Are TSA screenings about to get tougher?

by Janice Hough on March 18, 2009

Most travelers these days have a love-hate relationship with Transportation Security Administration. Yes, they seem to be keeping us safe. But the often arbitrary rules and inconsistent screening times and processes can be frustrating — especially when standing in line watching your flight departure time get closer and closer.

And it could be about to get worse. Sometime in the near future, although the date has not been released, travelers will be required to give not only their full names when booking tickets, but also their birth date and gender. This information will be transferred to TSA, who will take over responsibility from the airlines against watch lists.

The program, Secure Flight, will start with domestic flights and be expanded to international flights by year’s end.

Supposedly the name given must match exactly. If not, the passenger will not be given a boarding pass. Besides all the people who go by common nicknames, “Tom” for Thomas, “Kathy” for Katherine, etc., most people don’t generally use their middle names.

So this could be an interesting issue. Will TSA decide first and last names are sufficient? If not, travelers will have to get used to giving full names when booking flights and will have to redo their names with all their frequent flier accounts.

Moreover, if someone enters a wrong birthdate, even with a transposed digit, or makes the common error of entering the date in the European style with day of the month first, what happens?

TSA says the new system will actually make the system smoother, as requiring exact matches should reduce the number of passengers accidentally put on the “no-fly” list. They say the information will be held for no more than seven days.

Secure Flight has already received criticism from the ACLU and others over privacy issues, and there are worries about costs, both to airlines and travel agents in collecting the data. But what about the simple question, does adding more data to an already imperfect system make the system better, or just provide more room for errors?

Sounds like we’re about to find out.

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Tagged as: ACLU, no-fly lists, Secure Flight, TSA, watch lists

  • Don J

    The added information is a step in the right direction. Formal identification should have full name. Full first, middle, and last name, along with date (DOB) and place of birth (POB), supplemented with gender would be better. POB, combined with the other data, is the one that would really winnow down the false positives. For international travel, where a passport number is required, the POB becomes known as that is on the passport. That’s the good news.

    Some provision needs to be made in the system for individuals who have only a first initial or middle initial — it stands for nothing, it is just an letter — and for those who have neither middle name nor middle initial.

    Then, of course, there are folks with hypenated surnames……..

    None of this is worth two cents if the underlying documentation the person presented when getting all the official documents (driver’s license, passport, Green Card, etc.) have not been thoroughly verified.

    Total securitiy = Total immobility

  • Steve Surjaputra

    I just heard on the radio that TSA is redoing the Random Gate Checks now. In other words, even if you are at the gate, TSA will have an agent at the gate to pull people off the boarding line to check your carryons.

  • Jennifer (the other one)

    On the plus side, this should reduce the number of five-year-old ‘terrorists’ and senators barred from flying because they have the same names as IRA members…

    Sad, sad world we live in.

  • Bela Fleck

    I was also wondering about those folks who have multiple middle names. Which one do you provide? I’m sure there won’t be room in automated systems to give all of them? I knew a girl in high school who had four middle names. What a nightmare for her if she travels a lot these days.

  • TerryO

    I live in an area where multiple middle names are common. Being very aware that the pax name–as it appears on the passport–is required, I comply when booking flights/cruises. Apparently, many of the airline providers don’t have the capability of including a “space” between words. As a result, Mrs Mary Sue Louise Joan Jane Smytherly-Brownstone prints out as:
    “SMYTHERLY-BROWNS, Marysuelouisejoa Mrs” on the ‘E-ticket’
    It doesn’t resemble the Passport very much, but, that’s the way the “system” does it. So far, most of the bookings I’ve made accept the hyphen. For now.

    It’s one thing to have a requirement. It would be nice if the ‘requirement maker’ checked to see if all the systems were compliant (or able to be compliant) first.

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