A CLEAR Path to the Front of the Line

Summary

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Up First – A CLEAR Path to the Front of the Line

Date: August 31, 2025
Host: Ayesha Rascoe
Featured Guest: Kim Naderfehn Petersa (Producer), David Zipper (MIT), Donald Cohen (Author), Kyle McLaughlin (Clear VP), Brody Ford (Bloomberg), Michael Sandel (Harvard Professor)

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Overview

This episode of NPR's "Up First: The Sunday Story" looks at the rise of CLEAR, a private biometrics company operating in airport security lines, and explores the broader issue of private companies performing roles traditionally managed by the government in public spaces. Through personal stories, expert insights, and investigative journalism, the episode probes what happens when public and private interests collide in essential services like airport security, and how this interplay raises questions about equality, convenience, security, and the role of money in accessing public goods.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Frustration at Airport Security

• David Zipper's Story:
  • Experience: Was frustrated when CLEAR employees moved their customers to the front in the TSA PreCheck line, despite his own efforts to qualify for expedited screening (01:20–03:19).
  • Quote:

    "It's a line cutting privilege. That's all it's doing."
    —David Zipper (03:15)

  • Zipper wrote an article about his experience, which resonated widely as it articulated a growing public discomfort with CLEAR and the privatization of airport security (04:47–05:13).

2. The Rise of Privatization in Public Services

• Historical Context:
  • Kim Naderfehn Petersa explains privatization isn't new—it accelerated in the 1970s and has touched many sectors, from water to prisons (08:28).
  • Under the Trump administration, privatization is being actively promoted, including ideas to privatize elements of the USPS and cut government staff (07:46–08:28).

3. CLEAR’s Origin & Business Model

• Origin:
  • Launched after 9/11 as part of a government pilot program (Registered Traveler Program), designed to identify low-risk flyers and move them more quickly through security (09:02–10:09).
  • Initially provided background checks but shifted focus to biometrics and "line privilege" after losing access to do background checks and amid data security scandals (11:14–12:21).
• Relauch & Expansion:
  • After bankruptcy, bought by Wall Street investors in 2010 and repositioned as a biometrics platform for use far beyond airports—doctor’s offices, stadiums, daily life (12:31–13:20).
  • Quote from CLEAR VP:

    "Our vision has long been to take what we do in airports and scale that to something you're using multiple times a day ... to unlock a more frictionless experience."
    —Kyle McLaughlin (13:20)

4. Security Incidents and Criticism

• Major Security Incidents:
  • 2008: Lost laptop with unencrypted user data (11:14).
  • 2022: Passenger got through CLEAR under a false identity with ammunition in luggage; employee override cited (15:44–16:42).
  • 2023: Someone used a discarded boarding pass and was escorted without ID verification (15:44–16:42).
• CLEAR responded by retraining staff and deploying new tech with TSA cooperation (16:59).
  • Quote:

    "We overhauled all of our processes and developed a brand new technology product ... able to pivot and upgrade our entire platform to address these concerns..."
    —Kyle McLaughlin (16:59)

• TSA began requiring some CLEAR customers to show ID at random, which challenges CLEAR’s core value proposition (17:16–17:37).

5. Money, Inequity, and the Business of Speed

• Airports Profit from CLEAR:
  • Airports like LAX take a 12.5% revenue share; in 2023, earned $5 million from CLEAR (18:14–18:40).
  • Despite ambitions, most CLEAR revenue is from airports—their other partnerships are marginal (18:41).
• Competition from TSA PreCheck:
  • TSA PreCheck now offers similar convenience (expedited lines, biometrics) for far less ($80/5 years vs. ~$200/year for CLEAR), raising the question of whether CLEAR is still necessary (19:25).
  • Usage of CLEAR has dropped, but with potential TSA staffing cuts, the company could soon be needed more (19:25–20:27).
• E-Gates and Future Plans:
  • CLEAR rolling out E-gates that allow users to bypass TSA agents entirely—an innovation only for those who pay (20:33–21:10).

6. Moral and Philosophical Stakes

• Citizens vs. Customers:
  • Michael Sandel, Harvard, explains why line-cutting services like CLEAR evoke strong feelings—airport security is a public good, and "jumping the queue" with money erodes civic equality (22:13–24:14).
  • Quote:

    "What separates a customer from a citizen is that the customer can spend however much they want to buy the good or to buy faster service. Whereas to be a citizen is to accept certain inconveniences for the sake of the public good."
    —Michael Sandel (23:39)

• The proliferation of "pay-to-skip" models increases the social gap between those who can and cannot pay, even when core safety is preserved (24:14–24:41).

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Memorable Quotes

• David Zipper:

  "It's a line cutting privilege. That's all it's doing." (03:15)

• CLEAR Customer (overheard by Zipper):

  "I'm really sorry, I only joined Clear cause I frickin hate waiting in those lines." (04:34)

• Kyle McLaughlin (CLEAR VP):

  "We overhauled all of our processes and developed a brand new technology product in partnership with TSA... We were nimble enough that we were able to pivot and upgrade our entire platform to address these concerns inside of a year." (16:59)

• Michael Sandel (Harvard):

  "To be a citizen is to accept certain inconveniences for the sake of the public good... for certain aspects of life, we stand together, we have equal status." (23:39)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:20: David Zipper describes his frustrating experience in the TSA line
• 03:15: Zipper’s insight on “line cutting privilege”
• 09:02: History and government pilot program origins of CLEAR
• 11:14: Data breach and initial bankruptcy of CLEAR
• 13:20: CLEAR’s relaunch and vision from the VP
• 15:44–16:42: Description of 2022 and 2023 security incidents
• 16:59: VP’s explanation of company response to security breaches
• 18:14–18:40: Airports’ revenue share explained by Brody Ford
• 19:25: The decline in CLEAR’s usage and government’s role
• 20:33–21:10: Upcoming CLEAR e-gates and implications
• 22:13–24:14: Michael Sandel on citizenship, equality, and public goods

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Conclusion

The episode offers a nuanced look at the promise and pitfalls of privatizing public services. CLEAR is emblematic of a broader trend in American life: lines between public and private are blurring, with convenience and speed increasingly tied to one’s ability to pay. The discussion balances practical considerations—security, efficiency, revenue—with philosophical questions about fairness, equality, and the meaning of citizenship. As government services (like TSA PreCheck) become more efficient and accessible, the necessity and morality of parallel private systems like CLEAR come increasingly into question, especially under political environments favoring privatization.

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Transcript

[A]

You. I'm Aisha Rascoe, and you're listening to the Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. It's Labor Day weekend, and if you're lucky, you might be hanging out at the beach and napping or cooking out, you know, but maybe you aren't so lucky. Maybe, like so many on this peak travel weekend, you're standing in a security line at the airport, and you're feeling like some other line is moving faster than yours. It always feels like that. But you might be right, because all is not equal in airport security. That fact got us to thinking about what happens when private companies offer services and what we perceive perceive as a public space. So we asked producer Kim Naderfehn Petersa to tell us a story of how one company got a stake in airport security. Hi, Kim.

[B]

Hey, Aisha. Nice to be here.

[A]

Glad to have you here.

[B]

So we are going to start today at the airport security line with this guy.

[C]

My name is David Zipper. I am a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative. I focus on ways in which our transportation systems affect our lives.

[B]

And Zipper, he shared this story with me. It starts in mid December, 2022. He was flying out of Washington, D.C. and he had been standing in the TSA line for, like, 20 minutes. Long enough to get a little annoyed and to notice that at the front of the line, these employees from this company, Clear, they were causing a little bit of a holdup.

[C]

This person wearing a Clear shirt would say, please wait, and then they would usher somebody from the Clear line ahead of them. So it was annoying, to be honest.

[B]

And Zipper, he thought that he was in the fast lane. He had paid this small fee to the government, gone through the trouble of a background check, all to get into the TSA PreCheck line. And yet here were these people who were still cutting in front of him.

[C]

If you think of, like, those old cartoons from 30 years ago, I had, like, angry clouds darkening over my head. I was just sort of like, starting to fume.

[B]

And Aisha, I'm sure that you have seen Clear employees at the airport.

[A]

Yeah, I've seen them, but I never really understood how it all worked.

[B]

So Clear is basically a biometrics technology company. For about $200, instead of stopping by a TSA employee who looks at their photo ID, their customers stop by this pod to scan their face or fingers or eyes to verify their identity. And then they get escorted to the front of the TSA line by a clear employee. And when Zipper sees all of this, it makes him think this is really what people are paying for. It's not that they want biometrics.

[C]

It's a line cutting privilege. That's all it's doing.

[B]

So he starts ruminating about a little one man revolt.

[C]

I was thinking, I am not a customer of Clear, so why are their employees telling me what to do here?

[B]

And a few minutes later he's right at the front. And sure enough, this Clear employee asks.

[C]

Him to wait and ushers like a couple in front of me. And I say, no, actually that's, that's not okay. I don't have a relationship with you and you can't tell me what to do.

[B]

Oh.

[C]

What was interesting was the CLEAR employee was used to this and said, hey, I'm just doing my job. And I think the TSA person was also kind of used to this and was just like, you gotta wait a minute. So I just sort of swallowed it and I waited. And I'm fuming.

[A]

Nah, I mean, I totally get that. I mean it sucks when you're waiting in a line and you seeing other people jumping you. That's gonna make you heated.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think that we're talking about here are these like deep elementary school morals. They are baked very, very, very deep inside of us. And then this Clear customer who had just cut in front of him, she turns around and she says to Zipper.

[C]

I'm really sorry, I only joined Clear cause I frickin hate waiting in those lines. And I thought to myself, I need to just write about this. I've had it.

[B]

A few days later, he publishes this article for Slate magazine called Annoyed with Clear, the company that fast tracks its customers through airports. Get in line and the article, it.

[C]

Just takes off, sparked a ton of conversation online, got a ton of attention from readers because it seems to have like tapped into something that a lot of people were feeling viscerally but hadn't seen articulated.

[B]

And that's something that people were feeling. That's what we're going to explore today. Because in a way, this company embedded into America's airport security. It's this very literal physical representation of something that's actually happening across the country right now as private companies are inching their way into more and more public services.

[A]

Today on the Sunday story, a look at the tempting promises of privatization and what actually happens when public and private interests try to coexist. That's after the break.

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[A]

To the Sunday Story, and today we're talking privatization. I'm joined by Sunday Story producer Kim Naderfehn Peterson. So, Kim, under this Trump administration, the idea that businesses are more capable than government seems to run really deep. Yes, this is a conservative talking point, but they're really trying to put it into practice. You know, I'm thinking about DOGE and its attempts to shrink the federal government. And some officials have floated this idea of bringing some form of privatization to public entities, including the U.S. postal Service.

[B]

Yes, that's right. But this whole trend towards privatizing, I mean, you mentioned it, it's not a new idea. It really took hold in the 1970s. And since then we've seen more and more public services, from water systems to electric utilities, prisons and schools, fall into private hand. And the Trump administration, it's really just hitting the accelerator.

[A]

So tell me about Clear. Like, how did it end up in what is otherwise a government run security process?

[B]

So it all starts in this moment after 9 11, when the federal government started to tighten basically the entire airport security system. The government created a whole new agency, the Transportation Security Administration, and introduced this standard security process that all travelers now had to go through. Through. But of course, actually pulling off a system like that is really hard. And for a while, it was chaos. Blank along travelers were annoyed. So in 2004, the TSA invited private companies to test out a new approach to security in a series of nationwide pilots. The question that it was trying to understand was could it improve security overall by identifying low risk flyers ahead of time through things like background checks, and then move those people through security more quickly? The TSA launched it as the registered traveler program. And in 2005, Clear launched and became the biggest company in the program. Soon, things for the company were kind of chugging along. They were getting customers, raising money, and were in airports around the country.

[A]

So I mean, it sounds like this could be like an ideal version of a public private partnership because Clear is supposed to be innovating and it's supposed to be helping more people, like, move efficiently through security, right?

[B]

Yeah, that's right. I shared the story of Clear with Donald Cohen, the author of the Privatization of Everything, and he told me it's.

[C]

Totally fine to hire a private company to help figure something out.

[B]

So during COVID 9 11, these moments where there are huge needs, companies can be useful to develop new technologies quickly, especially under government oversight.

[C]

That's different from letting them be permanent parts of the system.

[B]

So sure, at this time, some people were already getting annoyed at all of this, but maybe that was a small price to pay for some new approaches in this moment where they're desperately needed.

[A]

So I mean, what you're, you're saying is like it was a trade off, but I mean, since we talking here, it's probably not the end of the story.

[B]

Yeah, no, there's a lot more to the story. And next things take kind of a wild turn. In 2008, the laptop of a Clear employee goes missing at San Francisco International Airport. And it has on it the unencrypted personal information of about 33,000 clear users. This is kind of a nightmare situation for a biometric company responsible for a lot of personal data. And what follows is really a media firestorm. Now, around the same time, the government ends the trusted Traveler program and removes Clear's ability to do background checks on flyers. So at this point, the value that Clear can offer it really shifts away from identifying low risk fires and more towards skip to the front of the line with Biometrics. All of this works together to contribute to a loss of trust from investors. And in 2009, the company goes bankrupt. Clear lanes disappear from airports, but obviously.

[A]

It is, as you're saying, it's back because, you know, I saw Clear booths at the airport just the other day. So how did they make this comeback?

[B]

So in 2010, two Wall street investors buy the company out of bankruptcy and relaunch it with a very different vision. This time with biometrics at its heart. This new version of Clear. It wants to use biometric technology for all kinds of things. So just imagine, go to the doctor's office, scan your finger and get your health records pulled up. Or maybe you go to a baseball game and then you scan your face on an app and get a beer because they know you're 21.

[A]

Oh my goodness.

[B]

The whole idea is like, we want to show up 12 times in your day, not just at the airport, but like really be embedded in your life. I asked Kyle McLaughlin about this. He's the executive vice president of aviation at Clear, and I wanted to understand through his eyes the promise of clear 2.0.

[F]

In a world where cybersecurity and fraud and identity theft are becoming more and more rampant. Our vision has long been to be able to take what we do in the airports and scale that to something that you're using multiple times a day to be able to confirm that you are you in a privacy centric way that's always opt in. And in a world where you're only sharing the core elements of your identity that you absolutely need to, to unlock a more frictionless experience.

[A]

Well, you know, I mean, the frictionless experience, that's definitely, you know, some corporate speak, but I get it. Like, you want to move very fast.

[B]

Yes, that is the company's pitch. So after my call with McLaughlin, I stayed in touch with the communications people at Clear because I wanted to run his critique by them that Clear is actually just a fancy line cutting service. And they told me that really doesn't capture the full picture of what Clear offers. As they see it, Clear creates just like a faster moving line. Their biometric verification is faster, they argue, than a person manually checking an id. And because we're dealing with machines here, they can have lots of pods going at the same time. So it's like speeding through the self checkout lane at the grocery store.

[A]

But obviously, you know, the concern with all of this is always, are there security issues? Right. Is your data, which is now linked to your body, is it safe?

[B]

Yeah. People have expressed concerns about this, a private company having all of this personal data. The DNA company 23andMe, recently went bankrupt. And in that process, a lot of people were worried about what would happen to their personal data. That's also a question that people have about clear. Kyle McLaughlin, the VP of clear, he said that the company has strict policies to keep people's data safe and that it never sells or rents customer data to anybody.

[F]

You are in control of your data. You are in control of what is stored, what is shared, and ultimately have the ability to modify or delete that at any point in time.

[B]

And he says the company is financially healthy.

[F]

So I think that the chances of us going bankrupt are relatively slim.

[A]

Okay, so then let's talk about security. Like, what's been the track record there since the company relaunched?

[B]

So clear has had two other security incidents that were pretty widely covered. In 2022, someone made it through Clear, who was flying under a false identity and later turned out to have ammunition in his luggage. According to reporting from Bloomberg, this was able to happen because Clear used to have this process that when users first registered with the company, if there was some mismatch between somebody's appearance and their id, that then the computer would flag it and an employee could override that flag, basically say, like, it's fine, this person is who they say they are. Which introduced some vulnerability for human error. And then in 2023, somebody grabbed a boarding pass out of the trash and was able to make it through CLER's screening. In this case, reporting shows that a CLEER employee escorted them to the TSA desk without verifying their identity at all.

[A]

Well, I mean, that sounds pretty bad.

[B]

Yeah, it raises a lot of questions. So I asked Kyle McLaughlin about this. He told me that these incidents were the results of human errors. And so they addressed those people individually and then retrained their entire staff nationally.

[F]

And most importantly, we overhauled all of our processes and developed a brand new technology product in partnership with tsa. And I think that really highlights the benefit of public private partnership. We were nimble enough that we were able to pivot and upgrade our entire platform to address these concerns inside of a year.

[B]

But these security incidents, they had a ripple effect. In 2023, the TSA introduced new rules and said that when some Clear customers get to the front of the TSA line, they will now have to show their ID to the TSA agents.

[A]

Doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose of the Clear screening?

[B]

I mean, yeah, like the company's whole promise is that they are going to speed you through security by doing biometric identity verification instead of somebody looking at your id. But I will say this TSA requirement, it only applies to a certain percent of people who are going through Clear, not everybody. So some people could still sail through.

[A]

So why would airports want to keep Clear if it does seem to add all of this frustration and complication to the security process for tsa, the government, and for regular flyers?

[B]

Well, they make money off of it. Airports take a cut of the revenue that Clear earns. To learn more about the details of this, I talked to Brody Ford. He's a journalist at Bloomberg, and he did an investigation into Clear last year. Ford found that LAX, for example, makes about 12.5% of what Clear earns at LAX. So in 2023, that was about $5 million.

[A]

That's a lot of money.

[B]

Yeah. These airports and the company, they're making a lot, servicing just this tiny little slice of airport inconvenience. The company is now worth more than $4 billion, which is bigger than some airlines like JetBlue. But if you remember Claire's ambitions for its relaunch, that it was going to become this big biometrics platform that you would interact with throughout your day, Ford's reporting showed that its other partnerships, like doctor's offices and stadiums, they are not significant sources of revenue for the company. So at this point, it really is this company focused on the airport security line.

[A]

So, Kim, where does all of this leave us?

[B]

So one thing that I think is really relevant to the future of Clear is that in the last few years, the government TSA has really upped its game these days. TSA PreCheck. I have to say, it looks a lot like early Clear background checks, expedited screening, even biometric verification. But it only costs about $80 every five years. So one question is, do we still need a company like Clear to speed people through airport security? Now with the expedited government line and the expedited private line, these days, lots of airports have three security lines. And some Clear customers have been complaining that Clear lines aren't the fastest at some airports. Ford's reporting shows that the usage of Clear has gone down. But under the new Trump administration, things could really turn around for the company. In May, it proposed a budget cut of $247 million to TSA's staff, which could mean that The TSA will need a hand from a private partner.

[A]

So in that case, Clear might be kind of perfectly positioned.

[B]

Yeah, this could all bode really well for the company. Clear also just made a big announcement that it's implementing E gates at several airports, which means that instead of stopping at their usual pod, some Clear customers can now walk right up to this gate, scan their face and their boarding pass, and then sail right into the zone where travelers in their bags get physically scanned. No more stopping by a TSA agent. Which looks like another sign that under the Trump administration, the TSA might be friendlier towards Clear. But, of course, this innovation, it's just for Clear customers.

[A]

So there's still this underlying issue of if you have the money, you can speed through this, like, mandated government security process.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I do think that that inequity is really what's at the heart of this story. It's not some terrible example of privatization gone wrong. People have stayed safe, and that is really what's at stake here. The TSA has clearly done a good job of regulating, but still, there's this feeling that Clear evokes for people. That zipper experienced when he got cut in line, that nerve that his article seemed to touch. And I wanted to understand what that feeling was getting at. So I reached out to Michael Sandel. He is kind of a big brain in this space. He's a professor of political philosophy at Harvard and the author of the Moral Limits of Markets. And when I asked him to help me understand what that nerve might be, he put on his philosopher hat.

[G]

Well, let me address it by posing the larger question. I think that this raises the question is, when should you be able to pay to jump the queue? And the answer to that question, I think, for most of us depends what people are lining up for. Think of an emergency room in a hospital, and they generally operate by triage. If there's a person there with a sore throat and there's a person there with bullet wounds, even if the person with the sore throat is willing to pay extra, they don't get to cut in line ahead of the person with bullet wounds. And in the case of airport security, we're talking about a public good. And that's, I think, fundamentally why we bridle at the idea that a private company is allocating access to the security line.

[B]

As he sees it, this kind of cue is meant to be a public experience, not to be bought. But when people do pay to jump it, he says something kind of big shifts. Instead of citizens, they become customers.

[G]

And what separates a customer from a citizen is that the customer can spend however much they want to buy the good or to buy faster service. Whereas to be a citizen is to accept certain inconveniences for the sake of the public good. It's to accept the that for certain aspects of life, we stand together, we have equal status.

[B]

And Sandel added that when money enters the picture, that equal status, it's no longer there, which means that the distance between people, between the haves and the have nots in more and more places, it grows. And I think that's the kind of thing that we all feel.

[A]

Kim, you know, thank you so much for giving us all of this information and taking us on this journey and.

[B]

Yeah. A journey without having to fly.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, just telling us about these private companies and public services.

[B]

Yeah. Thank you, Aisha, for having me.

[A]

This episode was produced by Kim Naderfehn Petersa and edited by Jenny Schmidt. Fact checking by Greta Pittenger, sound design consulting by Brendan Baker, mastering by Robert Rodriguez. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo, Justine Yan, and our senior supervising producer, Lianna Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Upverse is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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