Doubt over TSA air passenger screening system

According to the latest report of GAO for a new air passenger screening system, nine of the 10 criteria set by Congress such as accuracy and privacy protection have not been met.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report was requested by Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who has championed civil libertarians’ concerns about passenger profiling. It questions whether a new program of computerized background checks can accurately identify suspected terrorists and protect travelers’ privacy.

A new air passenger screening system also include oversight, security safeguards, accuracy of data, cost to airlines, privacy protections and a system of redress for passengers who are incorrectly targeted by the system.

A new passenger screening system has been sought by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Once in place, the government would take over from airlines the responsibility for checking passengers’ names against watch lists of suspected terrorists.

One potential problem area, the GAO report concluded, is the accuracy of the government’s terrorist watch lists.

“TSA still has a tremendous amount of work to do to check every airline passenger against the government’s terrorist watch lists,” he said. He is critical of the TSA for wanting to match passenger lists against both commercial databases and the terrorist watch list to determine which passengers should undergo further scrutiny. He says he’s concerned about the accuracy of commercial data, such as a name, address or phone number that’s maintained by a private company.

The report casts doubt on the TSA’s schedule for conducting Secure Flight pilot projects with air carriers by August 2005.

“The government itself found that Secure Flight is not ready for takeoff and should be held at the gate,” said Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Until TSA completes additional system testing, it is uncertain how well Secure Flight will perform, or whether it will be ready for operational deployment in August 2005,” the GAO said.

The security agency hoped to certify the system in January, but that has been pushed back to July. A final round of testing will begin in April.

More than 688 million people flew on domestic airlines in 2004, and that number is expected to top 1 billion a year over the next decade, regulators estimate. TSA hopes to screen 1.8 million passengers per day with Secure Flight.

Under the plan, airlines would transfer personal information to a government database. The TSA would check to see if any names were on watch lists and alert the airline about any matches.

Rogers’s panel is responsible for funding TSA programs, like passenger pre-screening. The Bush administration has budgeted $120 million for the project in 2005 and 2006.

“Although TSA is conducting accuracy of matching, the system’s effectiveness to identify passengers who should undergo enhanced scrutiny has not been determined,” GAO said.

Early results indicate that TSA may ask air carriers to collect birthdates from passengers. Results show it would greatly improve the ability to match to the watch list, the TSA spokeswoman said. Furthermore, TSA “is considering whether commercial data … maintained by private companies could enhance the system’s ability to match the data.” Access to such data would increase the operation costs of the system, according to the report.

The viability of the system hinges on the ability of TSA to communicate with airline reservation systems, the report said. GAO found that there is not a process in place to connect those systems with TSA and the terrorist-screening database. Airline carriers also expressed concern over the unknown costs of establishing links to transfer data and update reservations systems to include new data.

To address concerns about identity theft from the system, TSA said in the report that biometric technologies such as facial recognition, iris scans, hand geometry and fingerprint recognition might be the best tools.