There have been calls to reign in CLEAR at airports after a handful of lapses where people went through security without having their identities checked over the past year.
TSA itself has had tens of thousands of discipline incidents over the years. By comparison they’re far worse and very few question the agency that still makes passengers take out liquids 17 years after a single U.K. plot when Britain itself is moving away from liquids checks (and some parts of the world never started them in the first place).
Yet what CLEAR actually provides to customers (as opposed to how they sell themselves to the government) isn’t greater security through biometrics, it’s an option to skip to the front of screening lines.
- Sometimes PreCheck lines are shorter and you should just go through PreCheck.
- But when those lines or long, or if you don’t have PreCheck, CLEAR is a real time-saver.
- It’s great to have as an option in the arsenal to speed up travel.
CLEAR may have greater employee accountability than TSA – they say they fired the people responsible for last year’s lapses and their managers – but you’re still handing over your biometrics to a company and trusting them to manage those well, just as you’re trusting the federal government when you join PreCheck or Global Entry.
So how well are they managing them? Dusty Moer points out that when you walk away from a CLEAR kiosk, your identifying information may be left up for all to see:
Clear needs to be shut down. They leave passenger personal info on the screen for all to see after use. @garyleff @OneMileataTime pic.twitter.com/05cRImIunc
— Dusty Moer (@dmoer) September 10, 2023
That seems less than optimal! IDEMIA is likely to eat this up. That’s another private company that TSA contracts with to verify identities. The government contracts with a number of private providers, seeking to have them scoop up information on residents (that they likely couldn’t legally collect on their own without particularized suspicion) and then using that information. And governments and airlines partner in collecting data, allowing the airlines to do with that data as they please.
We’ve become complacent about our data, and our biometrics, trading access to it for discounts, for conveniences, or just to avoid confrontations over asking to opt out. And so there it sits, out in the open. The good news is that most of the time this is fine, because collecting information one person at a time is too costly to be valuable (malicious actors need a massive breach to be valuable) and because any one of us are too uninteresting to be paid much attention to.
And what are we even doing this for? There’s more life-years wasted waiting at security. In fact over 19,000 life years, equivalent to 242 full lives have been wasted taking off shoes and putting them back on for the TSA. Richard Reid may have won in the end.
We haven’t seen shoe bombings used against other targets in the U.S. that lack a shoe screening requirement. TSA accidentally filed a security assessment in court documents in 2013 revealing that “as of mid-2011, terrorist threat groups present in the Homeland are not known to be actively plotting against civil aviation targets or airports.” And the TSA found in 2013 that “there have been no attempted domestic hijackings of any kind in the 12 years since 9/11.”
Gov should have stop the sub contractor biz. Ridiculous. Lot of them are incompetent anyway
Passengers refusing to sit quietly while anything bad is happening are the first active defense on board. Hardened flight deck doors are the first passive one. But don’t expect the TSA to voluntarily ease up on anything, governments don’t work that way and the contracts to make more stuff (with “donations” given to Congresspeople by the manufacturers) are too big. It is really how the military and every other big industry works, often below the surface. A little off the topic but I see that the U.S. quietly spent something like $280 million on two huge drone basis in Niger and then were surprised when, rather predictably, the government it backed was kicked out and we have been pressured to leave. With waste like that happening often enough it is easy to spend endless money on security theater and never bat an eye.
So many negative articles about CLEAR I wonder if one of its competitors is planting negative articles and paying so called writers to carry these stories? I never see anything negative written about its competitors. Anyone see a pattern here?
@richard – I have defended clear, and also written about the campaign against them
I’ve had no issues using CLEAR and hope it remains that way until I stop carrying my AmEx Platinum. The potential security issues are something to be concerned, but I’ll trade my privacy for convenience just to not stand in line whenTSA pre-check is backed up. (looking at you SEA)
Same info that is printed on your boarding pass. Nothing to see here.
“And what are we even doing this for?” says it all. Security check by TSA has not evolved into a good and efficient system that would make CLEAR less desirable.
While CLEAR has made mistakes, it appears (and I may be wrong) the mistakes have increased post covid. Perhaps it’s the quality or lack thereof, of their post covid employees. At least having CLEAR gets me to the front of the line and through the idiots and ineptitude of the TSA faster. That said or written, CLEAR has hired their share of the mentality handicapped.
can we all just leave our shoes on?
Private companies exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: to make money. They don’t exist to care about your personal information, except to the extent that caring about it can increase profitability. So go ahead, give your personal information to as many private companies as you like. You are giving them a product more or less for free that they will monetize.
@YULtide Clear says they don’t sell customer data and don’t allow their partners to either, tho?
Clear, and companies like them, sell our data to whomever is willing to pay. I am amazed how many people are willing to sacrifice their privacy.
I wish more people recognized that one’s background neither ensures safety nor predicts risk. Every one of the 9/11 highjackers could qualify for CLEAR if offered back then. Terrorists and rogue regimes can get false ID. Screening for weapons and explosives is what ensures safety.
I am old enough to remember flying domestically without ever showing ID. It worked well for 70 years.
I use my finger print exclusively in their system, and do not have my eyes stored.
In exchange, I can get through virtually any TSA checkpoint at any time in less than 5 minutes.
The convenience far outweighs the “privacy” concern. If you are concerned about your face and destination being visible to others, you probably should wear a ski mask in the airport, and avoid using face-unlock on your phone…