Highlights
– New passenger screening program projected to launch January 2009
– Secure Flight designed to overcome flaws in CAPPS II
– Continued testing and system modifications are key to systems effectiveness
In a Congressional hearing on September 9, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told members of the House Homeland Security subcommittee that it was ready to take over the task of conducting watch list screening of airline passengers from the nations domestic airlines.
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief Kip Hawley testified that the new generation pre-flight screening program entitled Secure Flight, has been tested and is ready to be deployed in January 2009. According to Hawley, the only task left to complete is for the airlines to build the information technology (IT) infrastructure necessary to send the data back and forth between the TSA and the airlines Passenger Names Records (PNR) systems in addition to having the Government Accountability Office (GAO) certify DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff’s certification of the system.
New Program Seeks to Overcome Previous Criticisms
First unveiled in August 2004, Secure Flight was designed to conduct uniform prescreening of passenger information against federal government watch lists for domestic and international flights. Secure Flight replaces the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II), a highly criticized program which used computer algorithms to analyze commercial databases of potential travelers in order to decide if a particular traveler merited a red, yellow, or green terrorism score. Amid several delays over accusations of secret data mining, “Big Brother-like” plans to use commercial data to rate passengers, and general mismanagement, the TSA cancelled the program in June 2004.
Secure Flight, unlike CAPPS II is designed to have airlines submit limited passenger information to TSA’s centrally managed computer systems which screens passengers against the Terrorist Screening Center’s (TSC) watch list database housed at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Currently, the TSA sends “No-Fly” (persons who should be denied boarding) and “Selectee” (persons who should undergo additional screening) lists directly to each of the nations 95 domestic air carriers who are then responsible to screen their passengers against the updated lists.
According to the TSA, Secure Flight will meet one of the 9/11 Commission’s key recommendations for securing the nation’s air transportation infrastructure in the following ways:
• Identify known and suspected terrorists;
• Prevent individuals on the No Fly List from boarding an aircraft;
• Identify individuals on the Selectee List for enhanced screening;
• Facilitate passenger air travel by providing fair, equitable and consistent matching processes across all aircraft operators; and
• Protect individuals privacy
Further, the TSA is attempting to waylay criticism and increase support for the new system which according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center has cost the agency over $140 million. The TSA lists the following benefits once the program becomes operational:
• Eliminating inconsistencies found in current air carrier watch-list matching procedures
• Decreasing the risk of unauthorized disclosure of sensitive watch-list information
• Reducing the number of individuals who are misidentified as being on the No Fly or Selectee lists
• Integrating the redress process so that individuals are less likely to be improperly or unfairly delayed or prohibited from boarding an aircraft.
Secure Flight Launch Experiences Multiple Delays
Despite some recent successes by the TSA to develop a comprehensive, secure, and cost effective passenger screening system, the road to developing Secure Flight has been fraught with many technical, security, and privacy related potholes.
According to a report released by the GAO on September 9, 2008, the Secure Flight program had not met key milestones or finalized its goals, objectives, and requirements, and faced significant development and implementation challenges since being introduced four years ago.
In February 2006, TSA suspended the development of Secure Flight and initiated a reassessment and subsequent correction of the program’s development process, which was completed in January 2007. The decision proved to be positive for the agency when the GAO completed another assessment of the program in February 2008. The report stated that the TSA had made substantial progress in instilling more discipline and rigor into the program’s development and implementation, including preparing key systems development documentation and strengthening privacy protections.
Outlook
While the future outlook for Secure Flight looks brighter than its two predecessors, the TSA will need to continue testing and modifying the system to ensure it is producing the desired results while at the same time controlling the projects repeated delays and ballooning development costs.
The benefits of bringing the watch list screening under the control of the TSA will allow for better monitoring, management, and auditing to ensure the system is as effective as possible while protecting the privacy and rights of airline passengers.