If you build a system for one purpose, the gov't will use it for any purpose
The Trump administration is providing the names of all travelers passing through U.S. airports to immigration officials in search of people with deportation orders, a substantial expansion of government efforts to draw on data to hunt down immigrants it wants to expel.Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people.
TSA knows about your movements because we needed to be kept safe after 9/11.
Airline passengers have long been subject to some federal scrutiny. Airlines typically provide passenger information to T.S.A. after a flight is reserved. That information is compared against national security databases, including the Terrorist Screening Dataset, which includes the names of individuals on a watch list of known or suspected terrorists.
But we built a system that is useful and so they use it:
“The message to those in the country illegally is clear: The only reason you should be flying is to self-deport home,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.
It's crazy that the government knows who is flying on any given day and where. Can you imagine how you would feel if you had to log in to a gov't website and upload your id and travel plans every time you planned on driving anywhere? Yet, we've had 20+ years of accepting that this is normal for flying. It's hard to see how we pull back from the abyss.