Tuesday, September 13, 2005
A $79.95 Opportunity to
Breeze Through Security
By JOE SHARKEY
The New York (NY)
Times
NOT to put too fine a point on it, but I'd rather take a whack
up the side of the head with a sack of cobblestones than wait in a long line to
be treated badly when my turn comes.
This helps explain why I told
Steve Brill last week to please take my $79.95 and sign me up. Mr. Brill, who
founded Court TV and The American Lawyer magazine, is now the chief executive of
a company called Verified Identity Pass. If Mr. Brill gets his way (and he
usually does), his company's Clear Registered Traveler Program could soon have
many members paying $79.95 each year to obtain an identity card that allows them
to pass through airport checkpoints without being treated like a prisoner being
hustled to the cellblock.
The program is only now in an early test phase
at Orlando International Airport in Florida. It's one of six registered-traveler
programs that have been tried this year at various airports.
Mr. Brill's
program had about 7,000 enrolled members within a month after it started in
mid-July, and he predicts it will have 10,000 "within a few weeks." Other pilot
programs, which are administered by the Transportation Security Administration
and don't charge a fee, are limited to 2,000 members at each participating
airport.
What they all have in common is the means to let travelers
identify themselves with a thin card encoded with their biometric data - iris
and fingerprint scans - that the T.S.A. has checked against what Mr. Brill's
company describes as "various terrorist-threat-related databases" and concluded
that you have passed muster.
The reward for that is expedited passage
through security in a designated lane, along with the assurance that you won't
be randomly hauled aside for one of those secondary inspections and pat downs.
Other future benefits, Mr. Brill said, might exempt travelers from much disliked
rules like having to take off their shoes or remove laptops from their
cases.
Suppose your airline has marked your boarding pass with the
dreaded SSSS symbol. That supposedly means you probably did something
suspicious, like flying on a one-way ticket or abruptly changing a reservation,
both, of course, common behavior for business travelers. Whip out your
registered traveler card and, voilą, the S's disappear, Mr. Brill
said.
"When you come to our kiosk and put in your card with your prints,
our attendant puts a big T.S.A. stamp on your boarding pass that overrides the
four S's," he said.
A survey this year by the National Business Travel
Association and the Travel Industry Association of America found that 53 percent
of business travelers said they would pay an annual fee to participate in a
registered-traveler program.
Mr. Brill's initiative was timely. It was
also carefully designed to allay concerns about the potential for invasion of
privacy whenever the government gets a green light to conduct background
checks.
To obtain a Clear Registered Traveler card, an applicant provides
the company with his or her name, address, birth date, Social Security number,
and two forms of government-issued ID. Digital images of an applicant's
fingerprints and irises are made. The biographical and digital information is
then sent to the T.S.A., which checks it. Mr. Brill's company says it guarantees
restitution of any financial loss that might arise from the "highly unlikely
event" that its basic information on you is used for identity theft.
The
company does not get access to the T.S.A.'s evaluation, nor to any financial or
other information on the applicant. Neither the company nor the applicant is
told why an applicant is rejected.
Still, privacy advocates are watching
registered-travel programs with some trepidation. "They're saying, 'Hey, kids,
are you interested in moving through the line faster? Come on down and sign up
for this card, and if you pass the secret test, you'll get one of these things.
But if you aren't cool enough to pass, we're not going to tell you why,' " said
Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate and a former military intelligence
officer.
Not all frequent travelers like the idea. David J. Silbey, a
history professor who travels frequently, said that expediting the journey
comfortably for the most frequent, and therefore most influential, travelers
could "reduce pressure significantly" to enact necessary changes in standard
airport security.
How big is the potential market for a fee-based
registered-traveler card? "There is an industry here," said Mr. Brill, who
estimates his start-up costs at $2 million for each airport. "There are probably
eight million people in the United States who would buy this over the next five
to six years, and we think we can get a third of the market."
Click on
the link below to view the video:
Business Travel Minute: The Registered
Traveler Program
http://www.nytimes.com/video/src/2005/09/12/business/highbandwidth/windowsmedia/20050913_BIZTRAVEL_VIDEO_HI.asx