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PURPOSE

BACKGROUND

WITNESSES

The purpose of this hearing is to examine the need for, and improvements to, airline passenger profiling.

Since enactment of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November 19, 2001, the Subcommittee has held two oversight hearings on the law’s implementation. The first, on December 7, 2001 looked at the difficulties in meeting the December 31, 2002 deadline for screening all checked baggage with explosive detection equipment. The second hearing, on January 23, 2002 focused on the 60-day deadline for screening checked baggage by other approved means.

Some security experts have suggested that focusing on baggage is not the best approach. Rather, they suggest the focus should be on the person. This usually means profiling to try to determine in advance which passengers pose the greatest risk.

Passenger profiling is not new to aviation. For example, Sam Husseini, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was quoted in the January 2, 1998 New York Times as stating that profiling has been going on for 20 years, administered by individual airline employees. He suggested that a more objective system might be preferable, as it would tend to eliminate the biases of an individual.

Also, because of the limitations of existing bomb detection technology, aviation security experts have sought to use profiling to reduce the number of passengers to be screened. This would allow airport security to focus on those passengers who are most likely to pose a threat.

In 1994, Northwest Airlines began to develop a computer-assisted passenger pre-screening system (CAPPS). This automated screening system was designed to separate out that small percentage of passengers who should be subject to additional security measures.

After the TWA flight 800 crash in July 1996 and the initial suspicions that a bomb was involved, interest in passenger profiling generally, and CAPPS in particular, increased. Recommendation 3.19 of the Gore Commission recommended that automated passenger profiling be used to complement existing bomb detection technology. Also, section 307 of the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-264, 110 Stat. 3253) directed FAA to assist airlines in developing a computer-assisted passenger profiling system in conjunction with other security measures and technologies. Since 1998, CAPPS has been widely employed by the airlines.

Concerns were raised at that time about this passenger profiling system. The American Civil Liberties Union and Arab-American groups, among others, expressed concern that CAPPS could discriminate by using factors such as the passenger’s race, religion, or national origin. The Subcommittee held a hearing on this issue on May 14, 1998.

The factors the airlines use are a secret. But airlines insist race, religion and national origin are not factors. Published reports indicate that the factors include frequency of travel to certain destinations, whether the passenger is a member of the airline’s frequent flyer program, and whether the ticket was bought with cash or a credit card. The latter two are factors because it was assumed that terrorists would not participate in a program or use methods of payment that would reveal aspects of their identity.

Previously, passengers who fit the profile might never know that they had been selected. Their baggage might be examined by an explosive detection device or matched with them to ensure that they actually boarded the flight. More recently, however, passengers who are selected by CAPPS may be subject to additional security at the gate before boarding the aircraft.

Due to the concerns that had been raised about the potential for discrimination, DOT and the Gore Commission asked the Justice Department to review the CAPPS profiling system. Justice issued its report on October 1, 1997. It included the following findings -

CAPPS does not include race, religion, or national origin as a screening factor;

• Neither the Constitution or any Federal law prohibits the implementation of the CAPPS system; and
• To a limited degree, CAPPS distinguishes between passengers on the basis of whether or not they are American citizens but that this is justified and constitutional.

Justice did make the following recommendations --

• The FAA should periodically review the screening factors in CAPPS to ensure that they are reasonable predictors of risk;
• Justice should undertake a post-implementation review within one year to ensure that passengers are not singled out on the basis of race, religion, or national origin;
• DOT and FAA should undertake efforts to inform the public about the profiling system;
• Airlines should be prohibited from altering CAPPS without government approval; and
• FAA should require airlines to establish procedures for implementing CAPPS to ensure that it is not done in a discriminatory or insensitive manner.

Concerns about discriminatory profiling persist. However, since September 11th, attention has shifted to the effectiveness of the profiling system currently in use. It is unclear whether the current profiling system selected the terrorists who hijacked the planes on September 11th. Moreover, many people note that the type of person who is often selected for additional screening, Congressmen, elderly women, disabled passengers, and children, are not the sort of person who is most likely to pose a terrorist threat. They suggest that any profiling system should focus on those who are more likely to pose a threat.

It has been reported that Federal aviation authorities will soon begin testing a system designed to pull together every passenger’s travel history, living arrangements, and other personal and demographic information. The plan is to establish a computer network linking every reservation system in the U.S. to private and government databases. The computer network would use data-mining and predictive software to profile passengers and look for potential threats.