Wingman: Let's Get Smart About Smart Cards

Its time to use "smart cards" for airline passengers.  The need is obvious: Security lines are causing huge inconvenience and frustration, prompting many –including the airlines best customers – to think hard about travel alternatives.  In recent surveys, nearly one-third of business travelers say the airport hassle has made them less likely to fly.  Nearly anything that can save time and hassle for business travelers is likely to mean more revenue for airlines.

Smart cards aren’t really new or revolutionary.  Variations of “biometric” I.D. cards are already used by the U.S. military, other government agencies and some corporations.  They work by having personal information about the card holder stored on a magnetic strip or computer chip.  At security checkpoints, the person submits to at least one biometric measurement – usually a scan of his iris, face, hand or fingerprint – which is compared to an image of the same person that is stored in a database or on the card itself.

The cards could be used to more rapidly screen the holders – who have already been subjected to a far more thorough security check than could ever reasonably be done in a crowded airport  – and allow security personnel to pay more attention to “unknown” passengers.  Card holders might still be subject to bag scanning, like everybody else, but should be able to avoid special “pat downs” and hand searches for fingernail clippers.

This view has some high-level supporters.  Homeland Security director Tom Ridge has indicated that he doesn’t believe it is a wise use of resources to subject everybody to the same level of security, and believes it is important to both improve security and cut down waiting times at the nation's airports.

Security experts, such as Richard Gritta, a professor of transportation and finance at University of Portland, says I.D. inspections using these cards could be widespread within a few years, and will become "second nature" for anyone passing through an airport.

Wingman agrees with the experts who say that smart cards could quickly gain traction – especially with frequent fliers.  Some proponents say smart cards would save frequent fliers so much time that airlines could actually charge a fee for issuing them.  After all, as the saying goes, time is money.

Smart cards have critics, however.  One is Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who says that “trusted-traveler'' programs would require intrusive background checks, and “encourage security personnel to put their guard down and encourage people to obtain phony documents or (for terrorists) to obtain them by laying low for a while.''

For the ACLU there is even a deeper philosophical animus about smart cards.  "This is a backdoor national ID," Steinhardt has said. "This so-called trusted-passenger card will become essentially mandatory for everyone to use not only on airlines but also buses, trains and perhaps drives over bridges and tunnels.  The consequences of not having a trusted-passenger card is that you will be immediately suspect."

The ACLU has also complained that smart cards won’t be foolproof, and that biometrics could misidentify some innocent people as criminals while allowing other suspected or convicted criminals slip through security checks.

Harvey Burstein, a former FBI agent and security consultant and now the David B. Schulman professor of Security at Northeastern University in Boston, said human error would remain a factor even after the installation of smart card biometric devices.  "The thing that concerns me with biometrics or anything else is whether the people who are supposed to use the equipment use it properly," Burstein said.

Even high-level government officials have expressed misgivings about them.  Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta recently said he worried that “sleeper cells'' of terrorists could get travel cards.  John Magaw, the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), has said the same thing.  Reflecting concerns about smart cards, the TSA, in mid-February, scrapped a five-airline plan for expedited security screening lines in more than a dozen cities for frequent fliers and first class passengers.  The TSA said it wanted uniformity and consistency in the screening process, as its reason.

It is likely that not all biometric technology is equal.  The makers of iris scanning technology say it is fool-proof, and claim fingerprint and facial scans cannot offer the same accuracy.  Non-iris biometric companies will surely make strong cases for their technology and try to show how any present weakness will be fixed.  Wingman believes, however, that once we are reasonably confident about a technologies efficacy, we should then move on to implementation.  And if we find a better technology in the future, we move to that.  Its costing too much to delay.

There are legitimate questions about how smart cards would be used of course: Who would conduct background checks?  What kind of personal information would be gathered?  How would privacy be protected?  And can the required equipment be designed to essentially work without constant human monitoring or involvement?

Smart Cards may not be perfect, but compared to what?  The DOT’s Inspector General Kenneth Mead recently reported that – even after the attention given to airport security after September 11, human screeners at airports missed knives 70 percent of the time, guns 30 percent of the time and simulated explosives 60 percent of the time.

Airports Are Experimenting With Smart Card Technology

Airlines and industry trade associations have launched a number of high-profile security experiments in recent months, and many are adding secondary security checks such as card readers and biometric devices.

One such trial began last November at London's Heathrow, where Virgin Atlantic and British Airways frequent fliers on trans-Atlantic flights agreed to have scans of their irises kept in a database as part of Heathrow's "Simplifying Passenger Travel" program.  Washington's Dulles hopes to launch a similar program in upcoming months, and New York’s JFK is considering it.

In another experiment, Amsterdam's Schiphol has a project, called Privium, that also uses smart cards with iris recognition technology.  At Schiphol a pre-qualified passenger inserts his iris scan card into a machine at a security check point and looks into a scanner where the information is compared.  Where even the quickest of fast-track passport and visa controls now take up to 30 minutes, it only takes about 10 seconds with the new card, according to a Schiphol spokesperson.

Two-Factor Security

Proponents of smart cards are not saying they would be used exclusively as the only line of security defense.  Instead they would be used as part of a "two-factor security," approach.  In such a scheme, smart cards would be used in combination with normal baggage screening and EDS (explosive detection systems) as the second factor.  If other systems, such as CAPPS (computer assisted passenger prescreening system) are maintained and improved, that makes for another layer of protection.

Government Working On It

Meanwhile a task force at the DOT is working on plans for a national transportation-worker identity card intended as a first step toward what it calls "trusted-traveler" card for airline passengers.  The DOT started this action as a response to a part of last year’s Aviation and Transportation Security Act that authorized the new TSA "establish requirements to implement trusted passenger programs and use available technologies to expedite the security screening of passengers."

Wingman hopes the TSA moves with measured dispatch on this issue.  So much depends on it – not only for security reasons, but for the health of the airline industry.  Aviation security has to be balanced against the public’s need to travel with some reasonable level of convenience and economy.

Implementing smart cards isn’t a panacea for all that needs to be done during these extraordinary times; but it is an important – and relatively easy first step.  04-08-2002.

Click here to become a registered Flt Tech Online subscriber and receive headlines delivered to your e-mail each week

Click here to go back to the headlines