|
|
| SECURITY |
GETTING REAL ABOUT RISK
Airport Security's Next Phase
by Jim Glab – SkyGuide GO – 6/01/02
At Chicago O'Hare, security screeners stopped a portrait artist at the
checkpoint and confiscated his oil paints and brushes. In Detroit, screeners ordered a strip-search
for a 75-year-old Member of Congress after pins in his artificial hip set off the metal detector. In
Toronto, passengers wearing poppies pinned to their lapels for Canada's Remembrance Day had the tiny
straight pins - and the poppies - taken away. In Phoenix, screeners pulled an 86-year-old retired U.S.
Marine Corps general out of line and grilled him about an odd piece of metal in his pocket. It was his
Congressional Medal of Honor.
No doubt every business traveler has seen or heard examples of excessive zeal by
airport security screeners. In the wake of September 11, air transportation security is undergoing its
biggest overhaul since the government ordered x-ray machines and metal detectors deployed to stem a
wave of hijackings in the 1970s.
So far, the impact has been a radical tightening up of existing systems and procedures, a new attitude
of virtual paranoia on the part of security screeners, and a very long wait in line for
passengers.
But the government, airlines, airports and technology providers are working feverishly to invent, test
and roll out a whole new generation of devices and tactics that promise to make the skies safer
without requiring you to leave for the airport three hours before your flight time.
Last fall, Congress passed legislation mandating some security changes, like the deployment of more
sky marshals, the federalization of airport security screening, and stricter rules for checked
baggage. And passengers are now paying up to $1o more per ticket to cover the associated
costs.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has set a goal of reducing security checkpoint waiting time to
no more than 1o minutes, and the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is studying how it
can tweak the current system. In mid-February, TSA officially assumed jurisdiction over airport
security screening, and in the past few months, TSA sent teams to 15 airports of different sizes to
study passenger traffic flows and bottlenecks, to identify the most efficient methods so they can be
copied system-wide.
Meanwhile, TSA must hire and train a nationwide workforce of 30,000 security screeners by November,
along with several hundred airport security directors. By replacing the current patchwork of
airline-contracted private security companies with a centrally-controlled federal workforce, TSA hopes
to eliminate a problem that consumer surveys identify as a major passenger annoyance: different
security procedures and standards being applied from one airport to another, or even from one
checkpoint to another.
"That's one of the main reasons why things are moving to a federal workforce," said TSA spokesperson
Paul Takemoto–"to make things more stringent and consistent across the board."
But more significant changes are in the works, focusing not so much on passengers' belongings, but on
the passengers themselves. Since September 11, most of the slowdown in passenger processing has come
because security personnel are treating every individual equally: They assume anyone could be a
terrorist. So they scrutinize everyone, ordering nuns to take their shoes off, patting down children
and "wanding" old men in wheelchairs.
New systems under study would remove that basic assumption. Instead, passengers would be segregated
into different risk categories; those deemed the most suspicious, or about whom the least is known,
would be subject to the most intensive, time-consuming scrutiny at the airport. Low-risk passengers
would still have to pass through security, but hopefully a lot more quickly. There are two major
innovations under consideration–a voluntary program that passengers would sign up for, and an
involuntary screening process that would operate behind the scenes.
The latter is a project to develop a vastly more sophisticated version of the existing Computer
Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) program, which helps airlines select certain passengers
for extra inspection. TSA won't comment, but security sources confirm that the government and private
companies are studying how they can use powerful software to probe passengers' backgrounds and travel
patterns by digging into airline reservations systems and other existing databases–including law
enforcement records–looking for anything that might raise an electronic eyebrow.
Credit card companies already do something like this to detect potentially fraudulent transactions,
and casinos use it to track known gambling cheats. But the air safety program under consideration
would reportedly take this to a whole new level. The software might notice that a passenger's address
is the same as, or next door to, that of a known terrorist, using a link to an FBI database. It could
detect that several passengers seated at different places on the same flight have tickets that were
purchased with the same credit card. It might even dig into telephone records, credit card
transactions and other personal data, looking for possible links to, or suspicious similarities with,
government information on "bad guys."
Security sources say that this project could take years to develop, and the potential conflicts with
personal privacy rights are obvious. Still, some see a new era of Big Brother-ism as the unavoidable
price for a safer travel experience.
"We strongly believe that there has to be a strong 'passenger assessment' program, and that it needs
to go forward," said Richard Doubrava, managing director-security for the Air Transport Association, a
trade organization for the domestic airline industry.
"I think ultimately it will work, although there are certainly some things that have to be sorted out,
and some debates that will have to take place," said Bret Kidd, vice president-strategy for the Global
Transportation Industry Group at Electronic Data Systems (EDS). "However, if you consider the kinds of
information they're interested in looking at, generally it's already out there today. It's in a credit
bureau, or with a credit card company, or with the airline or whoever. If you can use some of the data
that's already there a little more intelligently, we'll see an overall efficiency in the airline
system and a convenience improvement for individual flyers, because you can cut down on the number of
selectees,"–i.e., the persons chosen for the most intensive scrutiny at the airport.
A more immediate, and potentially less controversial, system for separating out less risky passengers
is the proposed "trusted traveler card." This is a "smart card" with a computer chip that would use
biometric technology–like a fingerprint, hand geometry or iris scan–to verify the identity
of an individual who has voluntarily undergone a security background check. This concept is strongly
supported by the airline industry, and officials in both the Homeland Security Office and the TSA have
indicated it might be worth a try.
Kidd said EDS has developed a similar program for Israel's super-security-sensitive Ben Gurion Airport
in Tel Aviv, using a hand geometry scan, and it's proven quite a success. "With the card, you get
expedited passage, and folks there pay $2o to $25 a year for the service," he said. "And for good
reason–the average 'wait time' was about two hours from curb to plane. This system reduced it to
about 15 minutes from curb to plane, with about 15 seconds for the actual authorization process
through a kiosk."
The airlines see such a card as one way to give their business customers an edge in moving more
quickly through the screening process. To date, the only relief they've been able to provide frequent
flyers was special security checkpoint lanes. (In February the TSA ordered an end to the lanes, a move
that airlines balked at. A compromise was reached that allows airlines to create special lanes, but
these elite travelers must pass through the standard security checkpoint shared with "the
masses.")
At United Airlines, "We're always looking for technology to drive efficiency in our operation, and if
it's technology that's proven, and we could maintain the same high level of security using products
like that, then I think we'd embrace it with both arms," said spokesperson Joe Hopkins.
The National Business Travel Association, an organization for company travel managers, "definitely
supports a voluntary travel ID card," said spokesperson Allison Marble. "We have surveyed our members.
Safety is a concern, and they're willing to give up a little information to increase the productivity
of the security system by getting the non-risky travelers through as quickly as possible."
Air Transport Association security chief Doubrava said that because the technology for a trusted
traveler card system already exists, testing could get underway in a matter of months–if the
concept wins federal backing. But he concedes that could be a problem, since the TSA already has its
hands full in trying to meet the Congressionally-mandated deadlines for the other security
enhancements mentioned above.
And the private sector can't do this on its own, even with passenger fees financing the system,
Doubrava insisted. "The federal government has to set the criteria to determine what will be required
for an individual to be a part of the program," he said. Why? "No government agency is going to share
intelligence data with private parties–it's just not going to happen. And the federal government
needs to decide what the baseline [requirements for participation] will be, because they're the ones
who know the threat, who know how the system works, and they have to have a threshold that meets the
security requirements in the current environment."
However, airlines would be glad to assist by enrolling customers in the program, he added, and by
deploying passenger check-in systems that interact with the identity-verification technology in the
smart card. He suggested that the "trusted" population could start small and grow, perhaps beginning
with airport and airline employees who have access to secure areas, since they are already required to
provide fingerprints and undergo a criminal background check. However, "they would have to change the
law to permit private individuals to be required to have an FBI criminal background check, because the
current requirements for such don't apply to the general public," Doubrava noted.
EDS's Kidd points out that once a biometric "trusted traveler" smart card is in place, its
functionality could be expanded way beyond that of a high-tech ID card. "The same device, if it's
integrated with the reservations systems, could be your boarding pass. It could be your baggage claim.
It could manage your upgrades in the frequent flyer programs, your access to airport club lounges," he
said. "It could even be a payment platform once you're on the aircraft for things like Internet
access." Once other suppliers adapt to the technology, its use could spread; it could be a hotel room
key, a rental car check-in system, a credit card.
"There are a million potential applications," Doubrava agreed. "The carriers and the industry have
been looking at this [smart card technology] for a long time for their own marketing reasons."
But he said ATA and the airlines are most concerned right now with getting it started as a means of
facilitating the security screening process for passengers who clearly pose no threat to
anyone.
"We have to have an improvement in the current security process, or people won't want to fly,"
Doubrava said. "To us, it makes no sense to have 85-year-old grandmothers going to Orlando being
treated as if they're prospective terrorists."
|
|
|
|
