Bruce Scheier sums up the debacle of Secure Flight. The latest straw is a GAO Report that finds TSA collected and used commercial information in violation of its Privacy Act statement. As Bruce details from press reports and public statements, the program has moved from a narrow purpose of checking names against watchlists to "routing out terrorists in sleeper cells" using scores based on commercial data.
Bruce's tone accurately reflects my own view on both the process and substance. Our review is still progressing, but its unclear how effective we will be able to be. Every other group that's reviewed Secure Flight has scored both process and substance poorly. We'll see what happens in our last meeting --scheduled for august-- but I'm not optimistic.