"Registered Traveler Test Ends: U.S. Considers Findings As Private Airport Programs Proliferate"

Monday, October 3, 2005

Reg. Traveler Test Ends: U.S. Considers Findings As Private Airport Programs
Proliferate 
U.S. Considers Findings As Private Airport Programs Proliferate 
By Patty Donmoyer 
Business Travel News


The federal government late last week ended a 14-month test of its
Registered Traveler program that let frequent travelers who voluntarily
underwent a background check speed through security checkpoints at five
major airports. Although officials indicated the federal program may return
in some form, experts suggested that the ongoing, privately administered
program at Orlando International Airport may become the model for a more
permanent trusted traveler initiative. 

Airport officials in Boston and Indianapolis last week said they may adopt a
similar model, which would allow residents of those cities to pay up to $80
per year for the privilege of a streamlined security screening. Experts also
questioned how a trusted traveler program would dovetail with efforts by the
Transportation Safety Administration to expand Secure Flight, a
controversial program that screens airline passengers for suspected
terrorists. 

Boston is one of the five airports where the government since July 2004 had
tested the program. More than 10,000 travelers were cleared for speedy
security checks there or in Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis or
Washington's Reagan National Airport. 

The government's fiscal year ended Friday and President George W. Bush's
budget request for the year beginning Oct. 1 contained no funds to keep
Registered Traveler going. TSA head Kip Hawley told a luncheon gathering of
the Aero Club in Washington last week that there was no point in continuing
to pay contractors to administer the test. "We learned what we needed to
learn," Hawley said. 

Hawley said the agency isn't abandoning the program, but he said it must
first study the results of the test. He wouldn't say whether the program
would return in a way that's administered by the federal government, or
whether it will be turned over to individual airports and the private
sector. The Registered Traveler program grants access to separate, shorter
security lines at airports to frequent flyers who have passed criminal
background checks by federal law enforcement officials. This group of
travelers, who take about one-half of all flights in the United States every
year, are assured they won't face additional pat-downs and delays caused by
being forced to remove their shoes and laptop computers for additional
scrutiny. Officials said this will help persuade business travelers to
continue flying in a hyper-secure environment and allow TSA screeners to
devote more resources to detecting unexpected threats. 

The federal government's test program was criticized not only during
congressional hearings in June for fostering a perception of giving small
classes of people special treatment, but also because those who registered
could take advantage of their privileges only on particular airlines and
only at their home airports.

The Orlando program, which began in June, addressed some of these concerns
by allowing TSA-approved travelers to buy an $80 smart card embedded with
such biometric information as a fingerprint and an iris scan. The program is
open to travelers flying on all airlines. Verified Identity Pass Inc., the
New York company providing the smart cards in the Orlando program, last
month signed an exclusive deal to allow customers of Cendant Travel
Distribution subsidiaries Orbitz for Business and Travelport to receive an
unspecified discount off the smart-card fee.

Already, more airports are positioning themselves to adopt the Orlando
program, which has 9,000 participants and will continue for at least six
more months. Not only did Boston's Logan Airport last week signal that it
wants to continue with its own registered traveler program, which has
involved about 1,800 customers of the airport's biggest carrier, American
Airlines, but a group of airports, including Washington's Dulles and Reagan
airports and those in Columbus, Minneapolis, Dallas, Phoenix, San Francisco
and Denver, have formed the Registered Traveler Interoperability Consortium
to work for a nationwide trusted traveler program.

TSA spokesman Darrin Kayser said it's "too early to determine'' whether the
Orlando program will continue beyond January 2006. He said the agency's
review of data from the government-run test will help it decide how
Registered Traveler "fits into the security chain.''

"There's going to be pressure from a number of people to continue this
program," said Tom Blank, a former top career official at TSA who recently
joined the Washington lobbying firm Wexler & Walker. "There are several
thousand people who as of Oct. 1 won't be registered travelers anymore. The
airports are going to want to provide it."

Bill Connors, executive director of the National Business Travelers
Association, agreed. "NBTA members want to see a Registered Traveler program
available nationwide with voluntary participation, national standards and
interoperability between airports," Connors said. "There is significant
support in Congress for Registered Traveler, and I am confident that data
from the five test programs around the country will provide useful insight
into how to successfully build such a program." 

Association of Corporate Travel Executives president Greeley Koch sent a
communication to Homeland Security deputy secretary Michael Jackson urging
continuation of the program. "I am concerned that the abrupt termination of
the pilot programs will foster a patchwork of home-grown
Registered-Traveler-type programs driven by local airport authorities," said
Koch. "This process will require business travelers to enroll in multiple
programs, carry multiple cards and generate multiple registration
fees-without achieving consistent performance."

ACTE's support of the Registered Traveler concept has been contingent on the
program meeting specific criteria, including a separate line to expedite
security procedures, an integrated system that would work at any airport in
the country, a vetting process that would guarantee elimination from the
no-fly list, and an identification process that could easily tie in with
international travel screening efforts.

Blank said the program likely will evolve into one where TSA has federal
authority to collect fees for conducting background checks and enable the
federal government to run its own "pay-to-play'' service, like the privately
administered one in Orlando. It remains to be seen whether the federal
government would offer the service directly in competition with the private
sector or acts as a clearinghouse for trusted-traveler programs administered
by individual airports and other "wholesalers'' of passenger information,
such as hotels, airlines and credit card companies. 

Secure Flight Attacked, Defended 

Unanswered is how any future registered traveler program would intersect
with the less-popular Secure Flight program, through which TSA searches
passenger names against terrorist watchlists. Critics have called Secure
Flight unfocused, invasive and ineffective. 

Hawley last week defended Secure Flight, calling it a critical component of
protecting airlines from again being used in a terrorist act. "You have to
make sure people on the terrorist watchlist aren't getting on airplanes," he
said. 

TSA last week abandoned plans it had developed to use personal data mined
from commercial databases to bolster its passenger screening capabilities
after an advisory group said Congress should stop the agency from testing
the program. 

The Secure Flight Working Group, a group of TSA-appointed privacy and
security experts, said in a Sept. 19 report that the program remains
ill-defined and ill-conceived and lacks guarantees that passenger
information that is collected with be safeguarded or used properly. 

"Congress should prohibit live testing of Secure Flight," the nine-member
panel, which has been evaluating Secure Flight since January, said in its
report. The working group also said Secure Flight won't make airline travel
any safer because it doesn't incorporate appropriate intelligence to
identify characteristics of potential terrorists. 

TSA intends to use Secure Flight to check passenger names against terrorist
watchlists maintained by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. A Justice
Department investigation earlier this month concluded the screening center
was unprepared to handle the volume of inquiries Secure Flight is expected
to produce and faulted TSA for not working more closely with the center. TSA
had attracted criticism for its plans to buy personal data from commercial
companies to use in its screening process. In July, the Government
Accountability Office said TSA illegally hired a private contractor to
collect birth dates, phone numbers, full names, and other personal
information on more than 250,000 people. 

Now, the agency has decided it will use only information provided by
passengers, including full names and dates of birth, to compare against
no-fly lists. Timothy Sparapani, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties
Union, said the agency needs to go further and pledge never to use
commercial data. "The decision by the TSA to drop commercial data from
Secure Flight is a welcome move," ACLU's Sparapani said, "but TSA needs to
commit publicly that it will never use files on Americans compiled by
commercial data brokers."

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