This much is for sure: Leave the crowbar at home

ON a Hollywood set, it might be called “Travel Security, Take Two.”

Four years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks prompted a clampdown, the U.S. government is rethinking how it defends its citizens and borders.

Among the often confusing changes:

* Starting Dec. 22, we were once more allowed to carry small scissors onto planes.

* Thousands of us have helped the government test prescreening programs aimed at easing our way through airport security -- a prelude to a national rollout later this year of the Registered Traveler system.

* In a reversal of earlier plans, Americans won’t need passports by 2008 to cross back into the U.S. by land from Canada and Mexico. But if they don’t have passports, they will need a new type of ID, yet to be issued.

* By the end of this year, U.S. passports will contain computer chips with data that can by read by radio-frequency scanners.

Controversy swirls around all of these initiatives. A closer look at each:

* Scissors on planes: Just before Christmas, the federal Transportation Security Administration loosened its ban on carrying certain objects aboard planes. Passengers can now carry scissors with a cutting edge of 4 inches or shorter, plus tools, such as screwdrivers and wrenches, smaller than 7 inches. Bigger scissors and tools such as box cutters, crowbars and hammers are still barred.

The TSA also has stepped up random screenings, such as pat-downs and bag searches.

Both moves are designed to focus resources on “more serious threats, such as explosives,” agency officials said.

The Assn. of Flight Attendants, a labor union that represents more than 46,000 flight attendants at 22 airlines, has called the carry-on changes “risky and misguided.” On a protest website it launched, www.leaveallbladesbehind.com, it asks: “Who needs to bring sharp scissors or tools such as screwdrivers, pliers and wrenches -- all items larger and potentially more lethal than the box cutters used on September 11th -- onboard an aircraft?”

Bills aimed at rescinding these changes, including one sponsored by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), are pending in both houses of Congress.

* Prescreening of passengers: How would you like to breeze through airport security?

That’s the hope held out by the Registered Traveler program that’s aimed mainly at frequent fliers. It permits fliers with a special ID to skip certain security steps or get in faster airport lines. To qualify for the cards, the holders agree to fingerprinting and background checks.

The TSA has tested this system at several airports, including LAX, and plans to expand it nationwide this summer.

Backers include the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group for buyers of business travel based in Radnor, Pa., and some consumer advocates.

“It’s great for people who want to do it,” said Terry Trippler, airline expert with www.cheapseats.com. He said the program balances privacy, security and economic concerns.

But the Air Transport Assn., an industry trade group that once backed the registered-traveler concept, opposes its latest incarnation. In a letter last month to TSA Administrator Kip Hawley, it said better checkpoint screening had made such a program unnecessary.

The American Civil Liberties Union sees “substantial privacy and civil liberties problems” with the system, said Timothy Sparapani, the group’s legislative counsel for privacy rights, who was scheduled last week to testify before Congress about it.

Sparapani said the program would likely rely on databases that are far from infallible: a government one used to compile the “no-fly” watch list, and possibly commercial ones, such as credit reports.

The TSA said last month that it was keeping the data secure and that it would provide a system for applicants to resolve disputes about their eligibility for the Registered Traveler program.

As part of the national expansion, private vendors can apply to do the background checks and issue ID cards and charge passengers a fee to participate. In a pilot program in Orlando, Fla., the fee is $79.95 per year. But in truth, no one knows what the price ultimately will be because “it will be 100% market-driven,” TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said. Also unresolved: how fliers would apply for these cards, what personal data they would provide and how much time cardholders could save at the airport.

* Cross-border confusion: Under a 2004 law, all Americans, starting in 2008, must carry a passport or other secure ID to reenter the U.S.

After an outcry from various quarters of the travel industry, which said the law would discourage cross-border traffic, the departments of State and Homeland Security said last month that they would issue a special travel card for land crossings back into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada.

The card, targeted for release by year’s end, will probably cost about half as much as a passport, now $97 for adults, said Laura Tischler, spokeswoman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. But details are unclear.

Under the latest rules, you’ll need a passport to cross back into the U.S. from Canada or Mexico by Dec. 31 if you arrive by air or sea; if by land, you’ll need either a passport or the new travel card by Jan. 1, 2008.

* Electronic passports: Last year, U.S. passports began carrying digitized photos that can be scanned on machines.

By the end of this year, if much-delayed plans hold, they will contain computer chips that can be read remotely by radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices. The chips will contain the holder’s photo and facts from the first page of the passport, such as where and when the person was born, Tischler said.

Some critics last year excoriated the RFID feature as a security threat. Worried that terrorists could access the chips, they said the new passports would be “like drawing an electronic target on Americans abroad,” as the ACLU’s Sparapani put it.

To allay these concerns, Tischler said, the State Department has incorporated safeguards into the passports, which the TSA is testing at the San Francisco airport.

The cover, for instance, contains materials that thwart skimming data when the booklet is closed, she said, and the chips can be read only within about 4 inches or less when the booklet is open.

Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, said he was satisfied with the new safeguards. But the ACLU’s Sparapani said he was investigating reports that they could be circumvented.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments but can’t respond individually to letters and calls. Write to Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.