Here is where I have to side with TSA critics. This is nothing more than ambulance-chasing, and someone has certainly figured out a way to cash in.
This card merely exempts someone from the selectee passenger screening policy. In other words, for $79.95, you can guarantee that you will never get the dreaded SSSS on your boarding passes as long as you pass a background investigation.
As posted previously on many occasions, I think the SSSS system is completely wrong. Everyone and their carry-on property is already screened at the checkpoint. Selectively screening some more than others does not add to the security and it tends to imply that the basic screening is not effective. We either do it right or we don't. TSA needs to drop the selectee passenger screening policy.
It is wrong to expect people to pay for a background check to prove that they are not terrorists. The burden of proof should always remain on the government's shoulders. And this is exactly what we have here: laying down money to prove one's innocence. At $79.95 a head, I have very little confidence in the thoroughness of the type of background check it would buy since I have plenty of first-hand experiences with one of the most thorough background checks conducted by DoD: the special background investigation. SBIs are extremely thorough, and you would need something like it in order to declare someone as beyond suspicion for something like this. It's not something that can be done for $79.95. I think mine cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $15,000 in 1979 dollars; safe to assume it would be much more today.
Here's the catch: in the end, all it does is exempt someone from being pre-selected for secondary screening; it does not exempt people from screening. You still have to go through the WTMD, you still have to submit your property through the x-ray and, yes, you still have to remove your shoes if they meet the screening criteria.
Instead of giving in to snake-oil schemes, TSA should drop the selectee passenger screening policy.