CLEAR Rattles

CLEAR (https://www.clearme.com/) is a commercial service promising accelerated way through airport security. Its existence is questionable, as airport security is done by a government agency, so why would a commercial entity charge extra money for getting people in front of the government queue? Well, after all we have the best democracy money can buy. But of course CLEAR is not the only one, as "status" travelers also have their Fast Track systems. CLEAR is like a subscription-based "faster than fast track" track.

A while back it was available only to US Passport holders, so despite United airlines giving me CLEAR membership for free, I could not make use of it. It let me create an account but then I got stuck in the process. And I forgot about it. Until recently I saw a $129 charge on my credit card for yearly membership. United clearly withdrew their offer of "zero cost CLEAR membership", and I had my account (despite not being able to use it), so they charged me for the continuation. 

I immediately requested a refund, which - through the interaction with their AI chatbot - was processed on the spot. BTW the CLEAR chatbot has been the best and most useful I have ever encountered. It really solved my problem even though we quarreled a bit: the bot was insisting I was eligible for the service while I did not want to listen to it, being focused on getting my money back. Only then I realized they now accept non-US passports, including my own Polish.

So I re-subscribed back. Then hit the wall of the CLEAR App being able only to scan a US passport. The app told me to apply for passport validation with a CLEAR representative at the airport.

A side technical note: biometric passports are cleverly designed. There is an Near Field Communication (NFC) chip that can be read with a phone app. It contains your photo, fingerprints and other data. But to prevent anyone from wirelessly scanning the data (imagine in a bus when you have the passport in a back pocket), the data is password-protected. And the passport is printed with machine-readable characters on the passport photo page. So when you open the passport to allow an OCR scanner to read the photo page, the machine gets the password that allows it to access the NFC biometric data. Simple and smart. The official US ESTA app does exactly that - takes a picture of the passport photo page and then over NFC reads the electronic data.

OK so at the airport I approached the CLEAR stuff and they did not want to even hear what I was saying, arguing that only US passports were supported. It took me a very good while to convince them to even try. I heard all sorts of excuses that "they" (CLEAR) were planning to expand but not yet available yada yada. 

Ultimately they tried - scanned my boarding pass and - magic - the machine welcomed me - to the astonishment of the CLEAR stuff. It scanned my passport, took a number of face photos, I agreed to a number of fine print paragraphs, and boom - I breezed through the security line. CLEAR clearly has to give clear instructions to the CLEAR personnel about their new rollouts. The airport stuff I met (and stunned) was speechless, with the only comment "What passport is it? Ah Poland... You learn something new everyday...".