The concept was simple at first: Frequent fliers would clear a background check, become "trusted travelers" and be sped through less stringent airport security.
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But now, the government's small, 13-month-old test program known as Registered Traveler is provoking an intense and increasingly complicated debate about privacy and the proper roles of government and business. The resolution could have far-reaching implications not only for how Americans travel by air, but how they conduct their daily lives and commerce.
Government background checks conducted for the Registered Traveler program, and the biometric ID cards issued to those who enroll, could in the future determine how someone makes a purchase on credit, enters an office building or arena, turns on a cell phone or boards a train.
Frank Fitzsimmons, CEO of iris-scan developer Iridian Technologies, says millions of travelers using biometrics at airport security "will have dramatic effect on their acceptance in other markets" - activation of cash machines, cell phones and computers, for example.
It's a tantalizing prospect for those in Fitzsimmons' business. But not so thrilled are privacy advocates, civil libertarians and even some airline executives who are seeing their modest idea for speeding along their best customers burgeoning into a massive commercial enterprise.
Registered Traveler, now being tested at six airports and poised for expansion, creates two classes of people at security - those presumed safe who can be sped through, and those who are unknown and get more scrutiny. The "safe" get a highly secure, government-approved biometric ID card that stores images of their fingerprints and irises.
Some of the USA's biggest businesses - Unisys, Lockheed Martin, EDS and Microsoft, for example - have shown interest in Registered Traveler, which could be a gateway to greatly expanded use of biometric identification. Big business envisions spinning off a massive new industry that uses biometric cards to verify the identity of people in all kinds of other contexts - making credit card purchases or doing anything else in which establishing identity is important.
The federal government sees the technology and procedures adopted for Registered Traveler as a way to move people more quickly across borders and into federal buildings, airport tarmacs, pipeline facilities and other secure sites.
"I would hope that eventually a large number of people find their way into a trusted or vetted traveler program," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says.
But a two-tiered security system raises the specter of long lines, heightened official skepticism and more intense scrutiny for people who don't have the biometric IDs.
"It's a way of fundamentally changing our culture by making people suspect if they don't willingly give up their privacy" and apply for a card, says American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "Regular people will become suspect."
Gearing up
The debate is brewing as the Transportation Security Administration prepares to expand its Registered Traveler program to several new airports this year, and corporate powerhouses are lining up to run the marketing, enrollment and biometric card production. The TSA conducts background checks to bar applicants with terrorist ties or criminal warrants.
In May, Microsoft teamed with biometric card maker Saflink to pitch an idea to run Registered Traveler at airports - and use the biometric cards at retail outlets to validate credit card purchases in place of a signature.
"We can use that card for online purchases, retail purchases, access to rail stations," says Saflink CEO Glenn Argenbright. "Let's say you buy tickets through Ticketmaster. Why go to 'will call'? Go to the turnstile, put your finger down and enter."
Argenbright estimates a potential for up to 40 million Registered Travelers - "anyone who travels more than seven times a year." Cardholders will be affluent, creditworthy and "so valuable as a consumer-credit market that you can push retail vendors to install" card readers at cash registers.
But entrepreneurial dreams give nightmares to some aviation officials. They fear that companies will ignore methods of improving airport checkpoints and focus on profits from unrelated services.
Financially struggling airlines were particularly irked by corporate proposals earlier this year to run Registered Traveler, give enrollees perks such as credit cards, airport parking and retail discounts - and charge $80 to $100 a year.
The airlines protested the additional costs to passengers for a program they say is veering away from the initial goal of increasing efficiency at security.
"Private companies are seeking to turn the security program into a for-profit business opportunity," Northwest Airlines Senior Vice President Robert Isom complained at a Capitol Hill hearing in June.
Northwest has been a leading advocate of Registered Traveler as a way to avoid placing trustworthy people in massive airport security lines. But in its present form, the program "offers no benefit to our passengers," Isom testified, "and for that reason, we're very opposed to paying for it, as well as having anyone else establish means by which to extract dollars from our flying customers."
The TSA has faced criticism both for taking too long and doing too little to ease security for Registered Travelers. The program, authorized in November 2001, got rolling last summer when the TSA began testing its technology on 10,000 enrollees at five airports: Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston Logan, Houston's Bush Intercontinental and Reagan National in Washington.
"The program that's being set up is not the program that was envisioned originally," says Christopher Bidwell, security director at the airline trade group Air Transport Association. Registered Travelers go through airport security like everyone else. The only difference is, they are not chosen at random or through profiling for "secondary screening" that includes pat downs.
"What is the participant getting for the money they pay?" Bidwell asks. "They get a card and potentially get injected in the front of the line."
Guidelines to come
TSA acting Deputy Administrator Thomas Blank says the agency will announce next month checkpoint procedures that will be eased for Registered Travelers, who might not have to remove coats and shoes or take laptops out of cases.
Blank told Congress in June that Registered Traveler "has a real security value, because if we can pay less attention to these people, we can do a more thorough job on the people that are not known."
For individual travelers, Blank said, Registered Traveler is saving four to five minutes, according to results from the TSA pilot program at five airports. Security lines are "pretty reasonable," Blank said. "There hasn't been great pressure" to expand Registered Traveler.
But the pressure is increasing with the start of Registered Traveler at Orlando International Airport and TSA's vow to let airports take charge of the program and contractors operate it. Last month, Orlando became the first airport to run its own Registered Traveler program. That's the likely model for the future, and a potential windfall for biometric businesses.
Unlike the program's first five airports, which could sign up only about 2,000 people each with no charge to them, enrollment at Orlando is unlimited. And where the TSA handled the program logistics at the five airports, in Orlando, a contractor markets the program, signs up travelers, makes biometric cards, installs and operates the card readers - and charges $80 a year.
That's a small price to Rob Viveros, a Dallas restaurant executive who eagerly signed up for Registered Traveler in the Orlando airport last month. Viveros stood at a computer typing in personal information for his application, then stood at a kiosk and pressed each finger onto a print reader and gazed into an iris reader to make his biometric card.
Viveros hopes to save time on his regular trips in and out of Orlando, and he has no worries about applying. "It's about the same information as they ask for when you buy something from Sony," he says.
Since enrollment began June 21 in Orlando, 6,500 people have applied. That's nearly 1,000 a week, a rate that makes some see expansion to other airports as inevitable.
"Eventually, it'll be everywhere. I think the concept's just too powerful," says Stephen Van Beek, policy director of the Airports Council International.
The private-sector involvement stirs sharp debate over its potential to shape Registered Traveler's cost, scope and privacy guarantee.
Aviation analyst Robert Mann calls Registered Traveler "inherently a government program." If airports hire private managers, "all you're doing is adding to the cost and creating a profit margin for a third-party firm," Mann says.
The $80 fee in Orlando is supposed to cover costs, including the TSA background check, which Blank estimated at $30 to $50. But TSA doesn't charge for the checks and has no plans to soon, because that would require a lengthy process of writing a regulation, says Justin Oberman, TSA's assistant administrator in charge of Registered Traveler.
Each enrollee benefits the airport under a financial arrangement that longtime aviation-security advocate Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., calls "bad public policy" and "a disastrous model."
Where will funds go?
Orlando's contractor, a start-up founded in 2003 by media maven Steven Brill, is initially giving the airport 29% of the enrollment fees it collects in Orlando. It will give 2.5% of the fees from other airports where it might get hired. If Brill's company, Verified Identity Pass, meets its projection of enrolling 3.3 million Registered Travelers in the next six years, the Orlando airport would collect $11 million.
DeFazio is concerned that the airport profits from the program and that the enrollment fee was set not according to cost but in response to market research.
Oberman, the TSA administrator, is "not concerned" about companies profiting from his agency's background checks. Private business, he says, will be "much more efficient" than the government.
Richard Norton, executive vice president of the non-profit National Biometric Security Project, which supports biometrics for domestic security, agrees. Government is "not good at handling all the sticky little chores of registration, communicating with potential enrollees and taking all their information," he says.
The private sector also can better protect personal privacy, says Jim Harper, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. Private companies, unlike the federal government, can readily be sued for a privacy breach, he says.
Brill, the VIP chief, says records of Registered Travelers going through checkpoints will be kept only at an individual airport and will be purged every 24 to 48 hours. The founder of cable's Court TV and former publisher of The American Lawyer magazine, Brill got interested in starting his latest company in 2002 while writing a regular column for Newsweek about the response to the Sept. 11 attacks. One column promoted a "voluntary nationally accepted identification card," whose holders would breeze through security and "move quickly onto a train or into a terminal or office building." The VIP Web site boasts that the card being sold in Orlando could in the future "also allow access to expedited security at other public places."
Brill says there's not yet a market to expand the Registered Traveler idea beyond aviation. "What you want to do is establish the brand and the concept where there is an obvious market," Brill says, "and that is airports."
And then you can establish total control IE The police state :x
ADVERTISEMENT
But now, the government's small, 13-month-old test program known as Registered Traveler is provoking an intense and increasingly complicated debate about privacy and the proper roles of government and business. The resolution could have far-reaching implications not only for how Americans travel by air, but how they conduct their daily lives and commerce.
Government background checks conducted for the Registered Traveler program, and the biometric ID cards issued to those who enroll, could in the future determine how someone makes a purchase on credit, enters an office building or arena, turns on a cell phone or boards a train.
Frank Fitzsimmons, CEO of iris-scan developer Iridian Technologies, says millions of travelers using biometrics at airport security "will have dramatic effect on their acceptance in other markets" - activation of cash machines, cell phones and computers, for example.
It's a tantalizing prospect for those in Fitzsimmons' business. But not so thrilled are privacy advocates, civil libertarians and even some airline executives who are seeing their modest idea for speeding along their best customers burgeoning into a massive commercial enterprise.
Registered Traveler, now being tested at six airports and poised for expansion, creates two classes of people at security - those presumed safe who can be sped through, and those who are unknown and get more scrutiny. The "safe" get a highly secure, government-approved biometric ID card that stores images of their fingerprints and irises.
Some of the USA's biggest businesses - Unisys, Lockheed Martin, EDS and Microsoft, for example - have shown interest in Registered Traveler, which could be a gateway to greatly expanded use of biometric identification. Big business envisions spinning off a massive new industry that uses biometric cards to verify the identity of people in all kinds of other contexts - making credit card purchases or doing anything else in which establishing identity is important.
The federal government sees the technology and procedures adopted for Registered Traveler as a way to move people more quickly across borders and into federal buildings, airport tarmacs, pipeline facilities and other secure sites.
"I would hope that eventually a large number of people find their way into a trusted or vetted traveler program," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says.
But a two-tiered security system raises the specter of long lines, heightened official skepticism and more intense scrutiny for people who don't have the biometric IDs.
"It's a way of fundamentally changing our culture by making people suspect if they don't willingly give up their privacy" and apply for a card, says American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. "Regular people will become suspect."
Gearing up
The debate is brewing as the Transportation Security Administration prepares to expand its Registered Traveler program to several new airports this year, and corporate powerhouses are lining up to run the marketing, enrollment and biometric card production. The TSA conducts background checks to bar applicants with terrorist ties or criminal warrants.
In May, Microsoft teamed with biometric card maker Saflink to pitch an idea to run Registered Traveler at airports - and use the biometric cards at retail outlets to validate credit card purchases in place of a signature.
"We can use that card for online purchases, retail purchases, access to rail stations," says Saflink CEO Glenn Argenbright. "Let's say you buy tickets through Ticketmaster. Why go to 'will call'? Go to the turnstile, put your finger down and enter."
Argenbright estimates a potential for up to 40 million Registered Travelers - "anyone who travels more than seven times a year." Cardholders will be affluent, creditworthy and "so valuable as a consumer-credit market that you can push retail vendors to install" card readers at cash registers.
But entrepreneurial dreams give nightmares to some aviation officials. They fear that companies will ignore methods of improving airport checkpoints and focus on profits from unrelated services.
Financially struggling airlines were particularly irked by corporate proposals earlier this year to run Registered Traveler, give enrollees perks such as credit cards, airport parking and retail discounts - and charge $80 to $100 a year.
The airlines protested the additional costs to passengers for a program they say is veering away from the initial goal of increasing efficiency at security.
"Private companies are seeking to turn the security program into a for-profit business opportunity," Northwest Airlines Senior Vice President Robert Isom complained at a Capitol Hill hearing in June.
Northwest has been a leading advocate of Registered Traveler as a way to avoid placing trustworthy people in massive airport security lines. But in its present form, the program "offers no benefit to our passengers," Isom testified, "and for that reason, we're very opposed to paying for it, as well as having anyone else establish means by which to extract dollars from our flying customers."
The TSA has faced criticism both for taking too long and doing too little to ease security for Registered Travelers. The program, authorized in November 2001, got rolling last summer when the TSA began testing its technology on 10,000 enrollees at five airports: Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston Logan, Houston's Bush Intercontinental and Reagan National in Washington.
"The program that's being set up is not the program that was envisioned originally," says Christopher Bidwell, security director at the airline trade group Air Transport Association. Registered Travelers go through airport security like everyone else. The only difference is, they are not chosen at random or through profiling for "secondary screening" that includes pat downs.
"What is the participant getting for the money they pay?" Bidwell asks. "They get a card and potentially get injected in the front of the line."
Guidelines to come
TSA acting Deputy Administrator Thomas Blank says the agency will announce next month checkpoint procedures that will be eased for Registered Travelers, who might not have to remove coats and shoes or take laptops out of cases.
Blank told Congress in June that Registered Traveler "has a real security value, because if we can pay less attention to these people, we can do a more thorough job on the people that are not known."
For individual travelers, Blank said, Registered Traveler is saving four to five minutes, according to results from the TSA pilot program at five airports. Security lines are "pretty reasonable," Blank said. "There hasn't been great pressure" to expand Registered Traveler.
But the pressure is increasing with the start of Registered Traveler at Orlando International Airport and TSA's vow to let airports take charge of the program and contractors operate it. Last month, Orlando became the first airport to run its own Registered Traveler program. That's the likely model for the future, and a potential windfall for biometric businesses.
Unlike the program's first five airports, which could sign up only about 2,000 people each with no charge to them, enrollment at Orlando is unlimited. And where the TSA handled the program logistics at the five airports, in Orlando, a contractor markets the program, signs up travelers, makes biometric cards, installs and operates the card readers - and charges $80 a year.
That's a small price to Rob Viveros, a Dallas restaurant executive who eagerly signed up for Registered Traveler in the Orlando airport last month. Viveros stood at a computer typing in personal information for his application, then stood at a kiosk and pressed each finger onto a print reader and gazed into an iris reader to make his biometric card.
Viveros hopes to save time on his regular trips in and out of Orlando, and he has no worries about applying. "It's about the same information as they ask for when you buy something from Sony," he says.
Since enrollment began June 21 in Orlando, 6,500 people have applied. That's nearly 1,000 a week, a rate that makes some see expansion to other airports as inevitable.
"Eventually, it'll be everywhere. I think the concept's just too powerful," says Stephen Van Beek, policy director of the Airports Council International.
The private-sector involvement stirs sharp debate over its potential to shape Registered Traveler's cost, scope and privacy guarantee.
Aviation analyst Robert Mann calls Registered Traveler "inherently a government program." If airports hire private managers, "all you're doing is adding to the cost and creating a profit margin for a third-party firm," Mann says.
The $80 fee in Orlando is supposed to cover costs, including the TSA background check, which Blank estimated at $30 to $50. But TSA doesn't charge for the checks and has no plans to soon, because that would require a lengthy process of writing a regulation, says Justin Oberman, TSA's assistant administrator in charge of Registered Traveler.
Each enrollee benefits the airport under a financial arrangement that longtime aviation-security advocate Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., calls "bad public policy" and "a disastrous model."
Where will funds go?
Orlando's contractor, a start-up founded in 2003 by media maven Steven Brill, is initially giving the airport 29% of the enrollment fees it collects in Orlando. It will give 2.5% of the fees from other airports where it might get hired. If Brill's company, Verified Identity Pass, meets its projection of enrolling 3.3 million Registered Travelers in the next six years, the Orlando airport would collect $11 million.
DeFazio is concerned that the airport profits from the program and that the enrollment fee was set not according to cost but in response to market research.
Oberman, the TSA administrator, is "not concerned" about companies profiting from his agency's background checks. Private business, he says, will be "much more efficient" than the government.
Richard Norton, executive vice president of the non-profit National Biometric Security Project, which supports biometrics for domestic security, agrees. Government is "not good at handling all the sticky little chores of registration, communicating with potential enrollees and taking all their information," he says.
The private sector also can better protect personal privacy, says Jim Harper, an analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington. Private companies, unlike the federal government, can readily be sued for a privacy breach, he says.
Brill, the VIP chief, says records of Registered Travelers going through checkpoints will be kept only at an individual airport and will be purged every 24 to 48 hours. The founder of cable's Court TV and former publisher of The American Lawyer magazine, Brill got interested in starting his latest company in 2002 while writing a regular column for Newsweek about the response to the Sept. 11 attacks. One column promoted a "voluntary nationally accepted identification card," whose holders would breeze through security and "move quickly onto a train or into a terminal or office building." The VIP Web site boasts that the card being sold in Orlando could in the future "also allow access to expedited security at other public places."
Brill says there's not yet a market to expand the Registered Traveler idea beyond aviation. "What you want to do is establish the brand and the concept where there is an obvious market," Brill says, "and that is airports."
And then you can establish total control IE The police state :x