13 January 2004	Tuesday	20 Ziqa'ad 1424

WASHINGTON, Jan 12: The US government is pressing ahead with a controversial security programme to conduct background checks and assign a colour-coded risk rating to all passengers at US airports, the Washington Post said on Monday.

Under the programme, each passenger will be scored red, yellow or green. Red would bar the passenger from boarding, yellow would trigger additional scrutiny and green would signal a standard treatment by airport security.

The new computerized system will collect a passenger's full name, home address, telephone number, date of birth and travel itinerary, then run the information through databases to confirm passenger identity and compare it to lists of wanted criminals and suspected terrorists.

To implement the programme, the Transportation Security Authority (TSA) will soon begin forcing airlines to turn over passenger reservation lists. Airlines balked at joining a testing phase of the programme after privacy advocates encouraged boycotts of participating carriers and one carrier was sued for turning passenger data over to the military.-AFP