Fortress America

The question of whether a traveler is able to board an airplane may soon be less a matter of available seats, ticket prices or weather conditions and rest more on government consent.

That does not sit well with privacy advocates, many of whom are sounding alarms over the alphabet soup of federal programs introduced since 9/11 to thwart terrorism in the skies and better secure U.S. borders.

To cite just one example, new rules set to go into effect this year require that the name of all passengers buying airline tickets be run through a database to determine if they should be allowed to fly.

Currently, airlines are responsible for vetting passenger names against the government's watch lists when flights are booked. Then Transportation Security Administration officers check to ensure that the name on the boarding pass matches the name on the ID presented at the airport security checkpoint.

But the new program, as proposed, will use a tool known as the Terrorist Screening Database, or the TSDB, to vet passengers. The database is generated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Terrorist Screening Center, an entity created by President Bush under a Homeland Security presidential directive.

The FBI describes the TSDB as a "one-stop shopping" program in which "every government screener is using the same terrorist watch list, whether it is an airport screener, an embassy official issuing visas overseas or a state or local law enforcement officer on the street."

The Department of Homeland Security has made the TSDB a key aspect of a program called Secure Flight, one of 20 layers of security designed to operate in concert much "like numbers in a combination lock," in the words of Kip Hawley, head of the TSA, the agency that will be responsible for Secure Flight.

If, for example, a terrorist were to crack the combination for one security layer, Hawley said, he or she conceivably would be tripped up attempting to circumvent another of the remaining 19 layers in order to board an airplane (see list at right).

From U.S. land borders and seaports, where 1.1 million passengers and pedestrians are processed each day, to the airports that serve nearly 2 million people daily, the U.S. government is steadily putting in place an array of security programs to better protect U.S. borders by filtering the people and cargo that cross them.

The programs go by different names and have different functions, such as US-VISIT, an entry/exit program that monitors the arrival and departure of foreign travelers; the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which aims to reduce the documents that may be use for entering or re-entering the U.S. by emphasizing the use of passports; and Electronic Travel Authorization, which will receive advance information on an arriving visitors' travel itineraries and other information.

The overriding objective is to reduce the likelihood of another 9/11-style terrorist attack. Indeed, today's emphasis on security is in stark contrast to the days before Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 al-Qaida terrorists stunned the world by hijacking commercial jetliners to attack the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center. A fourth plane, hijacked for an attack on the White House, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania as passengers apparently tried to overtake the hijackers.

The 9/11 Commission, which convened three years later to investigate the attacks and the events that contributed to them, noted in its 567-page report that on Sept. 10, 2001, and on all of the days, weeks and years leading up to that time, "border security -- encompassing travel, entry and immigration -- was not seen as a national security matter."

The report went on to make numerous recommendations for improving security. Congress and the White House have since enacted legislation based on the recommendations. And in the years since the attacks, border security has increasingly become a national priority.

"Since 9/11, our nation has put in place critical tools that have strengthened our ability to identify terrorist threats to our homeland, dismantle terrorist cells, disrupt terrorist plots and prevent terrorists from crossing our borders or assuming false identities to carry out attacks," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security on the sixth anniversary of 9/11. 

Chertoff said DHS efforts included myriad initiatives in addition to aviation security, such as establishing secure identification, preventing illegal entry across U.S. borders and protecting against dangerous cargo entering the U.S.

"The objective for these initiatives is to try to keep the bad guys out," said Todd Stewart, director of the program for International and Homeland Security at Ohio State University. "But the challenge -- and this is a tough issue -- is how do you keep the bad guys out while welcoming those people who want to come across our borders?"

The Bush administration took a step toward answering that question in January 2006, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chertoff unveiled an initiative called "Secure Borders, Open Doors." The initiative was designed to encourage travel, which generates billions of dollars in revenue each year while continuing to shore up security.

Still, a survey of inbound visitors released later in 2006 and conducted on behalf of the travel industry found that many were more fearful of U.S. customs officials than they were of a terrorist attack.

"We are putting up all of these real or perceived walls and barriers, and people get frustrated about whether they can get through the process," said Richard Webster, senior vice president of government affairs for the Travel Industry Association. In the end, he said, U.S. policies dissuade many potential travelers from traveling, particularly by air. 

The TIA and most major travel trade groups generally support government efforts to bolster border security, even as they continue to express concerns that the Bush administration may be rushing to put post-9/11 security measures in place before it is ready to execute them.

The WHTI is often cited as a case in point.

Last summer, thousands of Americans were unable to proceed with planned excursions out of the U.S. due to the State Department's inability to accommodate an unprecedented spike in demand for passports generated by the WHTI. The law, which went into effect in January 2007, requires all airline passengers entering the U.S. from Canada, Bermuda, Mexico or the Caribbean (except for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) to carry valid passports.

The State Department and the DHS, which are responsible for enforcing the WHTI, had planned to extend the passport rule to U.S. land crossings and seaports this summer. But Congress, worried that State and the DHS were moving too quickly, passed legislation that essentially put the land/seaport portion on hold until June 2009.

"Certainly everyone in the industry wants to be part of a secure nation," said Steve Richer, the Washington-based public affairs advocate for the National Tour Association. "However, there are a lot of related issues that don't seem to be directly part of maintaining security, such as slow processing of visa applications, to the point that people decide not to come because of the difficulty in gaining access to the U.S. at various border points of entry."

The travel industry, Richer said, "is looking for a more expeditious type of government security operation."

CONTINUED...