Neowin.net

Already, several initiatives are being put into place to protect some 694 million passengers on US commercial airlines. President Bush and the US Congress have agreed to deploy sky marshals once again on commercial passenger flights. Having sky marshals aboard flights is an important step in deterring terrorism, but most of us are not comfortable with the notion of armed marshals firing weapons at 35,000 feet. It's clear that preventing terrorism must start with prevention on the ground.

Recent FAA guidelines for improving luggage and passenger searches and prohibiting any knife from being carried onto a plane are contributing to this effort. What we now need, however, is a better system of identifying who is entering our nation's airports and airplanes. At least two of the September 11 terrorists were on the INS terrorist watch list. With appropriate identification technology and access to these federal databases, the airports could have caught these men before they got to the boarding gate, potentially saving thousands of lives.

Technology solutions exist today, which can significantly improve the ability of airports and airlines to identify known criminals and terrorists and preventing them from accessing areas, whether it's a Boeing 757 or a networked PC, where they can cause harm.

Increasingly, these solutions are making use of biometrics--electronically capturing a face, a finger, a hand, an eye or even a voice--to uniquely identify individuals. For example, some US airports already compare fingerprint images of job candidates against the FBI Integrated Automated Identification System (IAFIS) database, which includes the fingerprints of known criminals and terrorists. The process takes only a couple minutes.

Biometrics technology used alone or in combination with other security practices, such as pass-codes, pin-numbers, and digital certificates, can make it significantly more difficult for criminals and terrorists to slip through the cracks at our nation's airports--or for anyone to gain unauthorised access to restricted areas or computer systems.

News source: ZDnet & IT Daily

But the promise of this technology also raises the question: "At what cost to personal privacy?" Fortunately, many of today's biometric solutions place a priority on maintaining individual privacy. At the same time, these technologies provide the flexibility to engage security measures on an as-needed basis to ensure that security is appropriate to a person's particular role--whether he is an airline employee or a passenger.

Privacy considerations

Governmental regulatory agencies, Congress, and individual airlines and airports developing and implementing any policies that include the use of biometrics-based security must set guidelines on an as-needed basis.

We must make sure that security is tailored to--and appropriate for--different groups of people. For example, a biometric image used to confirm that a passenger is not a criminal or terrorist should be immediately destroyed once the search clears a traveler. Similarly, any biometric images used for ticketing or boarding should be attached to items that remain in the control of the passenger, such as the boarding pass and a frequent flier card. Airport security begins with people who work there, too. By contrast, biometric images for airline or airport employees most likely will need to be stored in those organisations' computer systems.

However, fingerprint technology balances privacy with security for employees in that individuals must make a conscious decision to participate in the scans. They have a choice and they know what is happening--unlike other invasive security systems that use surveillance techniques. This same principle is comparable to airline pilots who must be periodically tested for drug use.

The ability to match either a live-capture of a biometric image or an image on a employee access card to the computer system will be necessary for ensuring that only the right people get access to appropriate areas or information--protecting both the safety and privacy of passengers.

Of course, the effectiveness of technology is determined by the people who implement it and create policies for it. The technology itself has been around for years. The current challenge is to balance security, safety and government regulatory compliance with the privacy rights of individuals.

Through judicious identification and access control policies that balance the need for heightened security with individual privacy, we can significantly raise the barrier against terrorist attacks while preserving the individual freedom and rights for which our country is known.