From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Aviation Security and Expedited Passenger Screening Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Jennifer Grover, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Related GAO Work: GAO-15-150: Aviation Security: Rapid Growth in Expedited Passenger Screening Highlights Need to Plan Effective Security Assessments Released: December 2014 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's December 2014. In 2011 the Transportation Security Administration introduced its pre-check programs, which offers expedited screening to selected air travelers. A team led by Jennifer Grover, a director in GAO's Homeland Security and Justice team, recently looked at how TSA's pre-check program has been working since then. GAO's Jacques Arsenault sat down with Jennifer to talk about what they found. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] What exactly is expedited screening? How is TSA's use of it changed? [ Jennifer Grover: ] Well traditionally, most airline passengers received the same level of screening. So that's the experience that you have when you go to the airport and you either walk through the metal detector or the AIT body scanner, and your carry-on luggage is screened through the x-ray machine. But about two years ago, TSA started offering expedited screening to low-risk passengers. And what makes that different is that passengers are allowed to keep on their shoes and their light jackets, and they can generally leave their liquids and their laptops in the carry-on case. This is called the pre-check program. TSA's use of pre-check really has grown exponentially in the past year because they have started using some new ways to identify passengers who could be eligible for expedited screening. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Great, can you talk about these new ways? What are the methods that TSA uses to identify people that would be eligible? [ Jennifer Grover: ] Well there's three main ways. First is people can be a pre-check member because they've applied through one of TSA's enrollment centers. Or because they have an association with a specific group, such as federal judges or members of Congress or someone who's active duty military. The second way to be eligible for expedited screening is through automatic risk assessments of all passengers that TSA has started doing. The new process generates a risk score for every airline passenger. And depending on your risk score, you may be eligible for a pre-check for that specific flight. And you'll know that's happened if you print out your boarding pass and you see pre-check on it, even though you hadn't previously signed up for the pre-check program. And then the third way is through a new process that TSA is using at the airport called managed inclusion. And this is where TSA randomly selects passengers from the regular screening lane, moves them into the expedited screening lane. Now they do this primarily to make more efficient use of those pre-check lanes when otherwise there wouldn't be too many people going through the lane. I mean I should mention that TSA has put additional layers of security in place when they're operating the manage inclusion process, because they are taking passengers who are supposed to receive regular screening and moving them through an expedited screening lane. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So then what recommendations is GAO making to TSA to improve pre-check? [ Jennifer Grover: ] Well the most important recommendation is related to that managed inclusion process that we were just talking about. So, TSA hasn't tested the process as a whole to make sure that it's working as intended. They have done some testing on some of the individual additional layers of security, but it's really important that they test the process as a whole to make sure that people are receiving an appropriate level of screening. And in the past, TSA hasn't done a good job of testing similar systems. So what we're recommending is that as they go forward with the testing, they should make sure that they follow sound practices for study design so that at the end of the day they'll have reliable test results. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So then finally, if I'm going to head to the airport and get on a plane, what would you say is the bottom line of this report? [ Jennifer Grover: ] Well, two things really. First TSA is trying to move away from one size fits all approach to screening. And we found that as many as 40% of airline passengers were receiving expedited screening. So don't be surprised if you find that you have an opportunity to experience pre-check. The second piece of that though is that since we all benefit from strong security, it is really important for TSA to ensure that all aspects of expedited screening, including this managed inclusion process, are working as intended. So over the next year or so, GAO will be tracking TSA's progress in that area. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.