The TSA Was Established 22 Years Ago. Do You Feel Safer Yet?

It’s the Department of Motor Vehicles, but at the airport.

Image: AP Photo

Prior to the November 2001 passage of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which birthed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the airline industry performed airport security through the hiring of private-sector security contractors. Of course, airline security at the time could have been more thorough, as we witnessed on September 11, 2001.

Here we are, two decades after the hasty creation of a new federal agency to replace private-sector airline security, and what do we have to show for it? An intrusive, incompetent, and ineffective government-run bureaucracy groping innocent citizens, seizing their personal property, and making an already stressful airport security process much more miserable.

And for what? A more secure and safe flight experience, free from danger? Hardly.

TSA failures are well known and documented. In recent security “red team” tests, TSA agents missed upwards of 95 percent of mock guns and bombs that passed through their security stations, and this is just the data TSA is willing to share with the public. It’s frankly not a surprise to those of us who have traveled frequently since 2001; the TSA has been failing these tests since it was established.

Security Theater

So if the TSA fails at discovering guns, knives, and bombs what does it do right? The TSA is very good at high-visibility groping, intrusive body scanning, and confiscating liquids and pocketknives. In other words, the TSA is very good at “doing something” without actually accomplishing anything.

Remember the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid who unsuccessfully tried to ignite plastic explosives buried in the sole of his shoe? Well, now because of that one incident, we all must remove our shoes. This is what TSA critic and security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater,” or putting measures in place that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security.

“Any terrorist attack is a series of events, such as planning, recruiting, funding, practicing, executing, and the aftermath,” Schneier writes. “Our most effective defenses are at the beginning and end of that process – intelligence, investigation, and emergency response.” And because the intelligence and investigation measures are largely invisible to the public, the TSA focuses on the visible “fear-inducing” activity that annoys, detains, and demeans passengers without providing any meaningful security.

“We don’t need perfect airport security,” Schneier continues. “We just need security that is good enough to dissuade someone from building a plot around evading it. Even a medium chance of getting caught is enough to discourage someone from an act of terror. A 95 percent failure rate is too high, but a 20 percent rate is not.”

The TSA operated under a budget of around $11 billion in 2023. Is it acceptable that a security agency so lavishly funded is able to discover only 5 percent of concealed weapons and explosives being smuggled on board while forcing men to submit to a strip search, women to lift their dresses, and children to surrender their toys?  

We have had more than twenty years of the TSA “standing guard against terror in the skies,” yet it’s clear to anyone who flies that what we have is the illusion of safety. We no longer have experienced private-sector security professionals performing specialized profiling and inspection per their training. Today we have uniformed government employees who have presumed all civilians under their supervision to be guilty and randomly subjected to invasive pat downs and arbitrary search and seizure of their possessions. No probable cause, no due process, no behavioral profiling, no incentive to do anything except harass people and make a big scene out of doing so.

A National Embarrassment

Former TSA head Kip Hawley wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “The relationship between the public and the TSA has become too poisonous to be sustained.” Hawley claimed that “it is a national embarrassment that our airport security system remains so hopelessly bureaucratic and disconnected from the people whom it is meant to protect.” To put the TSA back on its intended track, Hawley presents two basic principles: First, the mission is to prevent a catastrophic attack on an aircraft and not to prevent all passengers from individual harm. Second, the TSA’s job is to manage risk, not to aggressively enforce regulations intended to eliminate all risk.

Hawley goes on to make a five-point illustration of what can be done to reform the TSA, but after his long dissertation on how political bureaucracy and institutional inflexibility are baked into the TSA cake, I don't see how any reform is possible. TSA employees are not permitted to manage risk, nor to profile passengers, nor make judgment calls on non-lethal carry-on items. The rules are the rules, and throwing more money at the issue will only lead to more rules, mandates, and needless humiliations for passengers.

Good Enough for Government Work

The obvious reason the TSA cannot ever reform itself is because it’s a government agency. Its staff is comprised of otherwise unemployable people with boring jobs whose only interest is getting through their day and your priorities as a passenger mean nothing to them. It’s the Department of Motor Vehicles, but at the airport.

When the airlines ran airport security, those posts were manned by trained security contractors to perform the nuanced task of screening passengers and their belongings based on calculated risk, not to make everyone remove their shoes, confiscate their travel size shampoo bottles, and frisk them for weapons regardless of their age or handicap. The airlines were managing security risk, not trying to eliminate it altogether. And the airlines understood who their customers were and attempted to make the airport security process something better than the embarrassing nightmare it is today.

The TSA is fixated on how terrorism worked in the past, not how it works today. We are decades past 9/11, and the landscape has changed. Cockpit doors are locked now. Air marshals routinely ride with passengers. The flying public is much more vigilant now of potential threats than they were before.

This fixation on 9/11 explains why all airline passengers are treated as potential terrorists trying to smuggle explosives and weapons on board. But because airport security is quite clear on what you can and cannot take on board a flight, the actual terrorists are now informed on which items are to be avoided and creatively utilize something else that is not on that list. I feel safer already, don’t you?

Taking away water bottles, pocketknives, and children’s toys is not passenger security. It is harassment.

Arbitrary pat-downs and the groping of elderly women is not passenger security. It is assault.

Lengthy detainment without due process is not passenger security. It is an abduction.

Abolish the TSA, return airport security to the private sector where there is actual accountability, and spend the $11 billion in annual TSA funding on something useful such as intelligence and investigation. That will stop a terrorist long before he shows up at the airport.