On Thursday evening the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the federalization of airport
baggage screeners by a vote of 218-214 and then passed the administration-backed bill allowing private sector baggage
screeners by a vote of 286-139. The bill now goes to conference with the Senate
With 2.2 million fewer passengers flying in the last week of October than one year ago, Congress was visibly agitated
about the effect on the economy of unanswered doubts about air travel safety. A contraction in the economy of 0.4
percent in the third quarter on an annualized basis was less than economists had predicted and raised hopes that
the downturn would be short-lived.
It was also reveled that an amendment slipped into the counter terrorism bill passed and signed into law last week
contained a provision giving permission for the Justice Department to require foreign visitors to carry fraud and
tamper resistant biometric identification cards. The requirement would also be extended to the 29 nations that
participate in visa-waiver programs with the United States. One passenger safety program that is now in place is
the Capps profiling system.
Capps stands for Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. It is a passenger profiling program that has
been run by the FAA over the past four years. It is designed to legally avoid the liability of violating the politically
correct issues of selecting suspect passengers using race or ethnicity by employing an expanded computer matrix
to select possible high-risk passengers.
Before 9/11, Capps was used solely to make sure that certain passenger luggage was X-rayed for explosives without
their knowledge. Since 9/11, users of Capps have shifted their emphasis beyond baggage to passenger screening.
The revamped airline-passenger profiling system is classified but there are some details of which passengers should
be aware.
Shared Watch Lists. For the first time in its history, the FBI is willing to share its suspect watch lists
and give airlines using Capps access to its list of suspected terrorists. The agency, renowned for its territorial
imperative, feared that if unauthorized persons leaked the list, terrorists would assume new identities. Whether
the current cooperative mood can overcome entrenched FBI culture is still problematic.
In the spirit of homeland defense, the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service are also
suddenly willing to share their watch lists with airlines. To date, these sharing programs have not been implemented
but are supposedly "on the way." One impediment is that the international version of Capps, called APIS,
is used cooperatively by 98 foreign airlines but not those of the Middle East. Lead by Saudi Arabia, the Middle
Eastern flag carriers refuse to share passenger manifests with the APIS pool.
Specific Targeting. A risk profile uses a computer matrix to evaluate whether or not there is a reasonable
basis to devote focused attention on a particular individual. It makes a selection by the weight of a combination
of indicators. Such a procedure can pass constitutional muster. Patterns that can point to terrorism are collected
from the way flyer's book and buy their tickets. Included in the mix are both the countries of origin of the passenger
and the country of origin of the flight. Names, addresses and how and when passengers paid are part of the data-collection
process. Input continues with data on how the passenger is dressed, the travel history and even purchases made
at airport shops. For example, two of the 9/11 hijackers booked their flights over the Internet with a credit card
but picked the tickets up from a travel agency and paid cash.
The European and Israeli systems are much more sophisticated and may serve as the model for improvements. Fed by
data from Interpol, their systems assign a risk profile to each passenger. Factors even include whether or not
the passenger has donated to a suspect charitable organization. Both systems look for the purchase of one-way tickets,
paying in cash, traveling alone, purchasing tickets for passengers with different last names on the same credit
card and purchasing tickets with the same credit card in more than one transaction.
Manual Screening. Manual screening subjects certain passengers to a series of personal searches and questioning.
The recent Gore Commission recommended to the FAA the industry-wide application of a system developed by Northwest
Airlines. For reasons of political correctness, the method has been limited to screening checked baggage only and
not to selecting candidates for interviews. That will now change.
By contrast, the European model considers "the bomber as dangerous as the bomb." Screeners wearing wireless
communications armbands are stationed throughout the terminal, a suspicious passenger's name and boarding pass
number are flashed on the armband and the suspect is pulled aside for questioning.
High Tech Advances. Certain security software is in place or about to be put in place throughout the travel
system. Airlines are not willing to comment but the features are broadly known.
The first system recognizes multiple English spellings of Muslim, Middle Eastern and Arabic names and determines
whether or not an individual has traveled previously with an airline under a slightly different spelling of the
same name or similar-sounding aliases. A second system updates the watch list twice a day and immediately crosschecks
the list against recent reservations, notifying both the FBI and the airlines when it finds a match. By adding
Customs and INS data to the data, it will be possible to highlight suspects while they are still overseas and haven't
yet entered the United States or catch them upon arrival.
On international flights, the U.S. may soon bring itself into conformity with identification requirements put in
place in other countries. These entry and check in requirements include fingerprint, iris scans, video face and
even voice recognition. The issue no one wants to address at home is that the borders of the USA are so extensive
and so porous that unless Canadian and Mexican international airports and seaports are screening as strictly as
we do, we will accomplish little.
For the moment, the idea of a compulsory national identity card is dead in the water. Civil liberty objections
prevail. However, several back door attempts are still on the table. Legislation is being offered that would require
mandatory ID with fingerprints for non-citizens entering the U.S. from elsewhere. The current law only gives the
Justice Department the option to initiate a foreign ID system. A voluntary air traveler's ID that would hasten
check in procedures for the bearer have been proposed. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators
is designing recommendations for inter-connective, standardized state driver's license systems.
The airline safety bill headed for conference committee would allow pilots to carry guns if they want to and are
properly trained. It would mandate stronger cockpit doors, permanent transponders, screening of all checked baggage
and the deployment of more air marshals. It would also extend liability protection and limit lawsuits from the
highjack attacks. What provisions will remain after the conference committee is still not clear. Both versions
of the bill assess a service fee to passengers to pay for the federally-supervised inspectors.
