LESS PRIVACY

But that convenience has come at a cost: privacy.

On its application and in brief interviews, Precheck asks people about basic information like work history and where the have lived, and the give a ngerprint and agree to a criminal-records check. Privacy advo ates are particularly concerned about ideas that TS has

ted to also examine social media postings (the agency’s top cial says that has been dropped), media reports about people, location data and information fr data brokers, including ho applicants spend their money.

“It’s far fr clear that that has an relationship to aviation security,” says Ja Stanley, a privac expert at the American Ci il Liberties Union.

More than 10 million people ha enrolled in Precheck. TS nts to a se that to 25 million.

The goal is to let TS cers spend more time on passengers considered to be a bigger risk. As the country marks the 20th anni rsary of the attacks, the TSA’S work to expand Precheck unfolding in a

privac advo ates worry could put people’s information at more or risk.

At the direction of Congress, the TS will expand the use of private vendors to gather information fr Precheck ap licants. c currentl uses a compan called Idemia and plans by the end of the year to add two more: Telos Identit Management Solutions and Clear Secure Inc.

Clear, which recentl went public, plans to use Precheck enrollment to boost membership in its own identity-ver ation product by bundling the two fferings. That will make Clear’s own product more valuable to its customers, which include sports stadiums and concert promoters.

“The are r really trying to increase their market share by collecting quite a lot of very sensitive data on as man people as the an get their hands on. That strikes a lot of alarm bells for me,” says India Mckinney, director of federal a airs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for digital rights.

TS Administrator David Pekoske, though, sees Clear’s strategy as helping TSA. Says Pekoske: “We ha allowed the vendors to bundle their

fferings together with the idea that would be an incentive for people to sign up for the trusted-t aveler programs.”

The TS is testing the use of kiosks equipped with facial-recognition technology to check photo IDS and boarding passes ather than having an cer do it. Critics sa facial-recognition technology makes errors, especiall on people of color.

TS cials told privac advoc ates a ier this year that those kiosks will also pull phot taken when the traveler applied for PreCheck, Mckinne ays. That concerns her because it would mean connecting g the kiosks to the internet — TS ays that much u is true — and potentiall exposing the information to hackers.

“The are totall focusing on the convenience factor,” Mckinne says, “and the are not focusing on the privac and securit factors.”