'No-fly' procedures still plague air travelers

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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