QUEUE-JUMPING.(The Talk of the Town)(Verified Identity Pass Inc.)

This time of year, the newspapers come full of terrifying pictures: travellers camped out on grubby airport carpeting; epic traffic jams; deranged hordes descending on shopping malls (and trampling slowpokes). Long lines have a way of bringing out the entitled executive--glancing about with clenched teeth and a sigh of disdainful superiority--in everyone.

There are, of course, methods of circumventing some hassles, each accompanied by its own tinge of guilt (and glee). Perhaps, at the lunch counter, there is that discreet sign offering speedier service to those who order pre-made sandwiches. (Who cares if nobody else is bold enough to cut to the front? You're in a hurry!) For Disney World visitors, a wave of the Fast Pass is all that's required to bypass the two-hour line for Space Mountain. And soon, for an annual fee of eighty dollars, a set of fingerprints, and an iris scan, an air traveller will be able to insert a Clear card into an A.T.M.-like kiosk and enjoy express passage through airport security, in the form of a private cardholders' line. You'll still need to pass through a metal detector, but a Clear card is likely to spare you the indignity of being "wanded," as Steven Brill, the program's creator, and the author of "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," said the other day.

Brill, who is best known as the founder of Court TV, wears a banker's collar and cuffs. He is now the C.E.O. of Verified Identity Pass, Inc., makers of the Clear card, and, as he explained, while sitting in his office above Radio City Music Hall, any similarity between the initials of his company's name and the familiar shorthand for Very Important Person is purely coincidental. "I can prove this to you," he said. "We started out, and it was called Verified Identity Card, but 'V.I.C.' just looked awful. And then it was something with Verified Identity--I forget, but it had a 'D,' 'V.I.D.' And my two daughters said it looked like 'V.D.,' the logo did. So we struggled. There's nothing in our literature that says 'V.I.P.' "

In any event, the company, whose services are bound to appeal to the very important and the self-important alike, was born of Brill's experience in writing "After," and recognizing that what he called "security bottlenecks" were inevitable in the post-9/11 world. On his way to interview John Ashcroft, for instance, Brill waited twenty minutes at the front desk of the Justice Department, only to be asked to show his driver's license. He felt that the experience was both unpleasant and ...