The
government nationalized airline security screening in 2001 with the creation of
the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Today, TSA operates screening
at about 450 commercial airports. It has 59,000 employees and net annual
outlays of about $5 billion.
The
government takeover of airport screening was a mistake. Federal auditors have
found that TSA's screening performance has been no better, and possibly worse,
than private screening. TSA has become known for mismanagement, dubious
investments, and security failures.
A
House committee reported in 2012 that TSA's operations are "costly,
counterintuitive, and poorly executed." A House report in 2011 said
that TSA "suffers from bureaucratic morass and
mismanagement." And former TSA chief Kip Hawley said that the agency
is "hopelessly bureaucratic."
In
undercover tests in 2015, investigators slipped guns and fake bombs past TSA
screeners at numerous airports a remarkable 95 percent of the times they
tested. That result prompted a former TSA chief to comment, "It's just
completely unacceptable to have such a high failure rate.
The
government conducts annual surveys on employee satisfaction in more than 200
federal agencies, and TSA is usually ranked one of the worst. TSA has high
workforce turnover, and there are frequent reports of employee
misconduct. A House committee report described the agency as "an
enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy" that has "lost its
focus on transportation security."
TSA
misallocates its investment. It spends more than $200 million a year on the
Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, which tries
to catch terrorists by their suspicious behaviors in airports. According to the
GAO, TSA deployed SPOT nationwide before validating the science behind it. The
GAO found little, if any, evidence that SPOT works and recommended that it be
canceled, but the program continues to receive funding.
TSA
spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly performing full-body scanners
from 2009 to 2013. These were the backscatter radiation machines that caused a
civil liberties backlash because of the nude images they showed. After the
machines were withdrawn from airports, a team of outside experts tested them.
They reported in 2014 that terrorists carrying various types of weapons and
explosives could have easily fooled the machines.
The
problem is that TSA is a secretive near monopoly. It is difficult for
policymakers and the public to judge the agency's performance and hold it
accountable for results. The solution is to devolve airport screening
operations to the nation's airports. Airports would then be able to contract
security operations to expert private firms. That would allow diversity and
innovation in security techniques and management, and allow open comparisons of
performance across airports.
Congress
has allowed more than a dozen U.S. airports to use private screeners, which
makes possible some comparisons. Over the past decade, numerous studies have
found that private screeners perform on security at least as well as, if not
better than, government screeners. Private screeners at San Francisco
International Airport, for example, have been found to perform better than
federal screeners at Los Angeles International Airport.
Devolving
all screening operations to the nation's airports would end the conflict of
interest stemming from TSA's roles as both overseer and operator of screening.
Under a restructured system, the federal government would retain its role in
aviation oversight and security intelligence. But airports would hire aviation
security firms to screen; if those firms did not achieve high-quality results,
airports could fire them. Private firms have incentives to invest in procedures
that add security in the most efficient manner.
Most
other high-income nations use private airport screening. More than 80 percent
of Europe's commercial airports use private screening, including those in the
United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Spain. Canada uses private screening at
all its major airports. After 9/11, Canada created an oversight agency for
aviation security, but the screening itself is done by private firms, which
compete for contracts to handle different airports. Private businesses make
mistakes, but unlike government bureaucracies, they are more likely to improve
their performance over time, especially when they face competition.
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