I’ve written here before about the Clear card, which allows people to prove their membership in the Transportation Security Administration’s Registered Traveler program without telling TSA who they are. I disapprove of Registered Traveler, but if it’s going to exist, the Clear card system’s restrictiveness with users’ identities is a key anti-surveillance feature.
Today, the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection is holding a hearing entitled “Managing Risk and Increasing Efficiency: An Examination of the Implementation of the Registered Traveler Program.”
Steven Brill, the Chairman and CEO of Clear, is one of the witnesses, and he has some choice criticisms of TSA.
The anti-surveillance feature in Clear? Undone by incoherent TSA dictates:
Beginning last fall, TSA suddenly required that RT members using the RT line show a picture ID and their RT card right before entering the line. These are the same RT cards that, when put into the RT kiosk, will use the traveler’s fingerprint or iris scan to biometrically match the user to the data embedded in the card. That’s right, RT members are the only travelers who must present TWO forms of identification.
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