Will You Be a Trusted Traveler?

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WILL YOU BE A TRUSTED TRAVELER? By Laura Quarantiello Tiare
Publications 404 words

Security checkpoints have become a genuine pain for air
travelers. Where once you could breeze right through the x-ray
scanner and head for the boarding gate, now you must endure
careful checks of your carry-on luggage and perhaps even of your
person. It\'s the legacy of September 11th and a necessary step
toward keeping air travelers safe. But the delays are increasing
and passengers are grumbling. Frequent flyers,especially, are
complaining about the slowdown and the hassle caused by long
security lines.

Enter the Trusted Traveler program, the brainchild of an airline
industry committee working on ways to improve airport security.
With Trusted Traveler, anyone who wanted to forgo long airport
security lines would authorize the government to conduct a
background check and take their thumbprint or an iris scan of
their eyes. Once cleared, they would receive an identification
card encrypted with their \biometric ID.\ Airports would have
reserved checkpoints where passengers could present their card,
have their fingerprint or iris scan matched to the card\'s
information, and be passed through to the boarding area. This
type of prescreening would reduce lengthy lines and let frequent
travelers avoid much of the current airport hassle. \From my
perspective, it makes more sense to subject the people I know a
lot about to a lesser degree of security and the people I don\'t
know anything about to a greater degree of security. It just
makes a lot of sense to spend the finite amount of security
resources we have on the folks who are unknown,\ says Dirk C.
McMahon, Northwest Airlines Senior Vice President for Customer
Service.

Experts say that the Trusted Traveler program won\'t appeal to
everyone. Those who fly infrequently won\'t need to go through
the rigorous background checks necessary to be labeled a trusted
traveler, and those with something to hide or those with
concerns about privacy won\'t want the government checking their
bona fides. For frequent travelers, however, the program could
mean valuable minutes saved, hassles avoided, and a smoother
airport experience.

For now the program is just an idea; the Air Transport
Association is working on a proposal for the Transportation
Security Administration and the Homeland Security Department
that it hopes will put a 90-day pilot project at Northwest and
Midwest Express using already-screened airline personnel into
operation by the end of the year. If all goes according to plan,
the Trusted Traveler program could be in place at Northwest by
mid-2003.

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