The Transportation Security Administration is getting ready to take over responsibility from the airlines for checking passengers’ names against terrorist watch lists, and is advising travelers to start booking airline tickets using their full name as it appears on their driver’s license or passport.
Later this summer, the agency will also begin requiring airlines to ask passengers for their birth date and gender during the ticketing process, information the carriers will then transfer to the T.S.A. The goal is to help make the watch list matching process more accurate.
But it turns out that what’s in a name is more complicated than many reservation systems are currently prepared to handle. So the airlines are telling passengers not to worry if there is no place to enter a middle name when purchasing a ticket, or no field for a date of birth.
While the T.S.A. has announced Aug. 15 as a target date for the airlines to begin asking for each passenger’s full name, gender and date of birth, and has already begun publicizing the program, called Secure Flight, the agency acknowledged that it would go into effect in phases as the airlines update their systems.
“What we’re trying to do is make the public aware that these changes are coming,” said Paul Leyh, the agency’s director for Secure Flight. “If your name is Jonathan Smith and you travel as John Smith and your license says Johnny Smith — get all those things aligned.”
The government’s aim is to streamline the process of checking travelers’ names against its watch lists — a task currently handled separately by each airline — and to collect more detailed information so passengers with names similar to those on the watch list are less likely to be mistakenly detained.
Asking for a birth date, for instance, decreases the likelihood that a child with a name close to one on the list would be subject to an additional search — one example of a false match that has led to complaints.
As part of the Secure Flight program, travelers who have gotten caught up in some type of name problem and go through the process to get their identity cleared will be assigned a “redress number” that they can then enter when booking a flight.
This number, along with the other passenger information, will be sent to the T.S.A., which will check it against terrorist watch lists and tell the airline whether the traveler is cleared to get a boarding pass, should be subject to an additional search or is not allowed to fly.
“Secure Flight is going to allow us to clear over 99 percent of passengers,” Mr. Leyh said.
For travelers who are cleared, the T.S.A. will keep passenger information on file for seven days. For those who are a potential match, it will be kept for seven years and for confirmed matches, it will be stored for 99 years.
Concerns about data storage and privacy were among the issues that held up the transfer of name-matching duties from the airlines to the government, which was mandated by Congress in 2004.
While many of those objections have been addressed by narrowing the scope of the information collected, there are still concerns about the quality of the watch list data.
“To be precise, we support the fact that the government is now trying to make its matches more accurate,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has been advocating for stronger privacy protections since Secure Flight’s inception.
“The problem with Secure Flight is that there’s still not adequate transparency or redress for people who are placed on the list,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “As we know from the latest report from the inspector general, the list is riddled with errors.”
The change will probably also create frustrations for people who go by different names and have to standardize the name listed on their passport, driver’s license and possibly frequent-flier accounts.
“I’ve got Francis on my passport but I’ve always gone by Frank — my state I.D. and all of my frequent-flier accounts are Frank,” said Frank Ritchotte, who handles logistics for an audio and visual equipment manufacturer and flies about 150,000 miles a year.
“Now I have to go back and change everything to Francis, which is going to be a pain,” he said.
Complicating matters, he said, “I’m a ‘Jr.’ as well. None of my documentation says ‘Jr.’ except my passport.”
Mr. Ritchotte said he heard about the coming change through his company’s travel department, but felt the information released by the T.S.A. so far had been confusing.
“There hasn’t been a clear message about what you have to do and exactly when you have to do it,” he said. “It’s another thing that’s a hassle.”
Among the concerns raised by fliers are names with hyphens, foreign characters, spaces or just initials and people who have two middle names or have not fully adopted a married name.
“Nicknames are going to be one of the bigger issues,” conceded Paul Flanigan, a spokesman for Southwest, which aims to start collecting the Secure Flight data in October.
Currently, many airlines do not offer a place to supply a middle name when booking online, but for now, the message seems to be: If we don’t ask for it, you don’t have to tell us.
“We’re telling customers, do business with us as you’ve always done,” said Kent Landers, a Delta spokesman. “When the systems are ready to accept the data, we’ll advise passengers.”
NYT
