“I am writing all this stuff and I am sending it to my editor,” Scannell recalls in a telephone interview from his home in Austin, Texas. “I’m working really hard making all of this stuff up.”

On Friday, Feb. 18, Scannell learned that he could have saved himself some time and effort. That day, he opened up a local newspaper and read an Associated Press dispatch disclosing that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been working with Delta Airlines to implement an experimental program that draws on credit bureau reports, Social Security numbers and other personal data to assign a treat level to passengers flying out of three undisclosed airports.

The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPS II) is expected to be expanded to other airlines by the end of this year. Under the plan, flyers will be assigned one of three color codes: green, if it’s safe for them to travel without additional scrutiny, yellow if they require additional screening and red if they are not allowed to fly at all. TSA has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $12.8 million contract to tap into commercial data bases for information on flyers that could be utilized in the program.

Scannell was livid. Not because fiction had suddenly become fact, but because he felt betrayed by his own country.

“I was really angry,” he remembers. “I’m a vet. I did my three years, four months and 18 days in the Army. I didn’t sign up for this. It crossed my personal line where you say you’re going to stay and try to make things better or you’re going to go out shopping for another country. I thought: I am going to fight this.”

He decided to start a national boycott of Delta Airlines by creating a Web site, www.boycottdelta.org. He is asking flyers to avoid using Delta Airlines, divest of Delta stock, quit the Delta Skymiles program, contact the company by phone or letter and weigh in on the matter with members of Congress.

When he enlisted the help of several friends for the project, they agreed to assist him if he would protect their identity. For Scannell, that underscored just how fearful Americans had become of their own government.

On the following Monday, he launched the boycott Web site around 5 a.m., slept for several hours, and began preparing for war.

“When you go to war, you want to launch your cruise missiles first,” Scannell says. “Just as the markets opened, I called Delta analysts in New York. I spoke with about half of them and left messages for the others. I got their private e-mail addresses and sent them an e-mail saying that I was launching a boycott and stated the reasons.”

The next move on the battlefield was to send an e-mail to friends, asking them to forward it to all of their friends. Before long, news of the boycott spread to chat rooms and instant messages. The media picked up on the story. “Wired” magazine’s Web site ran a story that began, “Hell, no, Bill won’t go. And he doesn’t want anyone else to go either, if their travel plans involve Delta Airlines.” A “New York Times” headline asked, “A Safer Sky or Flight 1984?” a reference to George Orwell’s novel about “big brother.”

“My friends started to say, ‘You’re going to get a knock at your front door – John Ashcroft is going to come and pay you a visit.’ I have to admit that 5 percent of me was really worried about someone coming, stamping ‘person of interest’ on my forehead and taking me off some place. That made me even angrier.

“If I can’t peacefully protest in my own country, then I might as well get another country. I went after Delta because you can’t sell off your stocks in TSA [there are none]. You can’t buy a product from Lockheed Martin. But you can vote with your wallet and use the glorious powers of capitalism to vote.”

Scannell used the glorious power of the Internet to launch his guerrilla war against Delta.
More than 1 million people have visited the boycott Web site, Scannell says. Reaction to the site shows that the issue of privacy unites liberals, conservatives and anyone in the middle. It has also united professional airline organizations, travel agents and civil liberties groups, all objecting to the proposed invasion of privacy.

TSA officials met with representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups last week, hoping to win their support. But if the response to Scannell’s Web site is any indication, the flying public will not be satisfied until the program is eliminated.

In some ways, Bill Scannell has already won because is an inspiration to all of us. Rather than caving in, he showed what a person with $17 to register a domain name, a group of computer-savvy friends and a cell phone can accomplish.

Delta Airlines is in for a well-deserved bumpy ride.