TSA wants to read your Facebook posts and view online purchases before approving you for PreCheck

Published January 27, 2015 10:00pm ET



Just when you thought the TSA couldn’t get any more invasive…

Now the Transportation Security Administration doesn’t just want to check out your naked picture and go through your physical belongings, they also want to have access to your online profile and Internet history as well.

Since 2013, the TSA PreCheck program has been available to all U.S. citizens willing to pay for it and fill out an online application. If approved, PreCheck allows them to skip the process of removing their shoes, belts or sweaters before going through airport security.The bypass also allows participants to skip removing their laptops and liquids from their bags.

Now the TSA wants to “expand the public’s enrollment opportunities” in this program, according to a new bid application.

They want to partner with outside vendors to use other ways to approve people for PreCheck, Tech Dirt reported. The vendors will be allowed to use “commercial data” to check for any possible terrorist threats.

The proposal is very vague and leaves open a lot of questions as to what methods could be used, primarily giving criminal background checks, credit scores, and foreclosures as examples of this type of information.

But a PDF that would be signed by the winning contractor has the most detailed and damning of the definitions of “commercial data,” Tech Dirt found.

“For purposes of this private sector enrollment initiative for the TSA Pre√® Application Program, ‘commercial data’ includes: public record data, such as criminal history and real estate records produced by federal, state, and local governments; other publicly available information, such as directories, press reports, location data and information that individuals post on blogs and social media sites; and wide ranging data such as purchase information, customer lists from registration websites, and self-reported information provided by consumers that is obtained by commercial data sources such as data brokers.”

That’s a lot of access to grant for keeping your shoes on in the security line.