Fishing Frenzy

Since the date of September 11th 2001 a looming fear as captured the nation and the planet that more attacks were sure to come. Acting as a balance to the newly developed fears of that day the country as a whole chose to upgrade what we took for as security at airports to ensure such a tragedy would not occur again. Since then though; these same upgrades have turned into oppressive and despised security techniques simply to make it onto an airplane. It took a man by the name of Steven Brill to develop a business known as Clear Me to help airplane passengers get through these over the top procedures.

As inventive and creative of an idea it was Clear Me went bankrupt in 2009. The idea had failed and was poised to never return; until now. An individual by the name of Caryn Seidman-Becker along with her business partner Ken Cornick recently purchased 40% of the company and brought together a number of investors to pick up the other 60%.

The premise behind Clear Me is simple in its genius. For a fee of $199 a year subscribers are given the opportunity to jump to the front of security line at airports. It's debatable whether or not it's even really worth the money and the extensive application one must fill out for the service but for its previous 200,000 customers it most certainly was. I would imagine frequent fliers would see much benefit to such a system.

How it works is as simple as the idea itself. In order for Clear Me to be effective you'll have to follow their procedures and give up some vital information. You'll have to submit to a "high-tech bio-metric requirement" like an iris scan and a fingerprint identifier. It doesn't end there though as you will also need to offer up copies of a government issued ID and pass a Lexus Nexus background check. In return you will receive an encrypted Clear Me ID card and the privilege of passing through the CLEAR lane at participating airports.

Looking past the failures of Clear Me's first attempts at success Caryn Becker and Ken Cornick along with a slew of unnamed investors believe there is more room for growth in the industry. Although you still must be hassled by the TSA and the naked scanners the time saved for some is infinitely invaluable.