Tech & Biz

Verified Identity Pass: Clear Data Handling Still a Mystery

by Jordan Yerman | July 2, 2009 at 10:37 am

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Verified Identity Pass, which went out of business last week, still has the personal data of all of its customers. Now, the TSA wants to know exactly what is happening to all that data: is it getting deleted? Stored somehow in case the Clear system is acquired by another company?

We don't know, but we should definitely be concerned: private data is like toxic waste-- once it's created, it sticks around pretty much forever, and is very difficult to safely contain.

Also, Verified Identity Pass has a poor record of proper data management.

The intimate information shared with the TSA by Clear could leave some people especially vulnerable if there were a security breach, he said.

In addition to information such as Social Security numbers and home addresses, Clear took eye scans, fingerprints and digital photos of every one of its approximately 260,000 members.

Since Clear was a glorified jump-the-queue card, rather than a bypass for airport security, I'm still unclear on why Verified Identity Pass even needed all that info, and I'm not alone.

. But what's never been clear to me is why this data was needed. If you had a Clear card, it wasn't like you went through any less of a security check. You just got to cut the line. That's it. You still ended up needing to go through the same security check. So why did Verified Identity Pass -- or the Department of Homeland Security who VIP passed the data on to -- need your personal info in the first place?