posted 09-26-2003 12:19 PM            

Congress moved Wednesday to delay the planned takeoff of a controversial new airline passenger-profiling system until an independent study of its privacy implications and effectiveness at stopping terrorism can be completed.

A congressional conference committee, which was reconciling the Senate and House versions of the Department of Homeland Security's budget for next year, opted to keep the Senate's stronger language.

That language prohibits deployment of the Transportation Security Administration's CAPPS II program until the General Accounting Office certifies to Congress that the system will not finger too many innocent passengers.

The study will also check whether the system will effectively pinpoint terrorists, and whether an appeals system is in place for those delayed or prohibited from flying.

CAPPS II is intended as a high-tech replacement for the current system, which simply checks passenger names against a list of suspected terrorists.

The new system will require passengers to provide airlines with additional information, which the agency will check against commercial databases and a watch list of suspected terrorists and people wanted for violent crimes. The system will then color-code each passenger, according to decisions made by the system's pattern-matching algorithms.

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