TSA's birthday card list

A new TSA program - Secure Flight - will require more personal info from you. And don’t just tell them you’re, er, 29 - again…

You may have been patted down at airports or suffered the indignity of having your dirty laundry from a vacation searched at screening checkpoints. Now prepare yourself for security to get a little more personal.

Passengers making airline reservations soon will be required to provide their birth date and their sex in addition to their names as part of aviation security enhancements the 9/11 Commission recommended. The information provided at the time seats are booked must exactly match the data on each traveler’s ID.

The new program, called Secure Flight, shifts responsibility for checking passenger names against “watch lists” from the airlines to the Transportation Security Administration. Only passengers who are cleared to fly by the TSA will be given boarding passes. - chicagotribune.com

Secure Flight is set to begin soon (“early this year”) for domestic flights, late this year for international.

From the TSA:

The initial implementation phase of Secure Flight will result in the complete transfer of responsibility for passenger watch list matching to TSA from aircraft operators whose flights operate within the United States. The second phase of Secure Flight will result in the transfer of responsibility for passenger watch list matching to TSA for flights into, out of, and over the United States to TSA.

By assuming watch list matching responsibilities from the airlines, TSA will:

• Decrease the chance for compromised watch list data by limiting its distribution
• Provide earlier identification of potential matches, allowing for expedited notification of law enforcement and threat management
• Provide a fair, equitable, and consistent matching process across all airlines
• Reduce instances of misidentified individuals
• Offer consistent application of an expedited and integrated redress process for misidentified individuals via the Department of Homeland Security’s Travel Redress Inquiry Program (DHS TRIP)

Update on March 11, 2009 by Frank@OBOW

And there are now one million names on the watch list.