DHS doesn't build technology, their homegrown solution for verifying ID is hiring bodies to look at your ID with their eyeballs.
Building Clear with taxpayer dollars would have required outsourcing to a contractor anyway. And for what, to let rich people skip the line? Let them pay for their own system, and reduce the hiring burden for the TSA at the same time. Seems like a win-win.
... and in fact, CBP does have a biometric ID verification system, but it's for customs entry.
> And for what, to let rich people skip the line? Let them pay for their own system, and reduce the hiring burden for the TSA at the same time. Seems like a win-win.
Letting rich people skip the line is a loss.
Letting rich people opt out of the system poorer people have to use, reducing political support for having a properly functioning system for poor people is a loss.
Letting a private company profit from allowing people to “buy” back their time due to an underfunded government department is a loss.
It is losses all the way around unless you have an explicit goal of creating a more tiered society. All disregarding the notion that TSA/DHS is security theater and a jobs program at best, and a way to control the masses at worst.
Building Clear with taxpayer dollars would have required outsourcing to a contractor anyway. And for what, to let rich people skip the line? Let them pay for their own system, and reduce the hiring burden for the TSA at the same time. Seems like a win-win.
... and in fact, CBP does have a biometric ID verification system, but it's for customs entry.