[IP] A $79.95 Opportunity to Breeze Through Security
September 13, 2005
A $79.95 Opportunity to Breeze Through Security
By JOE SHARKEY
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, voilà, 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."
E-mail: jsharkey@xxxxxxxxxxx
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