TSA Asked to Ensure Safety Of Customer Data After Clear Closing

CWmike writes "The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), has given the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) until July 8 to explain how the agency plans to ensure the security of private data collected by a recently shuttered company that offered a registered traveler program. In a letter to the TSA's acting assistant secretary, Thompson expressed his concern over the abrupt closure of Verified Identity Pass (VIP), which offered a service called Clear for a $199 annual fee that helped air travelers get through airport security checks faster by vetting their identities and backgrounds in advance. VIP has left open the possibility that the data could end up being acquired or sold to a third-party, but only if it was going to be used for a registered traveler program."

Comments

Good Idea

[gamanimatron]

Then maybe they can ask the nice wolves down the street to look after our hens while we're on that vacation.

What did their privacy policy say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it matters, I'm sure it had a "we can change this at will without notifying you" clause, like every other one.

Re:What did their privacy policy say?

[TheRaven64]

It doesn't matter. Privacy policies can't violate data protection laws. You do have data protection laws, right? Oh. The USA. Sorry, never mind.

Pay for Security w/o as much Hassle?

[SeaFox]

Is anyone else bothered by the very existence of these companies? "Pay us and we'll get you through the security faster by taking all this personal information and running it through the security checks early, etc."

The hassle is a part of the security program designed by the TSA to keep Americans safer, not create new business opportunities. It seems to me the TSA should be offering the same service to travelers for free. Let people submit the same information beforehand, have all the info run through checks, and stored so folks are less inconvenienced by the "safety measures" they insist on.

Re:Pay for Security w/o as much Hassle?

[SeaFox]

From what I gathered, when you were a Clear customer you went through a separate line than everyone else. So perhaps this has nothing at all to do with security, it was nothing more than a way to legitimize the practice of bribes to get to the front of a long line.

If the service is actually able to reduce airport check-out times as much as former customers claim, and not sacrifice security at all, then all it shows is how inefficient the TSA's system is, and DHS should be revamping to emulate these services, making them unneeded. But if the service really wasn't any faster than "regular" security, and the saved time was nothing more than the fact the line itself wasn't so long, then the TSA doing the same thing would not have the same effect, as with the service now free more people would use it.

Re:Pay for Security w/o as much Hassle?

[mh1997]

The hassle is a part of the security program designed by the TSA to keep Americans safer....

I fly a couple times a week and can assure you that the hassle is not designed to keep you safer. It is for the illusion that "they" are doing "something" and therefore you must be safer. I fly out of 4 different airports on a regular basis and have know when and where lapses are in security.

My destinations are government facilities or military basis where you have to show ID, armed guards etc. Same thing - it is the illusion of security.

To the casual observer or an infrequent flyer, it looks very secure and you can't imagine how to breach security. To the frequent user, you don't need to imagine how to breach security, you can see it.

Re:Pay for Security w/o as much Hassle?

[Ihlosi]

If the card customers are bearing the full cost of the additional lines, is it really a bribe?

No, it's more like a protection racket. You pay and get protected from a possibly lengthy and intrusive search of your person and your stuff.

Re:Registered Terrorist^wTraveller Program

[muckracer]

This story is also IMHO a great example, just why any kind of centralized databases filled with info about people is a BAD idea, regardless of how official and sensible it might seem at first.

Re:Damn it, Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't think technical and legal handling of this sort and size of identifying data by a large entity is important then you shouldn't of been here to begin with.
How different entities around the world, government, private or both, handles personal information is of great interest to many people within the IT industry.
Go back to the hole of irrelevance you crawled out of.

A sad fact

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter what the privacy policy says. Nobody pays attention to those anyways. Nobody cares. Really. Do you see 260 000 people on the barricades because of this? No? If they ever hear about their data being sold, they will be "Uhh. I don't like that." and continue as if nothing had happened.

Except one of them who will raise a lawsuit - not because he or she actually cared about the data that much but because he or she sees that as an easy opportunity to become a multimillionaire.

Re:I am more bothered by the fact we need them

[Quothz]

Throw in the stories about how the TSA cannot profile and then how do we expect to have "security". You get it by profiling.

Hm? The TSA is allowed to profile, as long as they don't base it on race. This isn't insecure in and of itself; Timmy McVeigh, for example, scored pretty high on the caucasometer. The TSA has a lot of problems - a lot of problems - but their injunction against racial profiling isn't one of 'em.