'No-fly' procedures still plague air travelers

Do you fly much? Have you, or do you know anyone that has been put on a no-fly list?

'No-fly' procedures still plague air travelers
Government overhaul program has funding, privacy and security issues

By Brock N. Meeks
Chief Washington correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 6:42 p.m. ET June 29, 2005


WASHINGTON - Thousands of airline travelers a day are wrongfully identified as being on the government's "no fly" list of known or suspected terrorists due to the failings of the airline industry's pre-screening process, experts told a congressional panel Wednesday. Meanwhile, the government system intended to take over that screening process is so underfunded it might not get off the ground, a government official warned.

The primary reason the airline's procedure for pre-screening passengers is in disarray is because no two airlines handle it in the same way, legal and privacy experts said.

Moreover, because of national security concerns, only a portion of the information on government-controlled no-fly lists is shared with the airlines, Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation told members of a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

Lack of uniformity
And because each airline uses a different technology to look for matches between passengers and names on the list, results vary dramatically from airline to airline, said Rosenzweig, who chairs the Department of Homeland Security's data privacy advisory committee.

On any given day, an average of 35,000 people are stopped at airline gates because their names have appeared on a no-fly list, Rosenzweig said.

The Transportation Security Administration is painfully aware of the current system's shortcomings and has acknowledged them several times since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The agency also has tried to implement several government programs intended to take over the passenger pre-screening task. But so far, each of those programs has failed to get off the ground, each running into a hailstorm of criticism from privacy and security experts.

Privacy, funding concerns
The TSA's Secure Flight program is the latest proposal aimed at overhauling airline passenger screening and it, too, has seen its share of criticism.

"In its current state, Secure Flight fails to make the flying public safer, and it fails to protect our most sensitive information," Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "The program has failed multiple government evaluations, yet it is still being pushed forward. Secure Flight is not ready to be rolled out, and lawmakers must ensure that our privacy is protected."

Justin Oberman, the assistant administrator of the program, said "we are resolute in our commitment to … endeavoring to resolve all of the outstanding issues relating to privacy."

But even if the privacy issues are addressed, Secure Flight is in "serious jeopardy" because House and Senate budget proposals for fiscal year 2006 have trimmed as much as 40 percent from President Bush's proposed budget of $81 million for the program, Oberman said.

Laundry list of problems
For those wrongly identified as being on the government's no-fly list, the process of correcting the error is tedious at best, experts testified Wednesday.

A passenger must prove they aren't the person on the list, which can take minutes or days. When Sen. Edward Kennedy's name appeared on the list, it was obvious it was a mistake and the Massachusetts Democrat was allowed to board his flight. But some passengers can not immediately prove they should not be on the list and are turned away.

And even when someone does manage to "clear" his or her name with one airline it doesn't mean that another air carrier gets the information because there is no centralized "clearance" list that all the airlines can check, said Rosenzweig.

Oberman acknowledged that giving travelers a redress process for clearing their names is a top priority of the Secure Flight program and that the Transportation Security Administration has created a special department to handle this.

Secure Flight also has drawn criticism for combining consumer database information with airline passenger information to further hone its screening capabilities. Privacy advocates say the government can't guarantee the integrity of any such combined databases, noting, for example, recent identify theft cases involving commercial database providers.

But Oberman said that the TSA is only testing the use of consumer data. "No decision has yet been made on whether commercial data will ultimately be used in Secure Flight," he said.

No guarantees
Despite the government's best efforts, a screening system such as Secure Flight is only as good as the data it has to work with, and even then it might not be enough, lawmakers said.

"Would Secure Flight pick up a person with strong community roots but who is in a terrorist sleeper cell, or would a person have to be a known terrorist in order for Secure Flight to pick him up?" asked Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

"We're not in a position today to say that it does, but we think that it's absolutely critical that it's able to do that," Oberman said, "so we are conducting this test of commercially available data to get at that exact issue."

With 1.8 million people traveling by air on some 30,000 flights a day through 450 airports, "that's a very high bar to get over," Oberman said.

"What happens if a terrorist is traveling on stolen identity ?- how can this system pick that person up?" Thompson asked.

"Again, it's a critical threat area that we're worried about and something that we are hopeful that the use of commercial data will be able to address," Oberman said. "Right now, if we take the names of passengers, as they are provided to the carrier, and we compare them to the watch list, we won't generate matches," he said.

Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., noted a Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday that highlights serious flaws in the State Department's maintenance of watch lists that have allowed criminals, illegal aliens and suspected terrorists to obtain passports. "Many people in airports use passports to verify their identity," Dicks said, asking how the Secure Flight program was going to deal with that situation.

"I'm not responsible for the testing or administration of passports," Oberman said. "All I can tell you is we have our hands full trying to get Secure Flight started."

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