TSA eyes RFID boarding passes to track airline passengers
Privacy groups view the idea as a 'nightmare' for civil liberties
News Story by Bob Brewin
APRIL 01, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - CHICAGO -- The Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) is examining the use of RFID-tagged
airline boarding passes that could allow passenger tracking within
airports, a proposal some privacy advocates called a potentially
"outrageous" violation of civil liberties.
Anthony "Buzz" Cerino, communications security technology lead at the
TSA, said the agency believes the use of boarding passes with radio
frequency identification (RFID) chips could speed up the movement of
passengers who sign on to the agency's "registered traveler" program.
This would permit them to pass through a secure "special lane" during
the boarding process.
Under the registered traveler program, frequent fliers would provide
the TSA with detailed personal information that would be correlated by
a background check. Privacy advocates said they believe the RFID
boarding pass would then serve as an automatic link to the registered
traveler database. Details about how the system might work haven't
been released by the TSA, and Cerino couldn't be reached today for
further comment.
He spoke earlier this week at the RFID Journal Executive Conference
here and said widespread use of RFID boarding passes could enhance
airport security by allowing security personnel to track all
passengers in an airport. The RFID boarding passes would let security
personnel "know people's whereabouts," Cerino said.
Cerino didn't say when or if the TSA would push for introduction of
the RFID boarding passes or how such a project -- likely to require a
massive, networked infrastructure -- would be funded.
The TSA has already started to work on deploying RFID boarding passes
in Africa under the Federal Aviation Administration's Safe Skies for
Africa Initiative, Cerino said. He didn't say which countries would
use the boarding passes or when the project would start. The
initiative identifies Angola, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast,
Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe as member countries.
Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against
Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), a privacy group
that has fought the use of RFID tags by retailers and other
organizations, called the idea a potentially "shocking and outrageous"
violation of civil liberties.
She called the use of RFID to track people a "nightmare scenario" that
uses technology to invade privacy. "Are they going to track how long I
spend in the ladies room?" Albrecht asked, adding that the TSA idea is
"why people are so upset about the technology."
Beth Givens, executive director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights
Clearinghouse, said she views the use of RFID boarding passes as a
"questionable proposal," and wondered whether they would work because
of the "jumble of data" resulting from efforts to track thousands of
passes and passengers in a typical airport.
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