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.

Re:Good Idea

[Ihlosi]

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

They're probably going to outsource that job to their fox buddies and go looking for lucrative sheep-watching contracts.

Re:Good Idea

[ethan0]

I couldn't even finish the headline before I was laughing out loud, I only got as far as TSA Asked to Ensure Safety and I was gone.

Steaming Pile of Shit

[Frosty Piss]

$199 x 260,000 customers = $51,740,000.

This company shut down for "financial" reasons. Like they took the money and ran?

I'm not surprised, the TSA and its money grubbing sycophantic associates are a steaming pile of shit.

All this company does is do background checks and issue a plastic card, and they can't do it for 51 million gross?

Typical government contractor type boondoggle (strictly speaking, they were not a contractor).

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?

[Kijori]

Rather brilliantly, by having this card you didn't reduce the security checks at the airport - you just got to skip to the front of the queue. This does mean that security wasn't compromised in the slightest - but it also raises the question of why the company kept doing expensive background checks that served no purpose since the card didn't get you through security!

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?

[Hubbell]

The best part is that the clusterfuck known as TSA security in an airport has done nothing to increase the safety of fliers. The only thing it has done is violated the rights of thousands of Americans, and so far only Steven Bierfeldt from the campaign for liberty has had the balls to stand up to them.

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

[TheRaven64]

I fly a couple times a week and can assure you that the hassle is not designed to keep you safer.

Actually, it is. Various studies have shown that people under stress are likely to panic when they are hassled or surprised, and make mistakes. If you are about to blow up a plane, you are under a lot of stress and the kind of thing that is slightly irritating for the rest of us is a major psychological problem.

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

[mcgrew]

The USAF used to be pretty good a security (but I'm talking early '70s here). Once when I was on light duty because of an injury, they loaned me to the SPs (USAF equivalent to MPs) to test flightline security. They held my security badge and had me try to get in the cockpit of a C5-A holding a cardboard box. It was actually skewed in my favor, because my job was normally on the flightline hauling AGE equipment.

I did actually get in once, I think somebody got in trouble over that. After the test the flightline people were a lot more observant.

Registered Terrorist^wTraveller Program

[BlackSabbath]

According to the Computerworld article:

"They had your social security information, credit information, where you lived, employment history, fingerprint information," said Clear customer David Maynor, who is chief technical officer with Errata Security in Atlanta. "They should be the only ones who have access to that information."

and

"Other providers, who may now be interested in purchasing Clear's assets, include Flo and Preferred Traveler. "

Given the capability by companies to effectively hide their interested principals through convoluted international structures I wonder how hard it would be for a front-company to buy this info on behalf of criminal organisations, terrorist groups or other nation states.

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.

I am more bothered by the fact we need them

[Shivetya]

and that the TSA cannot do this BY NOW.

Let alone the whole fact that the TSA is yet another example of government sanctioned Political Connectedness run amok. My mom finally had a flight; she flies a few times a years; where she didn't get stopped. What makes her stand out? Oh, I dunno, but age sixty plus white women with small dogs are apparently a threat to US security. They don't even seem to notice her bag with needles for her insulin, or the pump attached to her. Yeah, last time she traveled she didn't have the dog.

Throw in the stories about how the TSA cannot profile and then how do we expect to have "security". You get it by profiling. Sorry, but when the next plane gets 'jacked all that political connectedness will have done what? Gotten more people killed.

Besides, the next method will be to shoot one down that is taking off. That will make 9/11's flight scares look benign.

So now we need private companies because the efficiency of a union staffed government agency is below par. What part of DUH don't people understand. Yet so many here want to turn over their health care to these same goons who can't even get you to your plane on time. Where is the proper sense of priorities here?

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.

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.