Software and smart cards
Can technology improve airport security while reducing the hassles for passengers?
The events of 9/11 affected many aspects of American life but perhaps none so much as commercial air travel. Since that fateful day, there have been unprecedented attempts to close security gaps at airports. The result is a commercial aviation system that is no doubt safer but also far more intrusive and time consuming--passengers must now deal with tighter baggage checks, long security lines, and downright invasive searches. Behind the scenes, though, the Transportation Security Administration, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is in the midst of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on research and new technology aimed at taking some of the hassle out of the flying experience. That work won't help during the upcoming spring-break surge. But over the next few years, it does have the potential to make America's aviation system both safer and less aggravating.
Speeding through security
The TSA's Registered Traveler program gives prescreened air passengers a "fast pass" through cumbersome airport security checkpoints and allows them to skip most secondary screening. Since June, about 10,000 frequent fliers have tested the program at five airports, and most gave rave reviews. Now tests of an international version of the program are underway, and the government is giving the nod to airports to develop their own easy-pass programs with airlines and private-sector partners. All of this holds out "the promise of better customer service, shorter lines, and less hassle," says Carter Morris, senior vice president of the American Association of Airport Executives.
The first stop for the international program is New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Starting this spring, JFK will partner with Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, which has a program called Privium that gives European travelers biometric smart cards that "fast track" them through border security stations. The pilot program includes Privium cardholders and American citizens who were part of a similar, now defunct U.S. system. When traveling between JFK and Schiphol, these passengers would skip the routine customs questioning and instead use special kiosks to present their passports and have their identities confirmed.
As for the private-sector approach, officials at Orlando International Airport are working to get their own registered-traveler program up and running by March. The airport will handle everything the government currently does--except setting security guidelines. The first partner may be locally based AirTran Airways, but if it goes well, the program will eventually expand to all carriers that serve Orlando and be a national model. The TSA would have to sign off on any such venture. "Getting the private sector involved" in solving security-related travel hassles is "something we need to do," says C. W. "Bill" Jennings, executive director of the Orlando airport. "They can do it in a more efficient way, in both service and cost."
Packing up the pat-downs?
The TSA wants to get out of the frisking business and rely on technology to do the dirty work. Intrusive--and controversial--pat-downs began in September, one month after two Chechen women allegedly smuggled plastic explosives under their clothing, through metal detectors, and onto two Russian airplanes, crashing them both. Stateside, the torso-frisking policy has garnered complaints, mostly from women who say it makes them uncomfortable. So the TSA is in the process of more than doubling the size of a pilot program testing so-called explosives trace detection portals. These machines aim puffs of air at passengers to dislodge and sniff out explosive residue. By midyear, the TSA also plans to test X-ray backscatter portals, which use X-rays to create an image of a passenger's body and reveal any concealed weapons. This idea isn't new, but when it was first unveiled for U.S. airports in 2002, privacy advocates were livid. The images, they argued, were so detailed they were embarrassing.
Since then, one company that makes the machines--Rapiscan Systems--has developed a way to "fuzzy up" body images to eliminate clear images of private parts. The firm is also working on a way to show only contraband superimposed on a generic body image. But Peter Williamson, Rapiscan vice president for sales, cautions that "if you compromise [the view] too much, you have a nice, privacy-enhanced product that doesn't work."
In late December, the TSA quietly named 16 "model airports" to test either the backscatter or trace portals or both. Four airports--Baltimore, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Jacksonville, Fla.--will do the first round of double tasking, starting within the next few months. The agency wants to see how multiple new technologies work together--or don't--in real airport settings.
Perfecting passenger prescreening
It has been years in the making, but the TSA thinks it finally has the solution to the vexing problem of how to use air passengers' names to root out terrorists. A new system, Secure Flight, could begin in August. The program is the successor to the controversial computer-assisted passenger prescreening system, or CAPPS II, which drew heavy fire from civil liberties groups for relying on commercial databases and using computer formulas that color-coded each passenger based on the potential threat he or she posed. The airline-administered checks of government watch lists incorrectly flagged many passengers, and there was no easy way to fix the errors.
This newest iteration has the TSA do the name checks, skips the color-coding, uses sharper name-matching software, and includes a smoother method for handling travelers' complaints, says Justin Oberman, chief of the TSA's Office of Transportation Vetting and Credentialing. The Government Accountability Office reported last month that Secure Flight seemed to be on the right track--so far. But groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center say they still have significant concerns.
This story appears in the March 14, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.