Selling Security Clearance

By Barbara Liston

Frustrated with unpredictably slow lines at the airport? In the hopes of speeding things up, more than 1,000 travelers at Orlando International Airport signed up within 24 hours of last week's rollout of Clear Card, the first privately run prescreening security program. Customers who pay a $79.95 annual fee and submit to fingerprint and iris scanning--plus a background check by the Department of Homeland Security--can be ushered through a dedicated fast lane at airport security checkpoints, exempt from secondary searches. Verified Identity Pass Inc. is trying to reassure civil libertarians, who are concerned that the system could be used to spy on consumers, with a promise not to track cardholders' movements or sell their personal information. But the company, which relies on Lockheed Martin technology for its biometric identification cards, is not pitching itself as a cure-all. Says VIP founder Steven Brill: "This is not risk elimination. It's risk management."