The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) commends the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection for its efforts to ensure national security through effective maintenance and use of terrorist watchlists. The Subcommittee is holding a hearing today on “Ensuring America’s Security: Cleaning Up the Nation’s Watchlists.”

The hearing demonstrates the Subcommittee’s commitment to simultaneously protecting national security interests and the freedom to travel, which is fundamental to the prosperity of American businesses. Commercial aviation passengers wrongly placed on terrorist watchlists or matched to watchlist names through “false positives” face uncertainty and lost productivity every time they travel, as well as significant time-consuming challenges in navigating the appeals process.

“In a recent NBTA survey, 40 percent of respondents indicated that their travelers are repeatedly subjected to secondary screening at airports, and many who have sought redress through the current system have not yet received clearance,” said Bill Connors, CTC, NBTA Executive Director and COO. “NBTA therefore recognizes that the implementation of an effective redress system for travelers who are unnecessarily flagged for secondary screening is not only crucial for providing fairness and justice to these individuals, but will make travel more convenient, and will increase productivity for business travelers and their companies.”

An effective appeals process would improve efficiency travelers and enhance security by making government watch lists more accurate and reliable. To meet those goals, NBTA heartily commends the unanimous passage of H.R. 4179--the Fair, Accurate, Secure and Timely or FAST Redress Act-- by the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the strong, bipartisan support under which the same legislation, S. 3392, was recently introduced in the Senate. The FAST Redress Act would set up a dedicated Office of Appeals and Redress within the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate and streamline the process of appeal for individuals who believe they have been wrongly placed on a government watch list and consequently remanded to secondary screening or denied boarding. Additionally, successful redress petitions would be shared with all government agencies responsible for checking individuals against government watchlists so that individuals are not required to go through multiple applications with different federal agencies.

The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) is the world’s premier business travel and corporate meetings organization. NBTA and its regional affiliates - NBTA Asia Pacific, NBTA Canada, NBTA Mexico and NBTA USA - serve a network of more than 15,000 business travel professionals around the globe with industry-leading events, networking, education & professional development, research, news & information, and advocacy. NBTA members, numbering more than 4,000 in 30 nations, are corporate and government travel and meetings managers, as well as travel service providers. They collectively manage and direct more than US$200 billion of global business travel and meetings expenditures annually on behalf of more than 10 million business travelers within their organizations.