Automation to ease aircraft passenger processing.

In the new future, Americans who travel by commercial airplane will benefit from improved automated systems that will assure identity and speed passenger processing.

That is the promise of James Loy, acting undersecretary of transportation security and head of the Transportation Security Administration, speaking at the annual meeting of the National Defense Transportation Association, in Greensboro, N.C., on Sept. 30.

"We're going to have a much more robust means of identification of traveling passengers," said Loy, who served as commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard from 1998 to 2002.

"We need to do a lot more and do a lot better job."

Eventually, an automated system will be available that will operate much like the proposed transportation worker security identification that has been proposed. Coupled with the new passenger data software will be a "behavior-based database," said Loy, which will focus on the inspection of air passengers.

Association members greeted the proposals with strong applause.

"We're working toward a security system for tomorrow that's better than today's," said Loy, a former commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. "And I assure you, our system today is better than yesterday's."

The new organization is responsible for the security of the nation's different transportation modes.

"What we have to do is weigh value against vulnerability as we find ways to make transportation as safe and secure as possible," he said.

Truck and ship cargoes remain a big challenge, said Loy.

"We have 16 million containers that enter the country every year," said Loy. "Fewer than 2 percent are opened and inspected at the nation's 361 commercial sea ports or border points of entry."

Loy suggested that commercial shipping data will assist the process of increased transportation security.

"What I will call in-transit transparency is needed," said Loy.

"Commercial data is very, very important in understanding domains in which we work."

Loy said he was in total support of President George Bush's imperatives of winning the war on terrorism, protecting the homeland and revising the economy.

"You can't have one or two without the third," said Loy. "They are an integrated set of issues for us to grapple with as best we can."

The Transportation Security Agency is the instrument that will continue improving homeland security, he said.

"They have a patriotic zeal to get the job done," said Loy. "They are an astonishingly good group."

To date, the agency has been achieving great results, said Loy.

Airport inspectors have discovered 2.4 million prohibited items since mid-February, including hundreds of box cutters, knives and weapons--including pistols.

"The challenge at the end of the day is have we informed the public," said Loy. "This is as much an education challenge as an enforcement issue."