Программа предварительного досмотра пассажиров Secure Flight

Secure Flight is an airline passenger pre screening program, implemented from August 2009 by the United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Secure Flight matches passenger information against watch lists maintained by the federal government. The initial implementation phase of Secure Flight resulted in the complete transfer of responsibility for passenger watch list matching to TSA from aircraft operators whose flights operate within the United States. The second phase of Secure Flight will result in the transfer of responsibility for passenger watch list matching to TSA for flights into, out of, and over the United States. Secure Flight is intended to prevent individuals on the No Fly List from boarding an aircraft, as well as to subject individuals on the Selectee List to enhanced screening to determine if they are permitted to board an aircraft.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) of 2004 requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assume from aircraft operators the function of conducting pre flight comparisons of airline passenger information to federal government watch lists for international and domestic flights. The final report of the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) recommends that this watch list matching function "should be performed by TSA and it should utilize the larger set of watch lists maintained by the Federal Government" (See 9/11 Commission Report p. 393). To fulfill this recommendation, TSA published the Secure Flight Final Rule on October 28, 2008. The Final Rule went into effect on December 29, 2008.

Secure Flight began implementation with select domestic aircraft operators at the beginning of 2009 and completed implementation for all covered domestic and international airlines in December 2010. TSA's Office of Threat Assessment and Credentialing is the lead for the program. Contractors supporting the program have included IBM, Accenture, ESR, InfoZen, and Deloitte. Infoglide Software provided the underlying identity resolution technology. TSA met its goal to vet 100 percent of all domestic commercial flights by early 2010 and 100 percent of all international commercial flights by the end of 2010.

TSA has stated it will not collect or use "commercial data" to conduct Secure Flight watch list matching. It has also released a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). concerns about civil liberties and due process. Specifically, civil libertarians argue that under the Secure Flight program, there are insufficient redress mechanisms for innocent citizens on watch lists. Additionally, the content and quantity of the watch lists has fallen under scrutiny.

The Secure Flight Programme applies to non US flights overflying the United States. TSA uses a table of airport pairs to determine if a flight is overflying the United States.