As much as travelers value cheap traveloptions such as cheapairplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages, theyvalue travel safety even more.
The new chief of the Transportation Security Administration(TSA) is determined to improve his agencys 96 percent weapons detection failurerate experienced during recent undercover testing. He wants all airport screeners to beretrained within two months to be able to better detect explosives and spot weapons. Enrolling more passengers in the agencysexpedited security checkpoint program is yet another high priority goal of thenew transportation boss.
Experts can see a future where travelers will be able touse fingerprints or other biometric identifiers (such as eye balls) instead ofpaper or electronic boarding passes.
TSA believes that it can train out current failures inidentifying threats at airport security checkpoints. The goal is to have this training completedby the end of September.
After this training is finished attention will be focusedon larger systemic issues that resulted in these failures and might lead toother problems in the future. TSA wantsto increase the use of explosive detection dogs for passenger screening.
The new TSA Chief also wants to meaningfully expandpassenger participation in its Pre-check program that provides travelers fiveyears of expedited travel through security checkpoints in exchange for sharingselect personal information, being fingerprinted, and paying an $85 fee.
Since the highest priority is being placed on moving towarda fully vetted and known population in the Pre-check program, the TSA isphasing out the agencys existing risk based managed inclusion program, whichin the past has given certain passengers access to the expedited security laneeven though they have not gone through the full Pre-check background check.
The new TSA Chief believes the agency should embracebiometrics (individual characteristics such as fingerprints or facialcharacteristics) for personal identification. This may ultimately result in each passenger becoming his or her ownboarding pass.
Airport security experts are generally pleased the TSAadministrator is so interested in biometric technology which many believe willultimately make air travel an easier experience.
Although biometrics will make some parts of the airportexperience smoother, it is not yet today a foolproof way to identifypassengers. First the TSA needs tocreate a known database with hundreds of millions of passengers from which tocompare.
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