Transportation Security Administration's Office of Intelligence:
Responses to Posthearing Questions Regarding Secure Flight
(04-AUG-06, GAO-06-1051R).
This letter responds to Congress's request for additional
information related to Congress's June 14, 2006, hearing on the
progress and challenges of the Transportation Security
Administration's (TSA) Office of Intelligence. As discussed in
the statement at the hearing, for over 3 years, TSA has faced
numerous challenges in developing a federal passenger
prescreening program, known currently as Secure Flight, because
TSA did not follow a disciplined life cycle development approach.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-06-1051R
ACCNO: A58079
TITLE: Transportation Security Administration's Office of
Intelligence: Responses to Posthearing Questions Regarding Secure
Flight
DATE: 08/04/2006
SUBJECT: Accountability
Data collection
Homeland security
Passenger screening
Passenger screening systems
Requirements definition
Program management
TSA Secure Flight Program
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GAO-06-1051R
August 4, 2006
The Honorable Rob Simmons
Chairman
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information
Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment
Committee on Homeland Security
House of Representatives
Subject: Transportation Security Administration's Office of Intelligence:
Responses to Posthearing Questions Regarding Secure Flight
Dear Mr. Chairman:
This letter responds to your request for additional information related to
the subcommittee's June 14, 2006, hearing on the progress and challenges
of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) Office of
Intelligence. Enclosed are our responses to the supplemental questions you
submitted for the record. Our responses are based largely on information
contained in our report entitled Aviation Security: Secure Flight
Development and Testing Under Way, but Risks Should Be Managed as System
Is Further Developed (GAO-05-356, March 28, 2005), and our testimonies
entitled Aviation Security: Significant Management Challenges May
Adversely Affect Implementation of the Transportation Security
Administration's Secure Flight Program (GAO-06-374T, February 9, 2006),
and Aviation Security: Management Challenges Remain for the Transportation
Security Administration's Secure Flight Program (GAO-06-864T, June 14,
2006).
As discussed in my statement at the hearing, for over 3 years, TSA has
faced numerous challenges in developing a federal passenger precreeening
program, known currently as Secure Flight, because TSA did not follow a
disciplined life cycle development approach. Although TSA made some
progress, it suspended the program's development earlier this year to
reassess program direction, and it anticipates completing the reassessment
by the end of September 2006. Whatever direction Secure Flight takes, TSA
needs to follow a disciplined system development approach that fully
defines system requirements, schedule, and costs; coordinate with critical
stakeholders; ensure system effectiveness through assessing name-matching
technologies and policies to match passenger and terrorist watch list
data; conduct stress and end-to-end testing that verifies that the entire
system functions as intended; and establish privacy protocols and access
to a redress process.
If you have any further questions or would like to discuss any of the
issues in more detail, I can be reached at (202) 512-3404 or
berrickc@gao.gov .
Sincerely yours,
Cathleen A. Berrick
Director
Homeland Security and Justice Issues
Enclosure-1
Response to Supplemental Questions
for the
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing,
and Terrorism Risk Assessment,
Committee on Homeland Security,
House of Representatives
Hearing on
The Transportation Security Administration's
Office of Intelligence: Progress and Challenges
June 14, 2006
1. Ms. Berrick, what benefits will Secure Flight provide, once
developed, over the current passenger prescreening process managed
by air carriers?
Answer:
Until the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) completes
its Secure Flight rebaselining efforts1 and decisions are made
regarding the future direction of the program, the specific goals
or benefits expected from Secure Flight over the current air
carrier prescreening are uncertain. However, TSA officials have
stated in the past that Secure Flight would
o transfer the passenger name-matching process from
the air carriers to the federal government,
o provide a uniform and consistent prescreening
name-matching process by using the same name-matching
technology,
o utilize more exhaustive watch list information
than is currently provided to the air carriers, and
o maintain a tighter control over sensitive security
terrorist watch list information by eliminating the
need to distribute it outside of the federal
government.
As we stated in our February 2006 testimony, over the last 3 years
TSA has faced a number of challenges in developing and
implementing Secure Flight to ensure the program operates
effectively. Key factors that could influence the effectiveness of
Secure Flight remain to be finalized or resolved. More
specifically, we stated that the program's effectiveness would be
dependent on TSA:
o assessing name-matching technologies that would be
used to vet passenger names against names in the
Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) to learn more
about how these technologies would perform in an
operational environment,
o performing stress testing to determine the
system's capabilities to handle peak data loads to
identify the relative volume of passengers who can be
identified as potential matches against the database,
and
o undertaking a comprehensive end-to-end testing to
verify that the entire system would function as
intended.
2. Ms. Berrick, your February 2006 Senate testimony made clear
that the success of Secure Flight depends a great deal on the
accuracy and completeness of records contained within the
Terrorist Screening Center's "master" terrorist watch list-the
Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). As you know, the Department
of Justice Inspector General found significant problems with the
accuracy and completeness of the TSDB last June. To your
knowledge, what progress has the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC)
made in this area, and what is TSA doing to help ensure the
accuracy of name matches against the TSDB?
Answer:
In June 2005, the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector
General reported that TSC could not ensure the completeness and
accuracy of the data in the TSDB. Since that time, TSC officials
stated that they have established processes to help ensure that
the records within the TSDB, which may be required for Secure
Flight, are as accurate and complete as possible. These processes
include
o conducting a record-by-record review that should
improve the quality of the TSDB records,
o updating procedures for daily review of each new
or modified record, and
o using automated rules to check the completeness of
records received from other agencies.
As of June 2006, this record-by-record review was still ongoing.
In addition, GAO currently has ongoing reviews of screening
agencies' use of TSDB data that will provide additional
information on TSC efforts to improve the quality of its records
and how these efforts could possibly affect the end users of these
data.
3. In your view, Ms Berrick, how central is TSA's Office of
Intelligence to the success of the Secure Flight program, and why?
Answer:
Currently, TSA's Office of Intelligence serves as a liaison
between the intelligence community and the air carriers who use
the terrorist watch list information in their prescreening of
passengers. Specifically, the Office of Intelligence receives
watch list data from the Terrorist Screening Center, prepares it
for distribution to the air carriers, and sends it to the
Transportation Security Operations Center, which in turn posts it
to a secure Web site that is accessed by the air carriers for use
in their name-matching processes. When an air carrier cannot
resolve a potential match during its prescreening process, the air
carrier contacts an Office of Intelligence analyst for assistance
in resolving the potential match. If needed, the Office of
Intelligence also contacts Terrorist Screening Center analysts who
can access additional information to try to resolve the potential
match. As a result, the Office of Intelligence plays a key role in
current program operations.
Until TSA completes its Secure Flight rebaselining efforts and
decisions are made regarding the future direction of the program,
the role of the Office of Intelligence and its relationship with
Secure Flight is uncertain. However, Secure Flight's draft June
2005 concept of operations stated that the program would employ
its own analysts to conduct the manual reviews of passenger names
that were potential matches against the watch lists as a result of
the Secure Flight automated matching process. If assistance was
needed in adjudicating a match, these analysts would notify the
Terrorist Screening Center. These analysts would also notify the
Office of Intelligence of potential passenger matches so it could
conduct situational awareness with the air carrier, and when any
inhibited boarding pass was released to a no-fly passenger who had
been cleared through the process.
4. Ms. Berrick, you testified in February that in addition to
TSA's Secure Flight program, Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
was developing a passenger prescreening program to match the names
of international travelers bound for the U.S. against terrorist
watch lists before their flight departs for the U.S. How are TSA
and CBP working together, if at all, to coordinate these programs?
Answer:
As part of its ongoing rebaselining of the Secure Flight program,
TSA has stated that it is collaborating with CBP to provide "one
face" to air carriers for domestic and international passenger
prescreening, that is, a strategic alignment that will allow for
the collection and transmission of passenger data in a unified
manner and at a uniform contact point to address issues that arise
during either domestic or international prescreening processes. In
July 2006, TSA officials stated that they had been meeting weekly
with CBP to discuss their coordination efforts, but did not
provide information on the actions being discussed.
Further, in announcing CBP's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for its
Advance Passenger Information System (APIS), CBP reaffirmed the
Department of Homeland Security's commitment to a common reporting
process for the airline industry through APIS and TSA's Secure
Flight program. CBP and TSA plan to continue their coordination of
Pre-Departure APIS for international flights and Secure Flight for
domestic flights by leveraging information gained during the
Pre-Departure APIS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. It is
anticipated that TSA and CBP's joint efforts will allow for the
prescreening function to occur through coordinated information
connections and avoid duplication of communications, programming,
and information requirements. Nevertheless, until TSA completes
its rebaselining, how and when TSA and CBP's passenger
prescreening programs will be coordinated remains uncertain.
5. Ms. Berrick, your February testimony before the Senate mentions
that TSA and TSC should conduct joint exercises to further
understand "the effectiveness of using intelligence analysts to
clear misidentified passengers during Secure Flight operations."
What additional joint exercises are you aware of since this past
February, and what kinds of exercises-in your view-would assist
TSA's Office of Intelligence as it gears up to support Secure
Flight? What basic questions should TSA and the TSC be striving to
answer at this point?
Answer:
When TSA began rebaselining Secure Flight in February 2006, it
suspended development and testing of the program. However, prior
to rebaselining, TSA had conducted development and testing
activities with key stakeholders, including the joint exercises
with TSC analysts. Although we encourage TSA to continue its
coordination with major stakeholders-including TSC-in order to
develop an effective and efficient passenger prescreening program,
it would be premature to speculate about the nature of testing
needed until TSA announces its rebaselined program. As TSA
continues its rebaselining and before it resumes development and
testing, TSA, in collaboration with stakeholders including TSC,
should address several questions that are fundamental to Secure
Flight's effectiveness, including:
o What passenger data should Secure Flight collect
to provide the best possible results when matched
against data contained in the no-fly and selectee
lists, which are derived from the TSDB?
o What TSDB data attributes will be provided by the
TSC and what name matching technologies will Secure
Flight use to compare the passenger data with the
TSDB no-fly and selectee watch lists?
o What manual review policies and procedures will be
established by TSA and TSC to determine whether a
potential match returned from Secure Flight's
automated matching process is a false positive or an
actual match against the watch list?
6. Ms. Berrick, to your knowledge, is TSA's Secure Flight
development team planning to increase the number of TSA analysts
on staff to help administer the Secure Flight program? What sense
do you have about TSA's capacity to handle the name matching
process that will be required under Secure Flight if a passenger
name cannot be differentiated from a terrorist included on the
watch list?
Answer:
TSA's Secure Flight draft June 2005 concept of operations
describes TSA's plans at that time for resolving potential
passenger name matches to the terrorist watch list. While the
concept of operations did not identify the number of analysts
required, TSA officials had stated that they planned to use their
own intelligence analysts who were currently involved in other
people screening programs, such as the crew vetting program. As
envisioned in 2005, Secure Flight operational testing was to begin
with two air carriers, which TSA thought they could service with
their current analyst staff or contractors and also provide the
experience needed to more accurately determine the number of
analysts needed for full operations. Until TSA completes its
rebaselining of Secure Flight and establishes specific system
requirements, TSA cannot determine the workload and number of
analysts that will be required for the program. Further, without
established system requirements and more concrete results from
TSA's testing of the automated matching system, we can not assess
TSA's capacity to manually review the potential passenger name
matches for air carrier operations in a timely manner.
7. Ms. Berrick, you reported to the Senate Commerce Committee in
February that TSA had not yet clearly identified the privacy
impacts of Secure Flight "or the full actions it plans to take to
mitigate them." What should this Committee be looking at to ensure
that if Secure Flight moves forward, that privacy is properly
taken into account?
Answer:
In our previous reports and testimonies on Secure Flight, we
recommended that TSA integrate privacy and other passenger rights
protections into all aspects of Secure Flight operations. Such
protections include statutory requirements, such as the Privacy
Act, and the Fair Information Practices, a set of internationally
recognized privacy principles that limit the collection, use, and
disclosure of personal information by federal agencies. In
monitoring this aspect of Secure Flight's development, the
committee could review TSA's system of records notice and the
privacy impact assessment that TSA plans to complete as part of
Secure Flight's rebaselining and continued system development.
These documents will describe how TSA considered privacy in the
development of the system, and how it will protect passenger data
once the system becomes operational.
In addition, the committee could review TSA's plans for redress
for passengers affected by Secure Flight. As we stated in our
February and June 2006 testimonies, TSA currently provides
individuals with an opportunity to seek redress, including a
process for passengers who experience delays under the current
name matching conducted by the air carriers. However, it is not
clear if this current system will be used for Secure Flight or be
able to accommodate redress related specifically to the operation
of Secure Flight.
In July 2006, TSA officials reiterated that they plan to address
privacy and redress concerns as they rebaseline and further
develop Secure Flight. Their system of records notice, privacy
impact assessment, and plans for redress will be put forth along
with their announcement of the rebaselined program or a rulemaking
that is supposed to, among other things, describe the passenger
data to be provided by air carriers.
8. Ms. Berrick, you note in your prepared statement today that
Secure Flight "was neither intended nor designed to address" the
situation where a person has assumed another person's identity
through identity theft. In recent weeks, we have learned that
millions of veterans may have had their names and Social Security
numbers stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs'
contractor. Given this development, should TSA be exploring some
sort of identity theft safeguards as part of the Secure Flight
rebaselining effort? What recommendations, if any, do you have in
this regard?
Answer:
Secure Flight was designed to take over the passenger prescreening
responsibility, or the matching of passenger data against
terrorist watch lists prior to a passenger receiving a boarding
pass from the air carriers. TSA officials have stated that Secure
Flight represents only one layer of security within the aviation
infrastructure and is not designed or intended to protect against
all vulnerabilities, such as identity theft. While TSA has
recognized that identity theft is a vulnerability for Secure
Flight, the extent to which it will be addressed under the
rebaselined program remains unknown. However, we believe that this
important issue, which will affect Secure Flight's effectiveness,
will also affect other Department of Homeland Security programs
and, therefore, should be addressed by TSA. We do not have any
specific recommendations on how TSA should address this
vulnerability at this time.
9. Ms. Berrick, you state in your prepared remarks that GAO is
supportive of the rebaselining of the Secure Flight program. In
your view, what principles should guide TSA's efforts to get the
program right, and what role does TSA's Office of Intelligence
have in this regard?
Answer:
There are several interrelated principles that should guide TSA in
its development and implementation of the passenger prescreening
program. These principles are
1. development of a program using the sound
management principles in TSA's System Development
Life Cycle, including development of program goals
and requirements, a schedule and the associated costs
for attaining those goals, and an effective program
for securing the system and its data;
2. development of a system that maximizes the
accuracy and completeness of the data used and the
effectiveness of the automated tools and manual
processes used for name matching;
3. coordination with stakeholders, including CBP,
TSC, and air carriers; and
4. establishment of privacy protocols, protection of
passenger rights, and access to redress for
passengers impacted by Secure Flight.
TSA has not made clear the role and relationship of the Office of
Intelligence in its efforts to rebaseline the Secure Flight
program.
10. Ms. Berrick, over the last three years, GAO's numerous reports
and testimonies on Secure Flight have highlighted significant
challenges. What do you believe are the most formidable challenges
facing TSA's efforts with Secure Flight, and what do you believe
TSA must do to overcome these challenges? How central is the role
for TSA's Office of Intelligence in getting Secure Flight "right"
and how should it be coordinating its efforts with the Terrorist
Screening Center and other entities in this regard?
Answer:
Based on our Secure Flight work over the last three years, four
key challenges have been identified that are directly related to
principles discussed in our response to the previous question.
These challenges are
1. developing, managing, and overseeing the program
through a comprehensive System Development Life Cycle
plan that would include establishing program goals
and systems requirements, developing cost and
schedule estimates that reflect all aspects of the
program, and designing a security program that
protects the system and the data it uses;
2. addressing key factors that will affect the
effectiveness of Secure Flight in identifying
individuals on the no-fly and selectee lists that
include (1) assessing passenger name-matching
technologies and policies that will be used to match
passenger names against terrorist watch list data,
(2) conducting stress testing to determine how Secure
Flight would handle peak data volumes, and (3)
performing comprehensive end-to-end operational
testing to determine that the system performs as
intended;
3. coordinating with federal and private sector
stakeholders, such as CBP, TSC, and air carriers,
that play a critical role in collecting,
transmitting, and analyzing the data needed for
Secure Flight operations; and
4. minimizing program impacts on passenger privacy,
protecting passenger rights, and providing access to
redress for passengers affected by Secure Flight.
Until TSA completes rebaselining Secure Flight and establishes
specific system requirements, it is difficult to determine the
exact roles that TSA's Office of Intelligence, TSC, and other
stakeholders will fulfill. However, no matter what the outcome of
TSA's rebaselining is, the Office of Intelligence and TSC will
likely play an important role in determining whether passengers'
names that have been matched to a name contained in the TSDB are
actual matches. For the Office of Intelligence and TSC to function
as part of Secure Flight, TSA will need to determine the level of
staff support that it will require for each entity so that vetting
outcomes can be handled in a timely manner.
1 In early 2006, TSA suspended development of Secure Flight and initiated
a reassessment, or rebaselining, of the program. As of July 2006, TSA was
continuing with its rebaselining efforts, which it expects to complete
before the end of September 2006.
(440536)
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