TSA adding black lights to screen passengers' ID cards
TSA expands program checking for forged ID by installing black lights and magnifying lenses to 1,300 specially trained screeners who check suspicious IDs in the ticket lines
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which has taken over document-ticket screening at U.S. airports, is rolling out small black lights and loupes (magnifying lenses) to 1,300 specially trained screeners who check suspicious IDs in the ticket lines. Airline contractors did the preliminary driver’s license checks at major airports until August. Until then, the TSA had no occasions in the security process to vet people’s IDs against their boarding passes. “The TSA in the past few years has been creating extra layers of security beyond the checkpoint,” TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley said. The checks for falsified documents are being added to screening outside the security lanes that looks for suspicious behavior, McCauley said. More training for document-ticket checkers is necessary because of the variety of IDs that come through a major international airport such as Dallas-Fort Worth. Under a black light, hard-to-reproduce holograms on identification cards, such as the Texas driver’s license, become visible. On the Texas driver’s license, for example, a bunch of little yellow “TEXAS” holograms appear. Different cards have different identifiers. The Swiss national identification card has a cobalt blue fishnet design. In the photo area is a second green-yellow hologram: “SCHWEIZ, SUISSE, SVIZZERA, SVIZRA, SWITZERLAND.”
Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Bryon Okada writes that most passengers will not need such a check. TSA officials say there have been no problems between passengers and screeners at pilot programs in Phoenix, New York Kennedy and Baltimore airports.
