A recently announced privacy issue with airport security in Canada lifted the lid on a much bigger problem with the so-called 'strip search machines.'

Today's report in the Edmonton Sun titled "Canada's airport security agency breaks gov't rules" points out that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) broke Canadian Government rules by collecting private information without the mandatory privacy impact assessment.  

It appears that earlier this year CATSA commenced scanning and retaining boarding passes at Montreal's Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport.  Now this may or may not have privacy implications – that's not the issue.  The issue is that it was done without the impact assessment.

CATSA emphasises that the copies are retained for only 24 hours and are intended to allow authorities to be quite sure who is in the terminal (and when they passed through the checkpoint) if there is some kind of security incident.  One can only assume that 'meeters and greeters' are not welcome beyond the security gate as they are in Australian domestic terminals.

The Edmonton Sun article also observes that 'virtual strip search' devices are also proposed for a number of airports, quoting B.C. Civil Liberties Association's Micheal Vonn, "CATSA tried to assure passengers new virtual strip search machines would not identify them, but now that they are collecting personal information, it does not inspire confidence.

"Not only is the picture very frightening and egregious, but it certainly raises the question, what else aren't you telling us?" Vonn said.

This is the nub of the problem.

If we have a time-stamped scan of the boarding pass, then it's not particularly difficult to link a name back to the supposedly anonymous strip search image, assuming the image isn't deleted as authorities claim it would be.

Remember, in this day-and-age where disk space is cheap, why wouldn't the authorities keep the scan images?  After-all, who would know?  Best of all, now they'll have a name to go with the image.