TWA884

Grog

You've lost me here, TWA884...

I'm asking "why must it be indicated on a boarding pass?" The answer to my question isn't allowed to just be "because it must be indicated on the boarding pass".

At time of scanning my passport at the TSA checkpoint, the agent could be informed of ""Global Entry approved and current" and there could still be a ruling of "yea or nay" in applying Pre✓or not. I know how it works (and doesn't work) today. I'm asking why it's designed this way.

chollie

IIRC, a participating carrier sends your information to TSA whenever you book a ticket.

A non-participating carrier does not send TSA your information pre-flight.

Does it make sense?

Well, does it make sense that there are two forms of airport security, Pre and regular?

TSA assures us that all pax are thoroughly and comprehensively screened at the checkpoint. Pre is not a 'lesser' form of security screening. Screeners are apparently able to thoroughly screen bags with laptops and LGAs inside with no problem if the bag belongs to a Pre pax. It has never been explained why this same level of convenient thoroughness can't be practiced in the regular lanes.

Checkpoint screening is a physical process. Regardless of your background - trusted traveler, suspect person - everyone is physically screened and cleared of threats.

So why should there be a difference in the way pax are treating, depending on the airline they are flying? If pax are being assessed based on their status as a frequent flyer with an approved airline, that's ridiculous. I fly multiple airlines. I'm a frequent flyer on some, chopped liver on others. Am I somehow less trustworthy on the days I fly a non-participating airline or an airline where I have no status?

Grog

Unfortunately, that's not it. Even when US Dept of Defense personnel board their own DoD aircraft, the personal data of travelers (names, passport numbers, ID numbers, KTN) is sent to the TSA prior to take-off, hours in advance. (No Fly List is checked)

The TSA does not assure us of this, but that's another matter altogether.

Exactly my questions ^

TWA884

Just because you are enrolled in PreCheck or Global Entry doesn't mean that you're entitled to use the PreCheck line each and every single time that you fly. The airlines electronically share your travel details with the TSA. It is then determined, based upon their algorithms, if you qualify for PreCheck processing for your flight. If you do, it indicated on your boarding pass for a specific date, airport and flight.

Secondly, the GE card can be counterfeited, the barcode on the boarding pass, not so easily.

Grog

I understand that you're outlining the current rituals/routine, but that doesn't bring us anywhere. Again, I don't see the correlation to security (I'm not stupid and yes, I would understand if it were comprehendable). In spite of a long career in the U.S. military as well as follow-on job dealing in personnel security, I'm not able to bend that arc and connect the two dots: current TSA procedurals/infrastructure on one side and security on the other.

The boarding pass is a meaningless document in terms of security measures, in that it's based solely on my own input via keyboard or touchscreen when booking and checking in for a flight. Until I'm face-to-face with a TSA agent at the security post, that boarding pass isn't worth the paper (or phone display) that it's displayed on.

If the GE card can't be trusted for authenticity, why produce it? Can a passport be counterfeited more easily than a boarding pass? Because my passport is the document that I'm presenting to DHS/TSA/CBP when I travel.

From Mike England, TSA’s national spokesman: "The goal [of PreCheck] is to allow people who we know have been vetted to go through security quicker and easier so we can focus on people who have not been vetted."

I'm either high risk or I'm not. I'm not suddenly more of a risk just because I'm about to board a Lufthansa 747 or a Navy C-40 rather than a United 747.

If you're arguing that the TSA should be permitted to hide behind the fact that "it's a secret algorithm" rather than confront potential shortcomings in its programs (and, yes, searching the wrong people too much and too often is a shortcoming), then no scrutiny in the world stands a chance.

phltraveler

The GE card is not an issue of authenticity but whether or not the TSA has felt comfortable to give you Precheck for a given trip. For a lot of people they get it close to 100% of the time with their GE PASS ID entered as the Known Traveler Number, but sometimes they don't (particularly if you have an odd travel pattern, e.g. visits to certain countries sometimes stop pre for a while).

The GE card (or passport, or driver's license, etc.) acts as proof of identity.

The boarding pass barcode is digitally signed by the airline via private key and then the barcode scanners verify (using the public key) that the boarding pass barcode is legitimate and hasn't been tampered with by the airline. This ensures the entire contents of the barcode (which has the first, last, and middle names [if applicable], date of travel, travel from/to cities, frequent flier number, and the designator for Pre).

Having GE has never guaranteed Pre. It will give most people with it Pre an overwhelming majority of the time, but the mechanism of determining whether or not you get it is submitting the ticketing info to the TSA (including the KTN) and that is used as an adjustment factor. The reply from the TSA to the airline on whether or not you get Pre is what matters. Since this is just a number on the boarding pass barcode, it is securely protected by digitally signing the boarding pass to ensure it hasn't been tampered between generation and presentation at the checkpoint.

On a US carrier with digitally signed boarding passes it would be harder to fake the boarding pass with a valid digital signature (you would need the private key that the airline uses to sign the boarding passes) than a passport.

That's the goal but as part of TSA's commitment to random security measures, not guaranteeing anyone gets expedited screening all the time, etc. it's not an 100% guarantee.

Apparently they are not opposed to having foreign carriers on Precheck but they've had trouble convincing them to make the internal changes required for it to work (source):

Without the mechanism to submit the right info (e.g. KTN for GE/NEXUS holders) to the TSA, and to get the response from the TSA & encode it in the boarding pass with a digital signature, it's worthless because IATA BCBP compliant barcodes are based on an open standard. Without the digital signature it would be very easy to modify the 0/1 to a 3 for 3 beeps on the boarding bass barcode for precheck.

Additionally, on verifying the travel documents front, TSA has spent money to assess it and is looking to start deploying it to airports:

TWA884

Let me just add a quote from The TSA Blog:

Grog

I'm starting to follow the money on this subject. It's sounding like "it's all about a barcode" and the industry involved in producing them.

SchmeckFlyer

Using this argument, every single government-issued form of identification is suspect as passports and so forth can be counterfeited, meaning every time a person wishes to travel would require a unique document with a unique barcode be generated. Additionally, if we assume GE cards and passports can be easily counterfeited, the entire security process (including generating barcodes for boarding cards) falls flat on its face as a bedrock of security is being able to verify security, using identity documents (including GE cards).

I also imagine anyone with a printer and some technical expertise could counterfeit a boarding card.

I do now understand that apparently using Pre is subject to approval every single time one boards a flight. Of this I was not aware. I fail to understand why this is the case, and fail to understand why the TSA cannot itself provide authorisation on the spot (if algorithms are used) regardless of airline used.

Grog

I disagree. I strongly believe that anyone and everyone in the chain should hear about issues affecting customers in any industry. Will it help me on the spot? Maybe not, but front-line employees can submit suggestions for improvement up their supervisory chain.

phltraveler

There's no "industry" in barcodes. The IATA makes the barcode format an open standard. Paper boarding passes use a PDF417 format barcode while mobile barcodes can be in the formats of Aztec codes, Datamatrix, or QR Codes. All of these have freeware to read on PCs and mobile phones, and it's trivial to generate them on PCs as well with freeware. This is part of the problem with their security. To counter this, particularly when travelers are subject to expedited screening, they digitally sign them. Using the private key of the issuer (the airline) the boarding pass is signed. Using the public key that corresponds (the TSA puts it into their boarding pass scanners), the TSA can validate that the boarding pass has not been changed since the airline issued it.

Foreign airlines could easily get Precheck by doing three things:
1) Including the Known Traveler Number in their ticketing information so this information is available for TSA Secure Flight Consideration;
2) Creating a mechanism to receive the information on whether or not the traveler is Precheck eligible from the TSA;
3) Digitally signing boarding passes at generation and providing the public key to the TSA so the TSA ID scanners can validate whether a boarding pass has been altered after the TSA.

Ostensibly because foreign carriers primarily operate flights outside of the US, other than Canadian carriers (not a majority but certainly substantial portions go to the US), they have not bothered with this integration effort. There is no one charging the airlines to digitally sign their boarding passes (I could generate a strong private/public keypair on my computer in less than a minute). The barcodes are based on open standards and require no licensing; regardless, over 200 airlines are already making these barcodes, they just need to digitally sign them.

The TSA has offered an $80M deal for technology that will both validate whether or not an ID is counterfeit, whether or not a boarding pass is counterfeit, and a cross compare (automatically) that the two match (e.g. not different names). Some documents from 2014 say they were looking to start testing at airports in late 2015, but I haven't seen it or heard more so I'm sure it was delayed (they started looking to get this technology rolling in 2011).

A concern which was brought up for years (the information printed on the surface is obvious, and the information on what fields and field lengths constitute the boarding pass barcode are entirely open*), and one of the reasons that digital signing of boarding passes started by major US airlines (alterations of the boarding pass would result in the signature not matching, causing rejection by the boarding pass scanner). I don't know if you've ever been in the scenario to see the TSO's side of the Desko Penta scanners they use, but they explicitly state whether or not a digital signature on a boarding pass is valid after they scan it, along with the name and some other information.

Do not attempt to understand the bureaucracy. I've received Pre 100% since receiving GE, but the first time I went to use it in 2013 (printed on boarding pass) I was deferred to the regular line I expressed disappointment to the TSO that it was my first opportunity and he said Go, I'll just defer the next guy )

I have seen several anecdotes on different forums that going to certain locations may trigger either SSSS or just a lack of Pre for a while despite GE/Nexus. Particularly, I've seen a few threads where people say they stopped getting Pre after visiting Turkey. Anecdotal, I know...

seawolf

Not really. Without the airline private key, it is technically infeasible without substantial computing power and time to counterfeit the bar code that would pass the scanner validation.

Often1

+1

It is also the case that when a participating carrier submits a name associated with a TTN for Pre-Check clearance, DHS runs a series of additional checks which are discussed ad nauseam here on FT and at least partially explain why people with TTNs who have recently traveled to various places under various conditions wind up in secondary with "SSSS" or without Pre-Check for a period of time.

It will be interesting to see whether the EU carriers choose to participate in Pre-Check given the privacy issues involved, especially now that UK nationals are GE-eligible (esp. for BA, VS).

phltraveler

What's the privacy concern? Foreign carriers traveling to the US have to submit their crew and passenger information via APIS. For flights originating in the US, they have to collect the full name of the passenger, date of birth, gender, and the redress number (if applicable) The only additional piece of info that would be required would be the known traveler - unless the US were to require that all flights (regardless of whether or not they arrive/depart from the US) be submitted to them in order for their passengers to be Precheck (in which case, that would be a legitimate privacy concern, as DHS/TSA would get information on all flights a passenger had, not just those involving the United States).