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

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."