Blundering TSA Needs a Mid-Course Correction
In this post-9/11 world, Americans would not argue that the government should do everything possible to protect them from harm. However, an agency tasked with that mission has tallied a frightening number of failures in nearly every area of its mandate and is in need of more significant reform.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was one of the principal homeland security responses to the 9/11 attacks. While TSA is supposed to protect highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, and ports, its most visible responsibility is protecting America’s airports. The TSA employs approximately 47,000 agents just to screen passengers and luggage.
Even with a fiscal year 2015 budget of more than $7.2 billion, ABC News reported on June 1, 2015 that screeners failed to detect mock explosives in 95 percent of test cases. For example, an undercover agent snuck an explosive through a checkpoint by taping it to his back, even after the magnetometer sounded an alarm and he was patted down by an agent. The acting head of TSA was “reassigned” as a result of this damning report. However, rearranging the deck chairs at the agency will probably not be effective. This very same security failure occurred in 2013 when undercover agents snuck fake bombs into Newark Airport.
On top of these security lapses, TSA has wasted taxpayer money on defensive technology. In 2012, the agency’s purchase of new body scanners caused a public outcry due to their invasive view of every passenger. The scanners were scrapped in January 2013, but an investigation in May 2015 discovered that the unopened, unused scanners are being auctioned off to the general public, in some cases for just $10. The scanners’ original cost to taxpayers was $160,000 each for a total of $40 million. In the wake of this $40 million mistake, the agency hiked security fees.
Even when TSA adopts the type of behavioral threat detection that has proven to be very effective in Israel and other countries, it still fails. Since 2007, the Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program has received $900 million in funding. However, a November 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that just 0.6 percent of the 61,000 passengers screened using the program were arrested for a crime. What’s worse, the system is tremendously complicated. TSA devised a scoring system of 94 indicators that agents must watch for in a typical 30 second conversation. The former security director of El Al, Israel’s state airline, derided the SPOT program as “worthless.”
TSA does not perform much better when it comes to the luggage it inspects. In June 2015, the agency paid out $3 million on 15,000 claims from the past five years where TSA agents lost, broke, or even stole the personal belongings of passengers. This is a shared problem for both small and large airports. The number one offender was New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, but even small airports like Reno/Tahoe International settled a similar number of claims as Chicago’s Midway or Detroit.
Another distressing report concerned TSA’s responsibility to screen the agency’s own ranks for terrorism connections. On June 4, 2015, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General (IG) reported that 73 current TSA workers or contractors had alleged links to terrorism, but were still hired. The IG also determined that TSA’s employee records “contained potentially incomplete or inaccurate data, such as an initial for a first name and missing social security numbers.” If this issue continues unresolved, the report concluded, “TSA risks credentialing and providing unescorted access to secure airport areas for workers with potential to harm the nation’s air transportation system.”
It is no surprise that as story after story of TSA’s incompetence comes to public light, the agency has lost a tremendous amount of credibility. Comedy Central’s South Park parodied TSA agents inspecting Americans before they use the bathroom (and failing at that as well).
Beyond the satire, TSA’s chronic failures not only waste millions of dollars each year, but also put Americans at a higher risk of harm. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) got to the root of the problem in a June 8, 2015 USA Today column: “Washington has a lazy and destructive habit of building bureaucracies instead of setting strategies.” Sasse’s statement matches CAGW’s position on TSA. On June 30, 2005, CAGW President Tom Schatz declared, “Turning over airport security to a massive federal bureaucracy was a wasteful endeavor from the start.”
These observations pinpoint the fundamental flaw with the TSA: It is a gigantic, monopolistic federal bureaucracy. One possible solution to TSA’s protracted series of blunders is to allow each individual airport to handle its own security. The CATO Institute’s Doug Bandow wrote, “Entrust airport security to airports, which can integrate screening with other aspects of facility security and adjust to local circumstances.” This sort of strategy would also create competition between security firms for the best security measures. This is not a radical concept. A vast majority of Europe’s airports as well as Canada’s have been private for years.
In the U.S., 19 airports have now opted out of TSA screenings and contracted private airport security firms through the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). One of the largest SPP airports is San Francisco International (SFO). A 2011 study by the House Committee on Transportation found that if America’s 35 largest airports were to operate as efficiently as SFO, taxpayers could save up to $1 billion over five years.
It is clear that while well-intentioned, America’s experiment with a massive federal aviation security agency has resulted in spending more taxpayer dollars to make Americans less safe. Congress should reverse both of these trend lines as soon as possible.
