TSA: Living on Borrowed Time?
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year. At TSA headquarters alone, there are 3,526 staff whose average salary tops $106,000. And while the TSA has gotten very good at groping airline passengers and undressing them with full body scans, the organization has yet to prevent a single terrorist attack. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation released last spring revealed that at least 17 known terrorists have been able to pass through TSA security totally unhindered.
“GAO [also] found that TSA completely bungled the development and deployment of a behavior detection program for the nation’s airports,” says Congressman John L. Mica (R-FL), who helped write the Aviation and Transportation Security Act in the wake of 9/11.
That law gave birth to the TSA. Now, Congressman Mica is spearheading the effort to partially disband the agency he helped create, seeking to replace TSA screeners with private contractors. Is this the beginning of the end of the TSA?
Let’s hope so.
A letter has gone out from Congressman Mica to one hundred of the nation’s busiest airports, urging each of them to consider switching over to private contractors for security screening. Thanks to an “opt-out” provision written into the Act, these contracts are a viable alternative to the current federal screening workforce provided by TSA. Eighteen private contracts have already been awarded to various U.S. airports and heliports, working efficiently and safely for over five years.
In December of 2005, the Sioux Falls Regional Airport in South Dakota became the first airport to exercise this right. TSA continues to maintain oversight for private screeners, providing the equipment and training on screening machines, and provides airports with a Federal Security Director, or FSD, to oversee operations. What this means is that the primary element of change for an airport with a private security contract is simply the attitude of its employees. For-profit corporations tend to have friendlier — or at least less hostile — employees.
This news has caused many flyers to ask a simple question. Is happiness at the airport synonymous with safety? It certainly can be. Though it ranks among the top terrorist targets in the world, one rarely hears about security screening nightmares at Ben Gurion International Airport — which brings flyers to a more important question. Why haven’t more U.S. airports already considered using private contractors?
Israel — the nation that sets the gold standard for aviation security — uses mostly private security at Ben Gurion. Many El Al Airlines employees are trained by Israel’s version of the Secret Service, but they work for a private corporation, not the government of Israel.
These screeners don’t have to act tough, they are tough, employing screening techniques based on psychological and behavioral profiling. Henrich Ditze, a German television cameraman who regularly flies out of Ben Gurion, shared his experience with Fox News. Security officers always ask him “lots of questions,” he explained. “They’re checking everything. … They look very seriously into your eyes. … It can make you nervous even if you don’t have to hide anything.”
Switching to Amtrack Security? So there’ll be what, 67,000 employees providing security for the 3 people that take the train? Sounds like a government position to me.
Amtrak’s ridership is over 28 Million Passengers a year and has increased 4.3% in the first half of 2010 (end of year 2010 numbers not available yet). Three passengers? Take a trip on a Northeast Regional Train to Washington DC or the Empire Builder to Seattle and notice how many seats are left empty. Not many, if any at all.
I guess TSA doesn’t want people to use Amtrak to avoid the long security lines. Yea, let’s drive passengers away from Amtrak like you have for the airlines. What’s next? On-ramp checkpoints so that you can’t drive without be groped?
The security concerns for planes and trains are vastly different. One can’t hijack a train and plow it into the White House. And there are thousands of miles of track that can easily be sabotaged. No need for a passenger to place a bomb on the train itself tho it could be done.
TSA can’t leave the scene any faster. It’s existence is the result of President Bush’s unfortunate decision to go against the idea of smaller government. The government should hire contractors who actually know what security is, rather than people who are there checking your luggage and then some because…it’s a job.
Once its members become part of SEIU or the AFL/CIO or some other thug-like union, it will be impossible to get rid of the TSA, especially in a heavily Democratic state. Just another example of how the Federal government does most things wrong. And liberals want the same people who gave you Janet Napolitano and the TSA to run our health insurance? God help us!
I wonder why you didn’t mention the over $81,000 in donations given to Rep. Mica by the private security firms that would take over from the federal officers?
A simple oversight, I’m sure.
You also didn’t mention that this restructuring will change none of the problems you listed. The only people who would be directly affected would be the uniformed officers. All those people making over $100,000 per year? Nothing……
I’ve yet to see anyone mention the person responsible for the pat down policy that has everyone enraged: John Pistole, the TSA administrator.
You, and everyone else, seem to focus on the one group that is not allowed to defend itself. I wonder why??
A simple oversight, I’m sure.
And you wonder why those officers are ill-tempered.
Good points.
We must be careful what we wish for. The terrorists won’t be going away. The most excellent pre-flight screening security procedures of the Israelis will also meet resistance from the self-important. “Don’t you know who I am?”, etc.
The vital key will be in the training of these new inspectors.
One on point, most citizens are are stalwart and would overcome any likey
terrorist on a plane, train or bus.
The TSA is clearly myopic and into theatre for PR intent for its survival.
What one might call the “Back End” of airline security operations is left
to the airlines themselves.
The recent flap over videos by the pilot in SFO demonstrate the flaws
in the TSA their approach to really protecting anyone.
If the TSA were serious about the job, why have they not closed
all the possible holes in security by this time ???
And just why have they been flummoxed with efforts by reporters passing devices under their noses onto planes ???
Time for some fresh air.
Are you implying a quid pro quo because the rep took campaign donations from the companies? Well then look at your Obozo and his donations many of which have never seen the light of day. So shove it up your a$$.
I guess your clairvoyancy allows you to know that private companies would do a worse job than the gov’t in protection us. In your world the government always does a better job than private industry. Yep, moron.
God knows where you are going with the Pistole reference…
Hey, Clay, leave.
Nice……
A little veiled profanity, a little wrong assumption, and top it all off with a little threatening censorship.
Are you one of those libtard trolls I’ve been hearing about? You’re obviously governemnt educated.
I was also. Fortunately, I got out before Carter and the Dept of Ed could reach me. You weren’t so lucky, huh?
Bush’s decision to allow the formation of the TSA was when I stopped trusting him.
The people who are not being allowed to defend themselves are we citizens. We are not allowed to defend ourselves from gross and perverse indignities to person forced upon us in order to travel by common carrier.
Rosa Parks had it easier! She, at least, got a hearing. She at least got respect for herself and all other citizens like her. Against the TSA from Pistole on down to the tens of thousands of perverts who watch the naked scanners all day long for pay and the perverts who feel up the genitals and breasts. Perverts. That’s right I said it. Because it’s true.
Yes, you folks in the TSA who do these line jobs are perverts. Worse, in a way, than the people (also perverts) who work in the porno industry. The porno perverts at least keep their perverted acts to themselves and not force every citizen seeking passage somewhere into their depravity.
As security, wholly ineffective. You haven’t stopped any terrorists. You have let terrorist through. Worse than ineffective, for by making sexual assault common, they may be creating a cultural mindset of victimhood, submission. Just what the terror of Islam wants.
Yet it is we citizens, we that remain with self-dignity, who have stopped every terrorist incident that has been stopped. LET US DO OUR JOB. We can, we have and we will keep ourselves safe if we can get an obnoxious lout and thug of a sexually perverted Federal agency out of the way.
TSA — GO AWAY!
bvw, beware of hyperbole. Not that I disagree with your main point but the groping of genitalia can technically be non-sexual in nature. Yes, there are exceptions, but when you attempt to hang the “pervert” tag on TSA staff you are implying they do the groping/viewing, etc., for sexual arousal and/or gratification purposes. You may think it’s true, but I don’t, and I doubt many reasonable people do, either. Exaggerating or miss-stating one’s case tends to destroys it. You make good points, otherwise.
Do you want some TSA guy groping your 9-year old daughter?
Check the TSA top brass at the local level and you’ll find most are those who already collect a federal pension. Retired SS and FBI are everywhere.
Want to bet the HQ 3500-plus are also double-dipping? Count on it!
So, what different procedures will these new private contractors try out that will be so much more effective than those the much maligned TSA is attempting to implement with so much resistance?
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if all of these new private contractors needing thousands of new employees started hiring laid-off former TSA employees? Where are all of these new contractors going to find all of these newly needed skilled employees, hopefully with previous screening experience……?
Charlie, closer checking reveals without extensive additional training most current TSA staff would be unqualified to perform “El Al” style screening. That suggests hires from other labor pools – maybe a few of the folk now on quasi-permanent unemployment insurance status?
You might argue privately employed screeners would make no significant difference in the inspection culture environment, but many years experience in CA comparing DMV [public] and Auto Club [private] vehicle registration service, which are identical in process and cost, would prove you wrong.
Bill,
…..you make a good point, but my idea is that “people are people” and while new training based on a different approach hopefully might improve the check-in experience, terrorism itself isn’t going away…and other than perhaps better manners and no “groping”, which I’d object to, and I’d quickly choose the x-ray, I had in the background the idea of the criticism in th’ media of the private security contractors in Central Asia. The differenece is only in degree and circumstance. It’ll be only a matter of time before the loud protestations about these new screeners will be shouted around airports. Where their paychecks are printed will make no difference.
Privatization of the screening process won’t change human nature and the need to find wires/explosive in body crevices.
Also,it seems to me that the current irritation aimed at the inept TSA screeners should instead be channeled towards better training. We should immunize ourselves against the organized intimidation from such as the A.C.L.U and C.A.I.R. and make a pleas for common sense and rationality in this time of war.
Part of the problem we have is that we Americans, in spite of the horror of 11Sept01 remain in some sort of “denial” that we actually are in a killing war against civilians wherever they may be found. Aircraft will remain tempting targets.
I submit this extended comment thinking that my 79 years of age and memories of WW2 and my living in South East Asia during the 1960′s tell me that we Americans must continually re-learn terrible experiences, we have no interest in precedent or even recent history.
Geez, Charlie your moral relativism is really overwhelming. So NOBODY could do the job better than a bunch of affirmative action lackeys? Is this the central point of your argument against privitization of airport security?
All you govenment teet hangerson please get a life…perhaps in Cuba or Venezula.
…Hello, blotto….
Don’t jump to such conclusions, I don’t.
…Cheers…
“A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation released last spring revealed….”
So the GAO is trustworthy after all? Better tell Boehner.
Joseph, might want to check your “narrative” closer. Wasn’t it the CBO and not the GAO that Boehner dissed?
Yeh, the TSA is a joke, but let’s be rational.
TSA isn’t the problem. The problem is that too many otherwise intelligent citizens acquiesce to the marxists’ PC strategy that is designed to immobilize the country and lay the groundwork to complete their coup.
Islamic terrorism can be stopped as a major global issue in one day. All it requires is a few conversations with the maniacs in Tehran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And it won’t cost a dime either since our marxist politicians have nothing better to do anyway.
Islamic terrorism can be stopped as a major global issue in one day. All it requires is a few conversations with the maniacs in Tehran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
I’m very curious to hear what specific message our politicians can deliver to the maniacs in Tehran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that would end Islamic terrorism? The only two things that I could picture working so quickly and effectively would be a plausible threat that their capitals would be nuked immediately if any act of terrorism occurred or an abject surrender of the United States to the Islamists. I can’t believe you’d want the latter and the former seems unlikely too due to plausible deniability: Ahmedinejad, for example, can defy anyone to prove that he launched any terrorist attack against the US.
So what do you have in mind?
Exactly what they said to Pakistan in late 2001 that persuaded them to support the war in Afghanistan and give up Dr Khan.
Hire these guys: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12124802
Yes. Experience has proven time and again that alert passengers provide the safest flights. But since they (we) can’t be counted on to vote for incumbents, we will never be officially approved.
Getting Israel-class security in US airports will be hard to come by, and going “private” is no guarantee of better security. Where, after all, is the pool of qualified personnel? Israel’s private security firms all rely on those who have served in the military, and the screeners are highly trained in behavioral psychology. Here we’re more likely to get newly laid off TSA screeners and folks who tired of slinging burgers. Why aren’t we looking to those with police and military backgrounds?
Whoever is in charge, they’ll still be following flawed TSA security protocols (most of which are now public), affirmative hiring of Muslim agents, and “special consideration” for Muslim travelers. (Can’t discriminate, except when we do.) Pray for this country.
You and I both wish it was hyperbole but it is not.
A TSA agent is not a medical professional. Four years of college, five-six years of medical school, internship, etc — the TSA does NOT have anything like the training a medical doctor has.
Good doctors and medical professionals are as modest as they can be while performing a check of genitals or breasts, or buttocks. They always have clear medical reasons why they make a check. A patient is NOT compelled to undergo such a check, and may — and do — object at any time, and are treated most respectfully when they do so.
What professional does come close? A Prison Guard. But prison guards do check every inmate on his every trip to and from a cell. The circumstances for such detailed checks are very limited.
We are not criminals. There is no good reason for these lewd searches, and the people giving them do so in full view of others, and there is no objection that can be made without — as cases have shown — suffering arrest and even a most forcible arrest.
This is profane, the people performing it perverts. It is a perversion of what is a well-ordered society.
Prison guards themselves tend to become psychologically or morally exhausted or some sink themselves into perversions by these kind of invasive searches, that is simply the nature of sex. The human sex drive is designed to overcome nearly all but the strongest and well-trained of persons. Prison guards have a difficult job — see http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5510659 Not all make it through to retirement whole, unbroken.
What is the long-term effect of performing these perverse searches and naked scans on those performing them? My bet? Not good.
Stop being perverts now.
Been there, done that. Including at Centennial where that article was partly set. Civilians have no idea what it is like, and tend to run away terrified when they get a hint. One of the ways that we know that you have become a Blueshirt, is when you start telling jokes. We tend to laugh at things that horrify civilians. A sick sense of humor is an excellent survival mechanism.
It is one of the hardest fields in law enforcement [Correctional personnel in Colorado are Commissioned Peace Officers with arrest powers for any crime anywhere in the state.]
I worked AD SEG Max for years. This is the state equivalent of the Federales‘s Supermax down the road in Florence, with the worst of the worst inmates. I know what it is like to do good, thorough searches. And I know the absolute necessity of doing so. While I have not been shot or stabbed on the job [beat up is another matter]; I have had members of my crew shot with smuggled and home-made firearms, and/or stabbed and slashed. One of the things I am proudest of in my career is that I was able to send all of my crew home to their family alive at the end of every shift, and we never left one of our own behind.
I know searches. Let me say this carefully.
If a Correctional Officer searched an AD SEG Max inmate, short of a strip search, in the way that minimum wage TSA goons search innocent citizens going about their lawful affairs, they would be immediately suspended pending certain disciplinary action and Federal courts would be involved under a number of court rulings. We are trained in the standards that the courts will allow. If you breach those standards, you are personally liable for civil and criminal penalties.
Incidentally, about those strip search porn machines they put people through. If you deliberately expose a person to ionizing radiation, by law the operator of the machine needs to be a licensed x-ray tech. Not only because of knowing how to aim the thing, but also because ALL x-ray machines go out of adjustment as far as focus and beam intensity; especially when heavily used. An x-ray tech can recognize when this happens and shut it down. I rather doubt if any of Napolitano’s goons are licensed x-ray techs. Otherwise, they would be making several times their minimum wage, in far better surroundings.
I have family across the country, love the Pacific Northwest, and want to visit Ireland and Britain. But I am NOT going to fly commercially in this country until after passengers are treated like free citizens of a free country again. I will drive or train to Canada and fly out of there to visit Europe if I get the chance.
Subotai Bahadur
Excellent point about the need for radiation machines to be operated and regularly tested by licensed technicians for proper calibration. Children are most at risk for illness due to long-term overexposure of radiation.
And let’s not forget that the TSA workers do not always change gloves after patdowns- another health risk and potential violation of health codes.
Our representatives in congress should be focusing on these potential dangers to our health. If laws are being broken, we need to hold accountable the policy makers who are allowing this.
Add to this list, the violation of our fourth amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Maybe multiple class action suits will get attention.
I’m with you- I won’t fly commercial in this country unless these enhanced search procedures and scanners are limited to use with demonstrable probable cause and follow health regulation laws.
(But I do have a concern about your idea to fly out of Canada- wouldn’t the fact that I choose to fly from Canada instead of my home country, raise a security flag that would cause Canadian officials to single me out for a more enhanced search? Wouldn’t that be ironic.)
Eliminating the TSA — and any regulatory inheritor of its passenger screening requirements — would immediately improve security for the reason you said. Citizens secure themselves. That natural American citizenship — the aware flyers — together with the airlines who need to provide a sense of comfort and perhaps even actual security will immediately provide far better actual security, than the wholly ineffective and culturally perverting system the TSA has foisted upon us.
bvwRedux….
…that remark of yours is simplistic and naive.
The reason airports don’t switch is that if the use their own guys and they screw up, the airport gets sued. If TSA screws up, they’re immune and the airport cannot be sued for using the TSA.
Changing to private contractors still won’t change the underlying paradigm… Simply, the rules set by authorities are based on the premise that front-line airline security staff are dumb, and therefore cannot be allowed to think and make decisions based on a broad range of situational observations. Instead, the management mentality is that a check-list should be followed, and if any issue gets flagged through use of the check-list, the screener must elevate the situation to the next step in the list… even if it’s a 90-year old lady who happens to have a small pen-knife in her sewing kit (oh, yeah, and a sharp little needle, too!).
This was the mindset years ago when private companies ran security at airports, it’s the mindset now, and will probably continue to be so no matter the changes made in who pays the front-line screeners.
It’s all about a “zero-risk” approach, wherein a supervisor can point to a procedure that was followed, to the letter, in the case that something goes wrong. It doesn’t matter that a few hundred people died, just that the procedure got followed and therefore everyone did their job properly. If something did go wrong, it was the fault of the guy (probably a contractor) who made up their checklist, so the managers get to keep their jobs. In other words, the risk they are avoiding is not planes falling out of the sky, but the loss of their job.
Instead of sending letters, Congressman Mica should be held to account for inflicting this evil upon us. If he wants credit, he should introduce and promote legislation to repeal the TSA. Otherwise, he is part of the problem of the rise of the bureaucrat dictators and deserves no credit only condemnation. Stupid and naive is no way to legislate.
I have been saying the TSA (touching someone’s ass) have been getting out of hand for yrs. This is the reason I hate flying. Take off your shoes, strip down, being wanded…then you get get dressed again they yell at you because you are to slow. A little fertilizer from a plant got on my computer I was treated like a terriorist. I hope to heck Amtrack does not start making us strip..take away our toothpaste and shaving cream…and pat us down.
There is one way to hurt islamic-driven terrorism and it is by showing their effing “Allah” is not a deity: bomb Mecca and Medina, destroy mosque after mosque, give them hell. There is no Allah, and Mahoma is just a dead folk by now. “Allah” won’t avoid destruction of mosques and islamic “holy places”.
After the ordeal, they can still have their religion, but they will have their feet on the earth again. Take note: Destruction of jewish temple and diaspora show them they are not the big deal of a chosen people, they can be punished too. Christianity have a long history of self-inflicted wounds, Christians are reasonable because they know now their own history with their flaws, their lows and highs. Islam has YET to learn that leason.
Israel airlines (government) security officers have hours to do their pre boarding investigations which often include personal interviews with passengers waiting to board. Israel has only 3-4 or less international flights a day. They can afford to take as much time as they want and there in lies the secret to their success in stopping attacks. Security officers also spend months if not years getting “licensed” to conduct the preboard screenings and have authority we would never allow “security officers” to have in the US.
If you want something to run poorly – call the government
If you want high Overhead and flimsy service – assign it to the gov’t
Time Tested analysis
Go to Walmart and the post office at noon
You would think Jefferson was still running the post office
People are their own best wardens. That’s simple to say. The complexity and subtlety of human relations make it complex far beyond the much simpler structure bureaucracies and procedures attempt to put on it.
Grow up. Trust yourself.
Lovely.
I won’t fly and now it seems I won’t be able to rail it either.
My choice of course, but this is getting utterly ridiculous.
Bring in the dogs, you know the ones the military uses to keep them safe?