ID Cards for `Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/technology/09PASS.html?todaysheadlines=&pagewanted=print&position=top




April 9, 2002

ID Cards for `Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions

By MATTHEW L. WALD

ASHINGTON, April 8 - The idea seemed simple: figure out who the good guys
are, give them easy-to-recognize and hard-to-counterfeit ID cards and let
them breeze past airport security.

Everybody would win, advocates say. Holders of the "trusted traveler" cards
would save time. Screeners would have fewer bodies to inspect - there were
1.8 billion in 2000, according to the Transportation Department - and could
concentrate on identifying potential terrorists. And passengers would feel
safer.

There is only one problem: It is proving extraordinarily difficult to
figure out who would qualify for a card that would work as advertised.

"What makes a trusted traveler?" asked Richard P. Eastman, who writes
software for airlines and travel agencies. "The guy who travels all the
time; who travels on business; who has a reason to travel. Does that mean
the terrorist can't penetrate that group? Of course he can."

For weeks the new Transportation Security Administration has focused on
more pressing problems, like taking over the screening points, and
officials have equivocated on whether such a card is feasible. Now, though,
with the summer travel season approaching, lines will grow longer if the
normal pattern holds and millions of vacationers flood the airports. That
will take frequent fliers' frustration back up to the boiling point.
Pressures on politicians to do something are rising, and some experts say
the only feasible solution will be some sort of travel card.

Probably the biggest obstacle to creating the airport equivalent of an E-Z
Pass is doubt about its effectiveness. After all, terrorists can be adept
at blending into the society they plan to attack, so who can guarantee they
won't fool the gatekeepers? "The guys who did this exercise on Sept. 11
spent the better part of four years becoming nondescript," Mr. Eastman
pointed out.

The federal government seems to be of two minds. Tom Ridge, director of
homeland security, said the proposed cards would help reduce bottlenecks.
And Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, said his department
was open to some type of trusted-traveler ID card system.

Yet John Magaw, the under secretary of transportation who is the head of
the new Transportation Security Administration, worries that the card might
not be smart enough to thwart hijackers."Terrorists are not in any hurry,"
he said. "For them, the soup of revenge is best served cold."

Even if a risk-free card could be devised, civil libertarians would
probably fight it. The American Civil Liberties Union has ridiculed the
trusted-traveler concept as a "get out of security free" card. These
critics argue that it would be impossible to safeguard the confidential
information travelers would have to divulge about themselves. And they
contend that a smart card would set a dangerous precedent.

"Quickly enough, policy makers are going to say, `If this works, let's
require everyone to go through background checks before they get on a
plane,' " said Barry S. Steinhardt, director of the A.C.L.U.'s program on
science and technology.

The card would be sophisticated but not technically difficult to produce.
At a minimum, experts say, a card should be able to store a fingerprint or
a retina scan and verify to a computer that the holder's finger or eye
matched. The computer should be able to check that the card had not been
revoked. So far, the government has not even been able to devise a card for
flight attendants, pilots or Secret Service agents.

Frequent travelers, however, create a commercial imperative. Though they
are mostly unorganized, they are voting with their feet and abandoning air
travel in droves to avoid the long lines. In a recent survey, fully 60
percent said they had cut back on their flying purely to avoid airport
problems.

Take Steven M. Fetter of Rumson, N.J. He runs his own energy consulting
firm, Regulation UnFettered, and makes frequent flights out of Newark
International Airport to destinations all over the United States and
Europe. Before starting his business, Mr. Fetter, 50, held a variety of
jobs with states and the federal government, including a stint as a senior
official in the Labor Department.

He is an unlikely terrorist, but he gets the same scrutiny as everybody
else at security booths, and has the horror stories to show for it. To beat
a three-hour delay he heard about at the New Orleans airport in October,
for example, he got to the airport two and a half hours early, zipped
through the lines in 20 minutes and had to kill more than two hours.

Mr. Fetter says he would happily give all kinds of information about
himself in return for a traveler's card that could spare him such
frustrations. "Rather than search people like myself, they should focus on
people who want to go nowhere near this card idea," he said.

Mr. Fetter, who is a platinum-class traveler on Continental Airlines
(news/quote), is frightening for the airlines because he is typical. The
dissatisfaction of business travelers is creating alarm at airlines. The
industry is awash in red ink, with losses expected to approach $4 billion
this year. Yet just a few hundred thousand road warriors account for more
than half their revenues. Winning them back is the key to future
profitability.

But the process of setting security rules has changed. When the Federal
Aviation Administration was in charge, the airlines had a sympathetic ear
when they raised commercial concerns. Now security is in the hands of a
separate division of the Transportation Department.

"This is the first test, really, for a new agency," said Senator Ron Wyden,
Democrat of Oregon, who is not known as a friend of the airlines. Congress
set up the Transportation Security Administration to be more independent of
the industries it regulates, he said.

After Sept. 11, relatively few politicians have been willing to
second-guess the agency. Representative John A. Culbertson, Republican of
Texas, came out strongly for a trusted-traveler card but could find only 13
colleagues to sign a letter to Mr. Magaw in January calling for it.

Some consumer advocates are skeptical the card will work. "If they start
letting some people through security, it blows the whole security program,"
said Kathy Lynch, the project manager at the Aviation Consumer Action
Project, a group founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. "Terrorists can get ID's
of any sort."

Ms. Lynch predicted lines would become shorter as new technology and
workers are put in place, and the Transportation Department is already
committed to a goal of waits of no longer than 10 minutes.

But proponents say there must be an easier way than screening people who
the government knows are making routine trips.

"If you start having a behavior pattern that is outside the norm for you,
and inconsistent with your job, then even as a trusted traveler you bear
further looking," said Mr. Eastman, the airline software author.

Something has to happen, the airlines say. "We can't and won't lose focus
on security," said Leo F. Mullin, chairman of Delta Air Lines (news/quote),
in a recent speech here. "But we must simultaneously reduce the hassle
factor. It's possible and necessary to do both."

-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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