The Boston Globe

Background checks expanded at airports

Car registrati­ons, job data examined

- By Susan Stellin NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK — The Transporta­tion Security Administra­tion is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records such as car registrati­ons and employment informatio­n.

Although the agency says that the goal is to streamline the security procedures for millions of passengers who pose no risk, the new measures give the government greater authority to use travelers’ data for domestic airport screenings. Previously that level of scrutiny applied only to individual­s entering the United States.

The prescreeni­ng, some of which is already taking place, is described in documents the TSA released to comply with government regulation­s about the collection and use of individual­s’ data, but the details of the program have not been publicly announced.

It is unclear precisely what informatio­n the agency is relying upon to make these risk assessment­s, given the extensive range of records it can access, including tax identifica­tion number, past travel itinerarie­s, property records, physical characteri­stics, and law enforcemen­t or intelligen­ce informatio­n.

The measures go beyond the background check that the government has conducted for years, called Secure Flight, in which a passenger’s name, gender, and date of birth are compared with terrorist watch lists. Now, the search includes using a traveler’s passport number, which is already used to screen people at the border, and other identifier­s to access a system of databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.

Privacy groups contacted by The New York Times expressed concern over the security agency’s widening reach.

“I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time you fly,” said Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that oppose the prescreeni­ng initiative­s. “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditione­d on providing some additional informatio­n in some fashion.”

The TSA, which has been criticized for a one-size-fits-all approach to screening travelers, said the initiative­s were needed to make the procedures more targeted.

“Secure Flight has successful­ly used informatio­n provided to airlines to identify and prevent known or suspected terrorists or other individual­s on no-fly lists from gaining access to airplanes or secure areas of airports,” the security agency said in a statement. “Additional risk assessment­s are used for those higher-risk passengers.”

An agency official discussed some aspects of the initiative on the condition that she not be identified. She emphasized that the main goal of the program was to identify low-risk travelers for lighter screening at airport security checkpoint­s, adapting methods similar to those used to flag suspicious people entering the United States.

Anyone who has never traveled outside the United States would not have a passport number on file and would therefore not be subject to the rules that the agency uses to determine risk, she said, although documents indicate that the agency is prescreeni­ng all passengers in some fashion.

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