"Cost of Airport Security Technology"

Sunday, May 9, 2004

Cost of Airport Security Tech  
Reuters


CHICAGO -- The technology to screen for security risks without the knots
that bedevil and delay today's business travel is already on line at
some of the world's airports, but its widespread use hinges on cost and
other issues. 

The issue is of more than passing interest since airport delays are
costing businesses millions of dollars annually. 

"The technology is there today," says Evan Scott, president of ESGI, a
Philadelphia-based consulting company specializing in homeland security
technologies. "It's a matter of who's paying for it, rolling it out and
getting common standards ... the rest is political," he added. 

Scott estimates it will be another five years before passenger
identification technology becomes more commonplace, unless there is
another incident like the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, creating a need for
reassessment. 

He predicts a much wider use of fingerprint technology, with electronic
scanners checking all 10 fingers when passengers place their palms down
at a checkpoint. Those who have put their prints on file beforehand can
be verified as to their true identity. 

The other common techniques involve pictures taken and electronically
stored at checkpoints to be pulled up and compared when the traveler
passes such a point again. Also, biometric data can be stored in
passports or other travel documents, and technology can verify such
documents. 

But getting such systems to work in tandem with the same standards
across the world, while answering concerns about privacy, is the
challenge -- along with who foots the bill, said Scott. He is also a
corporate board member for New Hampshire-based Imaging Automation, which
sells technology that can verify documents -- rooting out fake or
tampered-with passports, for instance. 

Australia recently deployed that technology at all of its international
airports. It uses multiple light scans to examine the security features
of travel documents, then compares the readings to a comprehensive
database of valid document features for verification. Canada, Hungary,
Sweden, Finland and other countries also have deployed the same
document-verification technology. 

In the United States, the Transportation Security Administration has
been moving toward a passenger profiling system based on the traveler's
birth date, home phone and home address, information that would be used
to code individuals as to the level of perceived security risk. 

The system would check government private sector intelligence and
consumer data to verify passengers' identities and determine if they
have criminal records or links to suspect groups. The government will
also hold a test later this year allowing regular fliers to submit to a
preflight screening process in order to bypass long lines at security
checkpoints. 

The Virginia-based National Business Travel Association recently issued
a report on the developing U.S. program that raises some of the problems
that screening technology still faces. 

"No approach is absolutely secure," the group said. The false match
rates on fingerprints, for example, can be up to 8 percent, it said, and
any kind of universal registered traveler card "must be protected
against fraudulent use or forgery." 

The report noted that a program in operation at Ben Gurion Airport in
Tel Aviv allows frequent Israeli international travelers speedy entrance
and exit. The users, about 80,000 to date, submit biometric data based
on a hand scan and agree to an in-depth interview. Once in the program,
passengers need only place their hand on a reader, receiving a receipt
that allows them through a gate. Similar programs have been implemented
at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands and Dubai
International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, the business travel
group said. 

By one estimate, the group said, as many as 40 percent of world air
passengers would be eligible for some sort of registered traveler
program that would involve pre-screening and biometric identification,
paying perhaps a $50 annual fee to participate. 

But it also said some sort of mechanism needs to be put in place that
would give passengers denied boarding or given a bad security rating a
place to appeal and correct any mistakes in information.


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