TSA launches worker ID test in Long Beach
Truck drivers, longshoremen, harbor pilots and other workers Wednesday began receiving biometric identification card that verifies their identity for access to secure areas at the port of Long Beach container terminal under a prototype test conducted by the Transportation Security Administration for a universal ID system.
TSA is the lead agency for developing a Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC) that workers in the transportation sector can use to access multiple transportation facilities. Currently, individual terminals, airports, rail yards and intermodal facilities may each have separate access control systems requiring different badges. In Florida, for example, some truckers carry up to 13 ID cards to enter each of the state’s deepwater ports under a state law requiring ports to control access to their facilities.
TSA said the prototype test will expand to 34 sites in six states and last seven months. The next prototype sites are the Philadelphia Maritime Exchange, as well as the ports of Pensacola and Port Canaveral in Florida. As many as 200,000 workers from all modes are eventually expected to participate in the field test.
Information gained from the project will inform TSA and U.S. Coast Guard regulators as they begin work on a joint rulemaking to implement a TWIC card for maritime workers. Airport, rail and highway workers eventually will be rolled into the system.
Officials are studying several types of biometric information to include in a tamper-resistant, integrated circuit chip smart card, including embedded fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition.
As part of the process, TSA will conduct a terrorist-based risk assessment on all workers enrolled by their employers during the prototype, Lolie Kull, the TWIC program manager, said two weeks ago at a seminar in Arlington, Va. Florida, as required by law, will conduct criminal history background checks on workers. When the program is fully operational after a rulemaking, TSA will also conduct background checks of workers, she said.
TSA will charge a user fee to conduct the record checks and create the cards while access control systems for each facility will be the responsibility of the private sector, TSA supervisor Robby Moss said Sunday during a panel at the joint annual conference of the National Industrial Transportation League, Transportation Intermediaries Association and the Intermodal Association of North America in San Antonio.
Kull said the agency hoped to get a proposed rule drafted by the end of 2005 or early 2006.
The long-awaited TWIC program has been plagued by technological, budget and bureaucratic problems so far that have caused delays to the program. The worker identification program was conceived after the 2001 terrorist attacks on America.