Paul Leyh, TSA Director Secure Flight Program, claimed that all U.S. airlines will be enrolled in Secure Flight within a month and that all foreign carriers will be working in the program by the end of 2010.
Speaking at U.S. Travel Association’s Pow Wow conference to encourage foreign tourism, Leyh noted that TSA is about to complete their mission of taking back the watchlist matching. This is part of maintaining control of the actual list for security and of relieving the airlines of the responsibility of performing the matches prior to allowing passengers to board.
Leyh claimed that in most cases names submitted by airlines to TSA can now be cleared in as little as four seconds so that boarding passes can be immediately issued.
Leyh explained how the Secure Flight program works. Information about passengers scheduled to fly is passed to TSA by the airlines as early as 72 hours prior to the flight. This allows TSA what Leyh calls a proactive approach to stopping “bad guys” as he calls them. In reality, the response is not proactive, however, TSA does have additional time to react to any “hits” to the No Fly list.
The system sounds simple, however, there were significant IT hurdles to be overcome. Expanded data field requirements for online travel agents such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline were more complex than originally thought. The new data collection by brick and mortar travel agents meant internal profile systems to accommodate the storage of this very valuable and confidential information had to be developed to guarantee accuracy. Even the Department of Defense travel booking processes had to be modified.
Leyh also explained the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) redress system, DHS TRIP (Department of Homeland Security’s Travel Redress Inquiry Program), that has been put into place for passengers who have names similar to known terrorists.
Foreign journalists attending the press conference asked whether there is a judicial process to use should the normal DHS TRIP process not result in having your name cleared. Leyh didn’t have an answer for that question.
He noted that privacy issues have been carefully detailed to prevent the government from collecting and keeping information submitted by passengers. TSA keeps names of normal screened-and-cleared passengers in their system for only seven days. They keep names that come up as a potential match for seven years and names of positive terrorist matches are kept for 99 years.
Leyh didn’t have an answer about privacy issues regarding the GDS, airline reservation systems or travel agents who are allowed to keep all passenger information indefinitely and who fall under no privacy legislation. However, that is a battle to be fought another time. The information managed by TSA is kept under strong scrutiny by GAO.
At the end of Paul Leyh’s presentation, I asked, “We are aware of failures with the Secure Flight program with the Christmas Day bomber and the Times Square bomber, can you tell us of any successes? Have we captured any terrorists?”
His answer, basically, “The failures were out of our control — one was overseas and the other with an airline not yet in the system.” He continued, “About our successes, we have a long list of successes, but we can’t talk about them.”
“Yes, trust me, we have lots of successes.”
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
