US Department of Homeland Security to take over watch-list vetting from airlines

From January 2009, the United States Department of Homeland Security will take over responsibility for checking airline passenger names against government watch-lists.

Under the new programme, named Secure Flight, passengers will have to, for the first time, provide their full name, date of birth and gender as a condition for boarding commercial flights.

The new rule, to be put into effect in phases in 2009, will apply to 2 million daily passengers aboard all domestic flights and international flights to, from or over the United States.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), commonly known in the United States as Homeland Security, is a Cabinet department of the United Statees federal government with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the country from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters.

According to the officials of the DHS, the additional personal information, which will be given to airlines to forward to the federal agency in charge, “will dramatically cut down on cases of mistaken identity, in which people with names similar to those on watch lists are wrongly barred or delayed from flights.”

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief Kip Hawley told reporters: “By transferring the screening duty from the airlines to the federal government, the Secure Flight programme marks the Bush Administration’s long-delayed fulfillment of a top aviation security priority after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Except in rare situations, passengers who do not provide the additional information will not be given boarding passes. If you don’t provide the data, then you are going to put yourself in a position where you are probably going to be a selectee subject at a minimum to greater future security scrutiny.”

“The Secure Flight will increase security and efficiency, it will protect passengers’ privacy, and it will reduce the number of false-positive misidentifications,” they added.

According to data available with the DHS, over the years, watch-list mismatches have frustrated numerous passengers whose names are similar to those on the agency’s no-fly list, or on a second list of ‘selectees’ identified for added questioning. And, the list of ‘suspect’ passengers have included infants and toddlers, Senator Edward M Kennedy (Democrat-Massachusetts), and Catherine Stevens, the wife of Senator Ted Stevens (Republican -Alaska), whose name is similar to Cat Stevens, the former name of the watch-listed, Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam.

Often, details about why certain passengers are stopped are not usually given to the affected passengers, who are often subject to long delays and sharp questioning.

According to an official of the Transportation Security Administration, the DHS has received over 43,500 requests for redress since February 2007 and has settled 24,000 of them, with the rest still being reviewed or awaiting more documentation.

However, the TSA official added that “the number of people who actually match the names on the watch lists is minuscule” and that “on an average, DHS screeners discover a person who is actually on the no-fly list about once a month, usually overseas, and actual selectees daily.”

Apparently to strengthen their case for the Secure Flight programme, US officials have, for the first time, revealed that the no-fly list includes fewer than 2,500 individuals and the selectee list has fewer than 16,000 persons.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters that 10% of those named on the no-fly list and fewer than half on the selectee list are US citizens. “By taking over watch-list vetting from the airline industry, the government will consistently apply the most up-to-date list information and more sophisticated computer programmes to catch name variations, and will avoid the risk of giving sensitive data to foreign air carriers,” Chertoff stressed.

“The Department of Homeland Security,” Chertoff said, “estimates that adding identity details will allow 99% of passengers to avoid delays – all but 2,000 passengers a day.”

However, many details of the Secure Flight programme – which cost $200 million, took five years to develop and will cost an estimated $80 million a year to operate – still remain unclear.