Clear exposes customer passport numbers in SFO security breach
A laptop with personal information including drivers license and passport numbers of up to 33,000 customers in the Clear airport security-pass program was discovered missing from a locked room at San Francisco International Airport. It has since mysteriously been returned, and there's no word of any security breach as of yet. Still, the laptop's data was apparently unencrypted, though Steven Brill, CEO of Verified Identity Pass, the company which runs the Clear program, said the personal information was behind "two levels of password protection."
Yes, that Steven Brill — the one who founded CourtTV, Brill's Content and dotbomb casualty Contentville. VIP largely arose from Brill's contention that a private company institute a national ID program in his Newsweek column, where according to Slate:
Brill had the keen insight that it would take an outsider to make the security pass happen. He had no faith that the government could pull off something like it.
Now the Trasportation Security Administration has grounded Clear from signing up new customers until more robust data encryption is put into place. (Photo by Getty/David Paul Morris)