Making aircraft more secure against terrorism without impacting convenience

1. Making aircraft more secure against terrorism without impacting convenience Steve Kirsch stk@propel.com

2. About me • Entrepreneur • Founder, 4 Silicon Valley companies • "Top 10 Entrepreneurs of 2000" • Red Herring magazine. • Philanthropist • “100 Most Generous Americans” • Worth magazine • I have no financial interest in any of this

3. The goal • “hassle factor” of intense security is #1 obstacle to returning to normalcy - Delta CEO • The most efficient way to stop terrorists is not let them in the country in the first place • Goal: security convenience.

4. Process suggestions • Look at each check we do today: Is it redundant or required? • More isn’t better. Re-examine and simplify. • Must we really waste time searching for an confiscating nail scissors? Do security questions really work or is a reminder sufficient? Who are we trying to catch? Amateurs or professionals? • Don’t limit thinking to airport boundaries • World ID give us a foolproof “foreign key” to allow us to accumulate information from disparate sources and analyze to detect suspicious behavior patterns, e.g., a suspicious wire transfer + flight school suspicions + “CIA watch list” • Make suggestions easy • Test it! • Challenge the FAA red team to penetrate it (on paper). What was effective? What wasn’t. • Propose a solution and have a separate group create 200 hypothetical attacks against the solution

5. Most effective are also cheap, simple, fast • Train the crew for how to handle terrorism • Fortify cockpit door • Scan carry-on luggage for bombs and guns; scan checked luggage for bombs • Arm crew with pepper spray/foam • Train passengers to be vigilant for suspicious behavior + a way to report this • Police officers fly free • Background check and validate identity of security personnel and anyone with access to the planes • Professionally interview suspicious passengers =doing =not doing… why?

6. What else? • Criteria: • Minimal inconvenience AND • Significant value add • What’s the first thing a terrorist learns?

7. World ID card World ID World ID • Facilitates background checks • Authenticates identity • Authenticates uniqueness so aliases are useless • Provides mechanism to track and catch people wanted by law enforcement wherever there is a mag card reader • Protects privacy! No less private than what we have today • Information stored centrally to eliminate possibility of tampering Steve Kirsch 563-456-345 Magnetic strip has room for 200 bytes so keep it simple: Name, unique ID • Local cache has all but most recent data & local iris code stoplist in case communication disrupted • Process backlog when communication restored

8. Core concept • Enrollment station: • Once per lifetime, person enrolls iris and is assigned a unique serial number. Serial number of iris enrollment is permanent for life. • If smart card, person may add additional biometrics and PIN. Change these options at any time. Use iris to authenticate changes in central databank and digitally signs these changes. • If traveler loses card, just re-enroll, and system will issue replacement card with info from central database. • Swipe card to issue boarding pass with seat # • Swipe card to get past security • Swipe card + present iris to board plane (card centrally verified in realtime usually, but can also be shortly thereafter) • Federal agencies can “flag” a World ID for “agency notification” or “apprehension” or “travel denied” • With iris, it is impossible to evade detection. Iris scan-number association can NEVER be hacked. That is impossible.

9. A simple example • I hire an employee • I ask to see his World ID card number (the name might be phony but the number is invariant) • I can validate via Internet: type in his number and pull up his photo or use a $200 iris scanner (the latter is foolproof) • He steals $100K worth of equipment and “disappears” • I give the police his World ID card number • If he ever travels by plane, applies for a driver’s license, or gets pulled over by a cop for a traffic violation, for the rest of his life anywhere in the world, we’ll catch him. Phony ID will NOT protect him. • If people know they will be caught, there will be less crime.

10. Some facts about biometrics • 2 biometrics are NOT better than 1 ! • FAR decreases, but FRR increases • Smart cards are not required • A dumb card with just an ID number is fine for our purpose • Most innovative would be to use a smart card with a dumb stripe which provides compatibility with an upgrade path and keep the card spec open. This would allow offline validation while still being secure. • Use of one biometric to authenticate uniqueness and another to authenticate identity is subject to fraud • Must use iris whenever security is important

11. Iris is “the gold standard” • Iris is stable for life after age 1 • Camera can’t be fooled by contacts or photographs or dead people • No physical contact required • 1 second iris capture time • The perfect (and only) biometric for authenticating uniqueness • CER less than 1 in 1,000,000 • 240 degrees of freedom: everyone has a unique value • Can determine uniqueness in a 1B member database within a fraction of second • There has never been a false iris recognition • Iris codes are small (512 bytes) • Fast: 100,000 comparisons/sec on a desktop computer; ONE desktop computer could validate everyone in the country in <1 hour • To do: optimize packaging for mass use

12. Benefits • Enables us to reliably stop a known terrorist from boarding a plane, entering the country, entering SuperBowl, … • We can alert silently and have a SWAT team ready when the plane lands without arousing suspicion of the suspect • Enables us to track suspicious behavior across disparate sources • Compatible with government requirements • Patriot Act • Border Security bill • Driver’s License bill • Minimal cost: iris stations are a PC and $200 iris scanner • Proven technology (used in airports today) • More convenient for customers: only iris scan at boarding gates where absolute identity authentication is critical; use card otherwise; don’t need a boarding pass

13. Summary • Evaluate each step for cost effectiveness • Do simple things first • Passenger vigilance training • Pepper spray/foam • Make it EASY to submit ideas • Test to see which are really cost effective in stopping FAA red team • World ID • Permanently associates iris & number • 100% available, zero wait time, can’t be hacked, private • Technically straightforward. Dumb or smart w/dumb. • Politically possible now …carpe diem! • Be visionary…huge positive for law enforcement

15. References • National Academies report on national IDhttp://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/030908430X?OpenDocument • Creating PhotoIDs with mag stripe from a PC:http://www.atlantekinc.com/mag_str.htm

16. General observations • People are terrible at matching a photo ID with a boarding pass • If this is important, we need a better way • Terrorists are expert at ID forgery to evade detection • Fix: Associate a permanent and unique serial number (World ID) to each person and require World ID lookups at airports, etc.