The Transportation Security Administration is taking another step back from its one-size-fits-all security screening that requires all airline passengers to remove their belts, shoes and coats at checkpoints.
The agency already makes some exceptions, including allowing some frequent travelers who have passed background checks to move more quickly through security — an E-ZPass, of sorts, called PreCheck for passengers traveling in the United States.
Now, the agency is testing a new behavior detection program where officers use on-the-spot observations and conversations with passengers to select some for the quicker pass through the checkpoint.
The program, which the T.S.A. calls “managed inclusion,” is being tested at airports in Indianapolis and Tampa, Fla. If the tests are successful, the agency plans to expand the program to more airports this year.
The idea is to selectively identify certain passengers who appear to pose no threat and invite them to use special lanes dedicated to the PreCheck program that the agency began in October 2011.
For several years, the T.S.A. has been looking for alternative screening methods to address public dissatisfaction with the current system. But one of those methods, behavior science, has its own critics, who warn of the potential for racial and ethnic profiling. Some critics also question whether the T.S.A. gives adequate training to its behavior detection officers. The officers had been receiving only four days of training, though the agency said recently it was expanding the program to provide “additional specialized training.”
One reason for the expanded program, the agency’s administrator, John S. Pistole, said, is to “make sure that the T.S.A. PreCheck lanes are being fully utilized” throughout the day, rather than just at peak hours. In a year-end report to employees, Mr. Pistole cited as an example what occurred at the Indianapolis airport on the day before Thanksgiving. Nearly a third of all passengers were chosen to go through a dedicated PreCheck lane, rather than the usual less than 5 percent, he said.
David Castelveter, a T.S.A. spokesman, explained how managed inclusion would work if the test phase was deemed successful. “As you are in the queue, behavior detection officers will be observing you, and if they feel that there is nothing that alarms them, you might be asked to come out of the queue, and invited to go through the PreCheck lane,” he said. Behavior detection officers, some with explosive-sniffing dogs, already routinely survey checkpoint lines.
Given the random nature of managed inclusion, there are no guarantees that anyone waiting in a regular checkpoint line will be invited to use one of the exclusive PreCheck lanes. “From time to time you might be pulled out of the line” and invited to use PreCheck, Mr. Castelveter said. Those passengers are able to keep their shoes on and their laptops in their cases, though they still have to go through metal detectors or body-imaging machines at the checkpoints. Their carry-ons are also still put through magnetometers.
It seems to me that the managed inclusion initiative is notable because it is based on the on-site judgment of behavior detection officers, rather than on the background checks that the PreCheck program requires.
Behavior detection officers use techniques familiar in some overseas airports, engaging passengers in casual conversation to look for suspicious behavioral clues.
But the Government Accountability Office has raised questions about the technique. In a 2010 report evaluating the T.S.A. behavior detection program, the G.A.O. cited a National Academy of Sciences study that said “a scientific consensus did not exist on whether behavioral detection principles could reliably be used for counterterrorism purposes.” The T.S.A. disputed that, saying the study did not specifically address airport security, and adding that it was conducting its own detailed research.
PreCheck, which is now at 35 airports in the United States, is still limited in scope. The T.S.A. said PreCheck was used five million times last year. It is open to high-frequency travelers selected by the five major airlines that so far participate — Delta, United, American, US Airways and Alaska. The T.S.A. is working with other domestic airlines to increase participation.
Once they are cleared in background checks, those invited passengers are eligible for boarding passes encoded to allow them to use PreCheck lanes. But randomness is deliberately built into PreCheck, so eligible passengers have no guarantee that they will be allowed to use a PreCheck lane on any given trip.
In addition to the high-frequency passengers selected by airlines, members of the Global Entry program of the Customs and Border Protection agency also are eligible for PreCheck. Global Entry costs $100 for five years and requires a background check and a personal interview. It provides expedited entry via an automated kiosk for airline passengers arriving from overseas, usually allowing them to avoid long lines at Customs and immigration.
I recently got a Global Entry card. The whole process, including the online questionnaire and the subsequent personal interview and fingerprinting at a Customs office, was easy to navigate. Enrollment information is at www.Globalentry.gov.
Managed inclusion, incidentally, is only one of several initiatives that Mr. Pistole has been proposing for this year to expand the population of so-called trusted travelers eligible for less intense checkpoint security. Security experts say that the more frequently people travel, the more “trusted” they become, since their travel patterns are easily determined. Of the roughly 640 million passengers who pass through T.S.A. checkpoints in a year, as many as 40 percent are frequent travelers, “the same people time and time again,” Mr. Pistole said.
Another possible initiative is what Mr. Pistole calls “Global Entry Light.” Details have not yet been worked out, but the basic idea is to adopt some aspects of the international traveler Global Entry program for domestic use by the T.S.A. At a lower enrollment fee, and perhaps with participation by private companies, Global Entry Light would offer expedited screening to qualifying domestic travelers who don’t also travel enough internationally to need the regular Global Entry.
That would be another part of the T.S.A.’s increasing effort this year to “move away from the one-size-fits-all construct” in airport screening and greatly expand the population of so-called trusted travelers eligible for PreCheck, Mr. Pistole said.
On the Road: T.S.A. Experiments With Behavior Screening
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On the Road: T.S.A. Experiments With Behavior Screening
