The Clear Pass

When it started I became a member of Clear - which is a service designed to assist frequent travelers in getting through the TSA security system. The system costs about $200 per year. It is not universally available. Thus if you fly as I do more than a hundred times a year - the cost of the service is about $2 per visit. The tradeoff for the system is like something the Customs service once had. You exchange some biometrics for a quicker way through security. The FastPass for the Customs service was a great idea but the computers never worked so it only was useful about one time in four when coming back into the country. The Clear Pass works quite well. In the airports it serves you go into a special line and a literally walked through the security system. But there are some drawbacks to the system. My wife is an occasional flyer so to get the benefits of the system I have to buy her a pass - that makes the system even less cost effective. This year I went through perhaps 35 airports, fewer than half of them had a Clear installation. Of the ones that do I rarely use some of them to start a flight, so the number of useful airports is, at least for me, quite limited. I spoke with the Sacramento airport people and they said they would not install the system. Some like Burbank have created an expert traveller line - which speeds your process without a cost. There is one other problem with Clear - it does not get you out of the inspection it merely speeds your process in the line. You still have to go through the screening. After zipping through the line, with Clear unlike the Fast Pass you then get put back into the grey container process where a lot of the screening delay occurs.

I am not a fan of the TSA. I think many of their procedures are silly and bureaucratic. But in the last year they have made some improvements which make the Clear system even less relevant. In addition to the Expert Traveller lines they have also simplified how you go through the process, so for example if you keep your computer in a sleeve, you do not need to take it out of the container.

There are lots of ways that the current TSA system could be improved. When it was created I expressed concern that we were making a lot of new public employees and that systems like the Irish and Israeli security screening used private employees and more technology with a lot less intrusion. Clear was trying to create an alternative to the bureaucratic gum of the system. They were less than half successful. That's why I did not renew. I suspect a lot of others made the same choice.