whose name and identity is on a watch list.”

They have done such a bang-up job until now that they will revamp their Secure Flight program, eliminating the use of assigning risk scores to passengers and predictive behavior technology.

None of this is intended to protect you.  It’s intended to scare you into believing that you should relinquish your rights so that they can “save and protect” you.  In the next 15-20 years, no one is going to understand what life was like before the government got into the protection business.  Just try asking a teenager today what life would be like without a cell phone.

The scam lives on.  Cargo is still not scanned.  Terrorists are still slipping onto planes.  Non metallic weapons strapped to your legs are not going to be picked up.  It’s still the same illusion they’ve been feeding us for the past six years.  We haven’t learned a thing and we’ve given up our hard fought privacy.