A number of aviation groups have expressed concern about a new Transportation Security Administration "Security Directive" (SD) which would dramatically increase the number of people who would be required to undergo background checks, be fingerprinted and meet other standards necessary to qualify them for airport identification badges at hundreds of commercial airports across the country.
A spokesman for one trade association says that basically the SD would "require everybody inside the fence in the Aircraft Operations Area" to meet the new ID badge requirements, including contract employees with access to hangars, taxi and limousine drivers and even pilots and passengers getting on and off their own private aircraft. The association official, who has more than three decades of aviation industry experience, says the SD is an example of the federal government "making policy in a vacuum."
Source: Aviation Week