Airlines Balk At Proposal on Fingerprinting

Plan Would Extend Policy To Flights Departing U.S.

U.S. air carriers are fighting a federal proposal that would require their workers to digitally scan foreigners' fingerprints at check-in areas before departure on international flights.

Airline representatives, who have spent years trying to streamline airport operations and encourage passengers to use kiosks and print boarding passes on their home computers, worry that collecting fingerprints would create major snarls.

"It creates a choke point in the check-in process," Jim May, president of the Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents the major U.S. airlines, said in an interview.

May and other airline representatives have recently increased their lobbying efforts in the hopes of influencing the eventual shape of the fingerprinting regulation, which the Department of Homeland Security is expected to publish for public comment in the next few months.

Government officials defended the proposal, saying they have carefully weighed their options and believe that relying on airline workers at counters would be the most efficient way to collect the prints. They said airlines already obtain passenger information, including immigration forms, that they pass along to the government. The fingerprint process, they said, might be a more efficient way for carriers to obtain that information.

The measure is part of the department's US-VISIT program, which has been tasked with collecting biometric information from visiting foreigners for several years. The information is meant to help authorities find criminals, potential terrorists and people who illegally overstay their visas.

So far, the government has been collecting only fingerprints from foreigners as they enter the country. The government has scanned more than 90 million sets of fingerprints from foreigners entering through 115 airports, 15 seaports and 154 of 170 land ports, officials said.

Homeland Security has set a goal of collecting the digitally scanned prints of foreigners departing from airports and seaports by the end of 2008. In December, the department backed off plans to develop a system to track foreign visitors departing from land borders, citing costs and technical obstacles.

Collecting the fingerprints and biometric information was endorsed by the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But the initiative has been assailed by privacy rights groups and foreign governments. Critics, including members of Congress, have questioned the program's cost and the length of time it has taken to get it up and running.

The airlines are now vocally questioning the program for operational and economic reasons.

In letters sent this week to Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Susan M. Collins of Maine, the committee's ranking Republican, May complained that federal officials are placing "the airlines in a law enforcement role."

The proposal "completely negates the developments that airlines have made and are continuing to make to gain efficiencies in the check-in process and migrate away from the airport setting," he wrote. "Collection of biometric information is an indisputably governmental function and should be recognized as such."

May wrote a letter last month raising similar concerns to Frances Fragos Townsend, the president's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.

Robert A. Mocny, director of the US-VISIT program, said that the proposal was being tweaked and that officials have been working closely with airline representatives to make it as fair as possible.

After weighing the carriers' objections, Mocny noted, officials have mostly abandoned the idea of having airline workers obtain the fingerprints at airport gates before passengers board flights.

"Frankly, the airlines successfully convinced us to move away from the gates," he said. "It was clogging up their boarding capabilities."

The other two options, he said, were for airlines to collect fingerprints at the check-in counter or for security screeners to obtain them at checkpoints.

Mocny said officials are hesitant to add the fingerprinting responsibility to security screeners because they have "a very specific mission" focused on preventing dangerous people from getting on airplanes.

"At this point, we're saying the check-in area" is the best option, Mocny said, adding that officials would carefully weigh comments from airlines and airports. "We are asking the airlines to partner with us and help us collect this data."