statement

BTC APPLAUDS SECURE FLIGHT PROGRESS

DHS responded to industry, customer and privacy groups’ concerns

Radnor, PA., August 10, 2007–The Business Travel Coalition (BTC) today applauded progress made by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in redesigning a program to identify potential airline passengers who are on federal government watch lists. The program, known as Secure Flight, appears to contain remedies to the many concerns raised by BTC and other groups regarding the so-called CAPPS II program as well as the first iteration of Secure Flight.

In 2004 BTC testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Subcommittee on Aviation, on behalf of U.S. corporations as well as the memberships of the Institute of Travel Management, Business Travel Association of Germany and the Guild of Travel Management Companies. Our concerns in 2004 fell into three main categories: (1) transparency and public policy debate regarding program design, (2) potential system cost and effectiveness and (3) due process and privacy protections. (See testimony at http://businesstravelcoalition.com/advocacy/196.html.)

The recent collaborative DHS planning process, opportunity for public comment, careful testing and airline-by-airline implementation through 2008 combine to allay concerns over transparency and public policy debate. Compared with the previous version of Secure Flight, the passenger data required, and consequently, the new data fields needed to capture the data are considerably fewer and should make the cost of the program less expensive for the industry. The recently announced “cleansing” of the watch lists should significantly improve on the effectiveness of the program.

While the redress process for wrongly ensnared travelers appears well thought through, BTC is concerned about foreign executives who are working in the U.S. for extended periods of time. If their names were confused with those on the watch lists, BTC would expect that redress would be equally simple and effective for them.

The Coalition believes privacy concerns are further alleviated by DHS’s plans not to use commercial or law enforcement databases and data mining techniques to assign a “score” for each passenger. Such an expansive effort to predict which Americans were possible terrorists was one of the most offensive components of previously proposed programs. Importantly, making certain useful information such as a traveler’s gender and birth date voluntary is a major step in the right direction.

BTC Chairman Kevin Mitchell stated, “In sum, this program should now reduce, to a material degree, the percentage of passengers who will be required to be secondarily screened. Improving overall security lane throughput is a benefit Secure Flight will now share with the Registered Traveler program. Breaking up security bottlenecks and quickly moving passengers into the secure side of airports is a critical aviation system security goal. In anticipation of filing comments with DHS on its revised Secure Flight program, BTC looks forward to examining the plans carefully and learning from the analyses of leading privacy groups and other interested parties.”