For several years now, TSA has contracted with Morpho Detection to operate PreCheck recruitment locations at airports and other locations ............ Those are often not very convenient to get to, and require the applicant to provide a full set of fingerprints. As a result, this program has signed up only about a million people in several years, far below what TSA would like to see.

The idea behind the new effort is to draw on creative new private-sector approaches—thousands of convenient locations, partnering with large employers and worksites, and <b>fully online application.</b>....companies developed and had TSA test pre-screening methods that they say could accomplish the objective of a criminal history background check without requiring a full set of fingerprints. In response to the new RFP, one source tells me that his company's market analysis concludes that if obtaining 10 prints is required from all applicants, that would limit their market to perhaps a million people.