Because the government will have access to additional pieces of identifying information, the TSA says it will be better able to distinguish between, for example, a 25-year-old John A. Doe who is OK to fly and a 37-year-old John Z. Doe who is not.
In addition to the data required of passengers, fliers who have had difficulty with watch list confusion can include a "redress" number. Those are issued to cleared passengers who have been stopped or delayed before because of similar names or other confusion.
"By enhancing and streamlining the watch list matching process, the Secure Flight program makes travel safer and easier for millions of Americans," Gale Rossides, the TSA's acting administrator, said in a statement.
The Secure Flight program was born out of a Department of Homeland Security directive issued in 2006 that required the TSA and U.S. Customs and Border
Protection to start working together to implement a system to make sure airline passengers have been cleared.
While the intent is great, I worry what it means for transgender folks. What happens if you are a trans guy with a government ID that says female? Will you be harrassed? Will you be able to board the flight? Why do they need to know one's gender anyways? Date of birth, okay that makes some sense, as the above quote makes clear but gender, really?
During NPR aired some folks' comments about the ne regulations. Some folks commented that gender is a given, that it does not need to be asked. For some of us it is not a given. What will happen when we try to fly?
Good point. I think that the new regulations also make people put their full name as it appears on their government-issued ID. So I think the question not only becomes what happens if people have to pick "M or F" on a form, but what happens if their government-issued ID doesn't have their chosen name on it, or if they live in a state that allows them to change their name but not their gender?
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