No-fly list complaints site launched

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Travelers whose names mistakenly appear on the U.S. no-fly list can now apply to have their good name repaired. The U.S. Department for Homeland Security (DHS) has unveiled a new system that allows travelers to complain if they have been wrongly refused transit, been detained or subject to additional security checks.

Previously, those who have had the same name as someone one the U.S Federal Government Watch List could be refused transit and had no recourse of complaint.

The Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, dubbed DHS TRIP, is billed as a voluntary one-stop process allowing people to seek a review if they have been wrongly delayed or prevented from boarding a plane or barred from entering or leaving the United States.

"We're making travel more efficient and secure by offering a convenient redress process," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

"This is a win-win program. Eliminating false-positives makes the travel experience more pleasant for legitimate visitors, and it frees up our front-line personnel to apply even greater scrutiny of those individuals who truly present safety and security risks."

Travel security procedures tightened after the September 11 attacks have become a bane for more than 31,000 innocent people each year. Victims of the rigid rules have included babies, U.S. lawmakers, including Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and the musician Yusef Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens.

The DHS TRIP program will require travelers who want a review to enter personal details, including their travel experience, on an online inquiry form. The form is then forwarded to a centralized office for review requests and sent on to the relevant DHS agency. The U.S. government estimates that each traveler would spend about an hour filling out and submitting the form.

In an early embarrassment for the DHS, users of the new complaint form found that it did not operate via a secure link when it was launched on February 20.

The shortcomings were first highlighted by Chris Soghoian, who had previously exposed airport security lapses with his homemade boarding pass generator Web site.

The Bush administration has been under fire from rights advocates who accuse it of illegally using personal data to formulate risk assessments on individual travelers.

Concerns will be compounded as the site has been outsourced to a private company and continues to use cookies, a practice that runs against U.S. federal policy, and could lead to sensitive personal details being kept on a shared computer.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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