Editorial: Background checks still hazy

Monday, Feb. 13, 2006 | 12:32 p.m.

Congressional investigators have criticized the Transportation Security Administration's inability to launch a long-awaited program that is supposed to improve the accuracy of airline passengers' background checks.

A recent report issued by the Government Accountability Office says the TSA has failed to follow its own plan for implementing the Secure Flight program. A December 2004 law requires that TSA take over the job of passenger background checks, which the airlines currently do.

The TSA plans to check passengers' names against comprehensive, classified terrorist databases, rather than the incomplete watch lists that airlines receive. The new system is supposed to curtail errors, such as a December incident in which a 4-year-old child was refused boarding privileges because his name appeared on a terrorist watch list.

Secure Flight was to start in April 2005. But now the TSA doesn't even have a projected start date, the GAO says. The report also criticizes the agency for not taking adequate steps to make sure sensitive information would be protected from computer hackers.

In a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week, TSA officials said their own internal review revealed similar issues, and they are working on corrections. But senators, frustrated that the TSA has spent three years and $144 million without improving the system, have lost their patience. Frankly, so have we. The TSA needs to get its act together and fix this system.