"Airports and biometrics"

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Airports and biometrics
By Ellen Messmer
NetworkWorld.com


There's considerable skepticism about using biometrics, whether the cost is
worth it or possible technical glitches known to come up with fingerprint
scans and the like. So when I happened to meet a business traveller last
week who was wildly enthusiastic about the government's biometrics-based
passenger security program, I took notice.

In a shared van to the San Francisco International Airport, it was a
businesswoman who remarked that her job in the medical field often required
her to travel a few times a week out of the Orlando International Airport
near her home.

To avoid the often lengthy passenger security lines in Orlando, she had
enrolled last year in the federal government's "Registered Traveller
Program" that granted her biometrics credentials that let travellers avoid
the regular security lines at the airport.

The credentials came in the form of the so-called "Clear" card, a smart card
that contained her fingerprint and iris scan, which she willingly supplied,
along with an agreement for a background check.

This government program, now up and going only in Orlando, is administered
under contract to Verified Identity Pass, Inc. and Lockheed Martin. 

The businesswoman retrieved her "Clear" card from her purse to show me what
it looks like.

Indeed, it is mostly clear, a transparent credit-card-sized plastic with a
tiny computer inside it.

She said the cost for the "Clear" card is $80 per year, an expense she said
was well worth it for avoiding passenger security lines.

All she had to do was touch her finger on a biometric scanner at a separate
clearance point when she went to board a plane in Orlando, present the Clear
card to be inserted into a reader to confirm a fingerprint match, and
whoosh, she was quickly through screening. 

She'd never seen a glitch in the process. The federal government may be
expanding the program into San Jose and other cities this year, and my
Clear-card-carrying business traveller said she certainly hoped that would
be the case.

Which raises a fairness question, in my view. I've got no problem with
airlines selling premium service -- no problem other than first-class envy,
of course -- but something just doesn't seem right when it's the government
giving the well-to-do yet another painless privilege while the rest of us
get to the airport two hours early just so we'll have time to remove our
belts and shoes.

I wondered out loud, though, whether the speed benefit of the Registered
Traveller Program would endure in the future if lots of air passengers
decided to join it and that special line just for biometrics users started
getting long, too.

She replied she doubted that would happen, even if the biometrics program
expands as envisioned to more airports, because only hardcore business
travellers would be willing to pay that $80 to avoid the more typical
passenger screening. 

Maybe so. But I confess I never thought anyone would be willing to pay that
monthly bill for for TV programming they rarely watch or a fool's ransom for
metered cell phone video and data services. Never underestimate the power of
the American consumer's love affair with technology, even when you have to
give your fingerprints to the government.

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