DOJ Assails Secure Flight

Despite a recent U.S. Department of Justice report concluding Secure Flight is unfocused and unprepared to take effect, the Transportation Security Administration said it is moving forward this month with two airlines to partially launch the passenger prescreening program.

DOJ inspector general Glenn Fine said in a report released this month that the TSA has failed to coordinate properly with the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, suggesting TSA can't get the proper data it needs to get the program operational. Under Secure Flight, TSA is supposed to match passenger names with watchlists of suspected terrorists maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which is administered by the FBI.

Although TSA spokeswoman Carrie Harmon said the agency agrees with most of the inspector general's recommendations and is already working to implement them, the agency still intends to implement Secure Flight by the end of the month.

"The implementation of the Secure Flight program at both the TSA and the TSC has been hindered by project delays and uncertainty about project scope, logistics and the resources needed to support the program's mission," DOJ inspector general Fine said. "We found that the TSC is attempting to plan for a program that has several major undefined parameters."

Specifically, Fine said, "the Terrorist Screening Center does not know when Secure Flight will start, the volume of inquiries expected and the resulting number of resources required to respond, the quality of data it will have to analyze, and the specific details of the phased-in approach for taking the program from 'pre-operational testing' in September 2005 to full operational capability in FY2007."

The Terrorist Screening Center this year is spending about $64 million in support of Secure Flight, with an additional $13 million in indirect support, inspector general Fine said. The Department of Homeland Security considers Secure Flight critical to its effort to protect commercial airline travel from a new terror attack.

It was the third major government oversight report to fault Secure Flight's progress in recent months. In separate reports earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office concluded TSA wasn't making satisfactory progress and in at least one case that it violated the privacy of more than 100 million passengers when it collected data while preparing to compare names to terrorist watchlists. TSA has delayed Secure Flight, originally slated to begin this spring, until this month. Critics said it's still not yet ready to go.

"They can't proceed," said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, an association of business travel buyers based in Radnor, Pa. He said the TSA is under "growing pressure to take this out of the spotlight and either get it right or abandon it."

For now, there is every indication is TSA intends to roll out the program this month, with at least two airlines and affecting 450 airports, which haven't yet been unveiled.

"This partnership between TSA and TSC is critical because it represents two major benefits to the Secure Flight program," Harmon said. "The first is the consolidation and maintenance of an expanded watchlist designed to identify known and potential terrorists. The second is that the TSC will, for the first time, institutionalize a formal, consistent and inclusive law enforcement response to terrorism."

The agency's stance has drawn fresh criticism from privacy advocates, most notably the American Civil Liberties Union, which has long protested Secure Flight and its predecessors, CAPPS I and CAPPS II.

ACLU said Fine's report signals the agency is moving ahead haphazardly, while passengers in Alaska and other places have sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for compiling data about them or erroneously placing them on a no-fly list solely because their name is similar to that of a suspected terrorist.

"This report is the latest example that Secure Flight is a fundamentally flawed program that would jeopardize our privacy and security if launched," said Timothy Sparapani, an American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel who is tracking the issue. ACLU estimated that about 5.1 million people will be wrongly flagged every year because of the program.

"TSA should not rush to launch Secure Flight when even its partner organization, the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, believes TSA has not adequately designed the program," Sparapani said. "Such a stunning lack of interagency coordination must be resolved before TSA moves forward."

Mitchell said airlines and anti-terrorism laws already in force make the case harder for TSA to move ahead with Secure Flight. From reinforced cockpit doors to air marshals to passengers who never again will passively submit to a hijacking, it's hard to imagine another Sept. 11-style incident occurring, he said. Secure Flight's mission, he said, has been relegated to preventing a terrorist bombing on an aircraft.

"If the goal was to prevent airplanes from being used again in this way as a weapon of mass destruction, we've pretty much achieved that," Mitchell said. "Secure Flight is left to great expense to prevent a bomb on a plane."

With federal lawmakers focused on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there's likely going to be little patience for controversial issues such as Secure Flight.

Other critics agree that TSA has transcended its original purpose, and not in a good way.

"Secure Flight is a disaster in every way," said Bruce Schneier, author of the book "Beyond Fear," a treatise on security and author of a Web log that chronicles the controversial topic. "The TSA has been operating with complete disregard for the law or Congress. It has lied to pretty much everyone. It is turning Secure Flight from a simple program to match airline passengers against terrorist watchlists into a complex program that compiles dossiers on passengers in order to give them some kind of score indicating the likelihood that they are a terrorist."

TSA and the Department of Homeland Security haven't done much to bolster confidence in the program.

In July, the Government Accountability Office reported TSA illegally hired a private contractor to collect data on more than 250,000 people such as birth dates, phone numbers, full names, and possibly other personal information.

The agency ordered U.S. airlines to turn over all passenger records for the month of June 2004 in order to test the system.

More recently, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has sought to downplay privacy concerns and to enlist the help of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) to quash ongoing oversight efforts regarding the program.

"The average American gives information up to get a CVS card that is far more in-depth than TSA's going to be looking at," Chertoff told USA Today in August, referring to the discount card offered by the drug store chain.

"Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," secretary Chertoff asked, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag?"