News reports have it that the TSA is getting ready to implement a color code system that will rate every passenger based on risk: green, yellow, or red. Those passengers marked red will be prohibited from boarding. In addition, those marked red “face police questioning and may be arrested.”

What boggles my mind is that the TSA estimates that one to two percent of all the passengers will be marked red. That’s one or two out of every hundred passengers. To put this into perspective, it means that out of a hundred thousand passengers on any day, one thousand will face the possibility of getting arrested. One hundred thousand may sound hypothetical, however it is comparable to the number of passengers who are serviced by Atlanta’s Hartsfield alone.

The TSA insists that the system is not only focused on terrorists, but also on wanted criminals. Put it another way, as a spokesman for the TSA said, “Not only should we keep passengers from sitting next to a terrorist, we should keep them from sitting next to wanted ax murderers.” On the one hand, I’d agree with the notion that someone with a warrant for his arrest should not be able to simply jump on a plane and fly away. On the other hand, the TSA system is built to circumvent the judicial process. In other words, the system is built to “measure risk”, not to catch known criminals.

Somehow, the news just gets more disturbing by the day.