Loose Cannon: Why Can’t The Airlines — And DM — Get Smart?

Heading down to Orlando for the National Center for Database Marketing conference? Be sure to pack all liquids in your carry-on luggage in tiny tubes and jars, and then to tuck those tubes and jars into a one-quart see-through plastic bag. (One-quart see-through plastic bags are conveniently available for sale at many airport newsstands.)

Loosen your shoes and belt as you approach the head of the security line: Your Guccis and Manolo Blahniks are going through a security check all their own. Now, with one hand holding your pants up, remember to take your laptop out of its case and place it, all by its lonesome, in the gray bin. You may need to use your teeth for this process.

The more comely of you may be chosen to be scanned by those happy machines that provide Transportation Security Administration workers with X-ray images of travelers. How revealing are those pictures? To paraphrase Andy Warhol, in the future everybody will be Britney Spears for 15 minutes.

There has to be a better way. I liked so-called smart card technology when I first wrote about it in the late 1990s. I still like it, and think it has potential to address issues that have plagued both airline and consumer data security in the intervening years.

Smart cards are nearly identical to common credit cards with one essential difference: they have an integrated circuit computer chip embedded on the card’s face. Run through a terminal, the cards can capture, store, and disseminate point-of-contact data. When integrated into marketing campaigns, they can also be programmed to make decisions based on preset promotion rules, or offer a consumer a tailored benefit based on event triggers, transactional history or personal preferences.

In addition to transaction-based information, embedded chip cards can store biometric information, such as iris or fingerprint data. Couple those with a device that can read fingerprints or irises at a point-of-purchase location, or plugged into a computer (for online transactions), and one winds up with a credit card usable only by the authorized owner.

Best of all, the uniqueness of biometric information would cut down on the need to use Social Security numbers as consumer identifiers when applying for a credit card, or mortgage, or what have you. This would reduce the amount of personally identifiable information data aggregators would have to store. Absent the actual finger or iris, stored data isn’t going to do a potential fraudster any good.

So why hasn’t this technology caught on in America? Primarily because traditional magnetic strip readers are entrenched in American businesses. But if the TSA were to adopt biometric information verification as part of the check-in process, there would be an impetus to make embedded chips on credit cards ubiquitous. And consumers concerned about credit card theft would effectively vote with their feet by patronizing stores that were quick to adopt these systems.

There will, of course, be those who actually enjoy the process of walking through security gates in stocking feet, clutching their pants and fumbling for their laptops. To them I say happy travels — provided they don’t miss their plane due to tripping over an untied shoelace.

See you in Orlando.

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