This past Friday, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced details of its upcoming Registered Traveler program. In a nutshell, the RT program allows frequent flyers to submit to a background check and fingerprinting in exchange for a special smartcard pass that can be used at airport security checkpoints to "accelerate the screening process at participating airports for passengers who voluntarily choose to enroll in the program."

What exactly is meant by "accelerate the screening process"? The answer is unclear for two reasons: 1) the program isn't fully implemented yet, and 2) even when it goes live, "acceleration" will mean different things to different users at different checkpoints at different airports at different times of the day.

The Registered Traveler programs will be market-driven and offered by the private sector. Individual participation in a Registered Traveler program will be entirely voluntary, with prices established by private sector providers. TSA will mandate a core RT security assessment for each applicant to a Registered Traveler program. If RT providers undertake more in-depth security background checks (e.g., by using commercial data specifically authorized by customers, or by other voluntary means), TSA will offer a variety of enhanced or time-saving participant benefits at passenger screening checkpoints. Participants may receive significant efficiency benefits over what exists today, if additional security is added by a more thorough background check... If the RT businesses wish to make investments in approved screening equipment, fund additional screeners, and/or obtain space for separate RT screening, then TSA is prepared to authorize the use of dedicated screening lanes or alternative screening locations for RT participants.

Welcome to the brave new world of "market-driven" airport security, where different private security firms run and operate different lanes at different checkpoints, offering varied levels of accelerated screening depending on how much a user paid and how deep of a background check he or she submitted to. Thus the speed at which you move through a checkpoint will theoretically depend on a multiplicity of factors, only two of which are under your control (the depth of your background check and the firm(s) with which you've contracted). Other factors affecting your screening time, like which private security firm is manning a checkpoint and what resources that particular firm has invested in a particular checkpoint (e.g. extra personnel, more screening equipment, and so on) at a particular time of day, are entirely out of your control.

Constant change, creative destruction, risk, unpredictability, inequality, profit maximizing behaviors, incentives (both aligned and misaligned), choice (for travelers and for terrorists) and all of those other things that we've all come to love about free markets will now be part of our airport screening experience. Frequent flyers, rejoice!

But that's not all! The RT program not only has the free-market attributes I've just described, but the TSA will intervene at random times to ensure that this little (faux) market system doesn't naturally self-organize into something rational, stable, and predictable. The TSA has assured us that they will randomly juggle about the benefits of the program to keep the terrorists off-balance. I'm not kidding. They actually said this:

We know that terrorists may seek to exploit the Registered Traveler program, and the program must be designed to thwart those efforts. Therefore, program benefits will change from time to time in order to make it more difficult for terrorists to anticipate our security activities. Further, TSA will not exempt Registered Traveler participants from random additional screening.

So you'll never be sure what, if anything, your participation in the program is going to do for your screening time, because even if you contract with one company and always fly out of the same terminal at the same time of the day through the same checkpoint, the TSA may decide to mix it up on you just for giggles and tack another ten minutes onto your screening time.

What's worse than the government having your sensitive data in one centralized location? Multiple private firms having multiple copies.

In addition to knowing that she has a wide variety of average airport screening times to keep track of as she moves about the country from airport to airport and from terminal to terminal, the RT-registered frequent flyer traveller will also have the security of knowing that her most intimate personal data—finances and fingerprints and family connections and all that stuff that goes into a thorough background check—is safely in the hands of the same private sector that brought us Choicepoint and related fiascos. But hey, that's the magic of the market as applied to travel authentication: multiple private firms with multiple databases among them, and personal data just multiplying and flowing everywhere between these firms and the feds. It's an identity thief's paradise.

This inevitable multiplication of pools of individuals' personal data is also part of the magic of the market. Any time there's a market for something—widgets, music, ideas, biometric identifiers, background information—then there will be more of that thing in more places and in the hands of more agents. So by creating a market for detailed information about your identity, the government will ensure that such information multiplies and moves about like dandelion seeds in springtime, or like credit histories, or like cell phone calling records.

What's worse than having identity thieves impersonate you to Chase Bank? Having terrorists impersonate you to the TSA.

We can only hope, will all of that privately managed personal data spread out all over the world and flying to and fro from database to database, that the perpetrators of identity theft are strictly confined to the criminal classes. If terrorists were to get their hands that on cornucopia of data, then they'd be much more empowered to impersonate you or I for the incredibly attentive and highly trained forgery detection experts that the contractors will no doubt hire at great expense to man these checkpoints.

Speaking of the quality of the security at individual screening checkpoints, this is another place where the market will (not) work wonders for our security. Consumers will want the fastest possible screening for the lowest price. This will give private screeners massive incentives to hire low wage, unskilled employees to man the checkpoints, and to give them the worst benefits possible. (Of course, such incentives are already in place to a large degree under the current TSA regime, but the proposed RT plan will increase them.) The new plan also will explicitly encourage companies to find ways to move travelers through checkpoints as rapidly as possible. Do unskilled, minimum-wage airport screeners who're under pressure from management to move customers through checkpoints as rapidly as possible sound to you like a recipe for thorough and secure airport screening? I didn't think so.

You'd think that at at least two of the problems I've pointed out above—the potential increase in terrorist access to larger and more ubiquitous caches of sensitive personal data; and the misaligned market incentives that encourage corner cutting at security checkpoints—would combine to defeat the whole purpose of the new program. You'd be wrong, though, because you'd be assuming that the purpose of the program is the keep us safe from terrorists.

Given that a truly market-driven airport screening program would encourage shoddy screening and give terrorists just as many options for gaming the system as it would give travelers options for participating in it, it's hard to believe that the program was actually designed with keeping the skies safe as its primary goal. Rather, the program seems tailor-made for handing out lucrative TSA contracts to well-connected private sector companies.

Hey, it's your tax dollars at work.