Leave it to the politicians to create a problem and then try to make themselves into heroes by proposing a solution (which, of course, never eliminates the problem, and always has a "gotcha"). Here the problem is an unusable security system which has been foisted upon us by our good friends in Congress, with widespread public support. The proposed "trusted traveler" solution not only fails to take care of the problem - countless millions who are just as trustworthy as anyone else will still be subject to an unusable system for not being card-carrying Friends of Big Brother - but will cause our collective privacy to be eroded that much more in the process. Of course, one could argue that the magnitude of the erosion wouldn't be that great, because every passenger already gets a pre-flight background check courtesy of CAPPS...

I hang my head in sadness at the prospect of applying for government authorization to travel without hindrance in my own country (and to think my schoolteachers used to tell me this was one of the things that made the Soviet Union a Bad Place to Live). Like other posters on this thread I have zero trust that the government would limit the program to its original intended purpose. (When has that ever happened?) Forget the "trusted traveler" program - a smoke-and-mirrors answer to smoke-and-mirrors "security." Make the system usable like it was before and everyone benefits.