The US government on Wednesday said it will take direct responsibility for the security screening of air travellers, in a bid to reduce numerous errors in identifying potential terror suspects.
Instead of airlines, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will carry out screening to "better remedy possible misidentifications when a traveler's name is similar to one found on a watch list," the Department of Homeland Security said.
The "Secure Flight" program will improve aviation security while correcting the problem of innocent passengers appearing on lists of suspected terrorists, said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
"Secure Flight is a critical tool that will further improve aviation security and fix the major customer service issue of watch-list misidentifications, a frustratingly common occurrence for travelers under the existing airline-based system," he said.
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, screening for terror suspects fell to airlines, which compared passengers' names to an extensive watch list of suspected terrorists provided by US agencies.
The US government has come under heavy criticism over the lists, which contain numerous errors, and thousands of passengers have demanded their names be removed.
Starting in 2009, airlines will be required to share with TSA the names, birth dates and genders of all passengers when they make reservations. The agency will then check the information against watch lists, officials said.
Information on the "vast majority" of passengers will be retained for no more than seven days, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, and the new procedure will apply to US nationals as well as those from abroad.
Chertoff has confirmed a list of 2,500 suspects who are banned from travelling and another list of 16,000 names, mostly from other countries, who may travel only after supplemental verification of their identity.
But civil rights groups allege the government watchlists have ballooned and are much larger, with hundreds of thousands of names.
Prominent figures have appeared on the watchlists, including decorated war veterans and at one point, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South African president Nelson Mandela, whose name was removed after Congress intervened.
The measure announced Wednesday fulfils a recommendation from a blue-ribbon commission that examined the government's response to the September 11 attacks.
