Reason Foundation

Private Screening Could Solve TSA Theft Issues

Posted on May 9, 2012, 1:36pm | Baruch Feigenbaum

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is hiring screeners without adequately checking their backgrounds. Recently, the TSA purchased equipment that does not work, mishandled screening of congressional members and allowed a loaded gun on a plane.

According to Bloomberg:

The arrest April 25 of two current and two former TSA screeners at Los Angeles International Airport marked the third bribery case involving agency employees this year. Also in April, a TSA screener admitted to accepting $1,200 in bribes from drug traffickers sending the narcotic oxycodone from Florida to Connecticut through an airport in White Plains, New York.

Agency officers have also been accused of stealing iPads, cash, laptops and jewelry from baggage.

“This pattern suggests there’s something wrong in the vetting process TSA uses in hiring and screening its own people,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation in Los Angeles, which advocates for free market solutions to policy issues. “It’s certainly a question Congress should be asking.”

All TSA security officers undergo thorough criminal background checks, submitting their fingerprints to the FBI and cross-checking names against terrorist watch lists, Kawika Riley, a TSA spokesman, said in an e-mail. 

Further:

Applicants are supposed to be disqualified for any one of 28 criminal offenses ranging from interference with navigation to espionage, treason and felony arson. Theft and bribery felonies are on the list, as are unpaid taxes, child support arrears or $7,500 in delinquent debt.

The TSA said in a 2008 post on its official blog that more than 200 employees had been fired for theft. Last year, taking a closer look at agency numbers, the news website New York Press concluded the number had expanded to about 500.

Agents were sentenced to jail terms after being convicted of stealing $40,000 from a checked bag at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

All agencies both public and private are going to have some personnel issues. Hiring is an imperfect science. However, the TSA has a problem with a much higher percentage of its employees than other government departments or private companies. Assuming DOT is accurately checking the background status of its employees, the agency is targeting the wrong people. The agency needs to study its hiring and recruiting standards to determine why so many future employees might be tempted to steal from customers.

One solution for solving this problem is for TSA to set the security standards but have private companies run the screening operation. If private screening company employees engage in criminal activity, the companies could face penalties or contract cancellation. As a government monopoly the TSA has no incentive to improve its hiring. Creating a better process would be the “right thing to do” but I am not convinced TSA leadership will be moved by a moral argument. 

The U.S. screening model is different from the process in many other countries. In most European countries and Canada private screening is the responsibility of private companies. The Governmental Accountability Office and others have studied private contracting and found the performance of TSA screening contractors to be as good or better than that of TSA’s own screeners. A 2008 catapult study commissioned by the TSA suggested that the agency expand private screening to several different types of airports. Instead of implementing the report's findings, TSA ignored its own study and refused to publish the results.

In the recently passed FAA reauthorization bill Congress requires that TSA now provide details on any opt-out application it denies. In the past, TSA has denied most of the applications because they did not provide a "clear and substantial benefit."

According to my colleague, Bob Poole, in March’s Airport Policy and Security Newsletter #77:

CNN reported on Feb. 2^nd that TSA turned down two pending airport requests to take part in the Screening Partnership Program while approving one. Both Mooney Airport in Montana and Orlando Sanford in Florida (in Rep. John Mica’s district) were denied access to the program, because they “failed to demonstrate an operational, security, or cost advantage that provides a clear and substantial benefit over federalized screening operations.” Those criteria are not in the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act legislation; they are the creation of Pistole and his TSA team. Moreover, insisting that the airport demonstrate a cost savings in advance is very difficult, since the airport itself is unable to issue an RFP and select the most responsive and cost-effective TSA-approved company. Instead, the way TSA has always managed the process, the airport applies to TSA for permission and if TSA deigns to grant it, TSA itself selects (by a process known only to itself) the security firm it deems the best fit for that airport. 

The airport that was approved is West Yellowstone in Montana. That airport is only open about half the year, and so under TSA screening, the agency flies in a team of its screeners each spring, puts them up in local lodging, and flies them home again in the autumn. Hence, if the airport hires qualified locals to do the screening, the cost will be about half, once travel and lodging costs are eliminated.

In the past, TSA director John Pistole and the Obama Administration relyed on ideological reasons and not sound policy analysis for their rejection of private screening. Maybe the new aviation bill will change that; but its doubtful.

Safety and cost issues should override politics in something as critical as airport security. But that’s not how the TSA operates.

For more details on private screening see the Annual Privatization Report 2011: Air Transportation.

The Year 2011 in Surface Transportation and Aviation Privatization

Posted on April 26, 2012, 10:53am | Baruch Feigenbaum

The rollout of Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2011 continues today with the release of the Surface Transportation Privtization and Aviation Privatization sections authored by Reason’s Bob Poole. The Surface Transportation section provides a comprehensive overview of the latest on toll roads, HOT lanes and other news on privatization and public-private partnerships in surface transportation. The Aviation section provides a comprehensive overview on the latest news on domestic and international airport privatization and privatization of airport security. Topics include:

 Surface Transportation

• In 2011, infrastructure finance continued to recover from the credit market crunch of 2009. The amount of capital available in infrastructure equity investment funds reached a new all-time high.
• Over the past five years, the 30 largest global infrastructure investment funds have raised a total of $183.1 billion dedicated to financing infrastructure projects, with the bulk coming from U.S., Australian and Canadian inventors. 
• Eight major privately financed transportation projects were under construction in the U.S. in 2011 totaling over $13 billion investment, including megaprojects in Virginia, Texas and Florida. 
• In 2010 CalPERS, the largest U.S. public employee pension fund, purchased a 12.7% equity stake in London Gatwick Airport, and public pension funds in Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon, Texas and San Diego are seeking similar investments. 
• Puerto Rico’s Public-Private Partnership Authority announced a $1.5 billion lease of the PR-22 and PR-5 toll roads, their as its first large-scale project.  Ohio officials are considering a similar lease of the Ohio Turnpike.
• Other topics include the federal role in private infrastructure finance, an update on high-occupancy toll and express lane projects in the U.S., and a review of toll road developments in the states and across the world.

Aviation 

• In the aftermath of the credit markets crunch of 2008–2009, the airport market continued its recovery in 2011, with efforts including Puerto Rico's current plan to privatize San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport and Chicago's continued interest in a potential Midway Airport lease. 
• A total of 48% of European air passengers were handled by partly or fully privatized airports in 2011, with that share likely to grow with impending privatization initiatives in Spain and Greece. 
• Amid public outrage over TSA’s introduction of body scanners and aggressive pat-downs, the administration and Congress continued to battle over proposals to allow airports to opt-out of TSA security and hire private screeners. However, some progress was made in Washington D.C. over reviving the trusted traveler program, advancing a more risk-based approach to security.
• Since 1990, 51 governments have commercialized their air traffic control systems, separating the air traffic control functions from regulatory bodies, removing them from civil service, and making them self-supporting from fees charged to aircraft operators. However, there was no significant progress in 2011 toward commercializing air traffic control in the United States. 
• Other news on domestic and international airport privatization and air traffic control commercialization 

TSA's PreCheck Trusted Traveler Program Is a Good Idea, But Has Some Big Flaws

Posted on November 7, 2011, 12:01pm | Robert Poole

The TSA has rolled out the test phase of its PreCheck trusted traveler program at American’s hubs at Miami and Dallas/Ft. Worth and Delta’s hubs at Atlanta and Detroit. As an AA Platinum member flying mostly out of Miami (MIA), I volunteered and got selected.

So far, I’ve used the program twice—and both times I did not have to remove my shoes, belt, or jacket, nor did I have to take anything out of my bag (neither laptop nor liquids).

A news story last week said that 280,000 frequent flyers like me are now taking part—and the reaction of those going through the special PreCheck lane the times I’ve done this were the same as mine: “This is great!”

Except for one thing. The way PreCheck is currently set up, participants must still wait in the same long lines to get to the TSA document checker, which is the point at which the participant is either directed to the special screening lane or to the regular lanes. That puts the lie to the Aviation Daily headline of Oct. 5, 2011, “TSA Rolls Out Pre-Screening Program to Reduce Wait Times.” Well, OK, it eliminates the few extra minutes that it takes to partially disrobe and unpack, and eliminates the longer dwell time for a body-scan versus the metal detector in the PreCheck lane. But it does nothing to reduce the need to get to the airport just as much ahead of time as before, due to the unpredictable line lengths and hence unpredictable waiting time. That was gist of the spontaneous comments of several of my fellow participants earlier this week.

There is obviously a security need to build in an element of randomness in any trusted traveler program. But that does not require making participants wait in the same long lines as everybody else. Instead, some small fraction of those showing up for the special lane could be singled out, with apologies, and required to go through the regular lane (but still without having to have waited in the long regular line). 

There are also a couple of other security flaws in the pilot program. First, there is no real background check, only a flight history check. Second, there is no biometric ID card to prove that the person who shows up at the checkpoint is actually the person who was admitted to the program. And that is simply bizarre, since all the other trusted traveler programs operated by TSA’s sister agency—Customs & Border Protection—do include both of those features. Those programs are Global Entry (for frequent international air travelers), NEXUS (for U.S.-Canada frequent border-crossers), SENTRI (for frequent U.S.-Mexico land border crossers), and FAST (for importers, carriers, and commercial drivers). All four programs require both a criminal history background check and a biometric ID card. The same is true of TSA’s requirement for airport workers who have access to secure areas of the airport. Why should PreCheck be any different?

TSA Administrator John Pistole told members of the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd that PreCheck is proving to be popular and is likely to be expanded. That’s good news, but in crafting the successor program, I hope TSA will fix the pilot program’s three flaws by adding a separate line for participants, a real background check, and a biometric ID card. I’d be willing to pay an annual membership fee for that kind of program, and there is good evidence that large numbers of other frequent flyers would do likewise.

Reason's Airport Security Research and Commentary

"Get Your Freak On" Baggage Screener Gets Disciplined by TSA

Posted on October 26, 2011, 9:57pm | Robert Poole

The TSA continues to find ways to violate air travelers. After a baggage screener left Jill Filipovic, who was flying from Newark Airport to Dublin, Ireland, a note in her luggage that said, “Get your freak on girl,” I’m dismayed to see that the TSA only “disciplined” the screener who wrote a “highly inappropriate note” in the bag that was searched.

TSA’s Blogger Bob writes, 

“TSA quickly launched an investigation and identified the employee responsible. That individual was immediately removed from screening operations and appropriate disciplinary action has been initiated. The handwritten note was highly inappropriate and unprofessional, and TSA has zero tolerance for this type of behavior.”

Doing what that screener did is an indication of bad character, which should not be tolerated in those who have access to the contents of people’s luggage or the images of their naked bodies on TSA's body-scanning machines. My guess is that had this happened at one of the airports where screening is done by a TSA-certified private screening company, the screener would have been fired, not “disciplined.” 

Congress needs to address our aviation security system’s lack of accountability by eliminating the conflict of interest that exists with TSA serving as both the regulator and provider of airport security. Someone needs to watch the watchmen. Ideally, the government would set the airport security standards and oversee private, TSA-certified screeners. 

TSA Isn't Looking for Guns In Checked Luggage - And You Don't Want Them To Start

Posted on October 24, 2011, 3:32pm | Robert Poole

Media reports are expressing alarm about the fact that a loaded handgun was found by Alaska Airlines baggage workers loading bags on to a flight at LAX on Sunday. The Los Angeles Times declared, "Security officials at LAX fail to detect loaded gun in bag,"  The gun fell out of a duffel bag that had been screened along with the rest of the checked baggage for the flight.

Despite all the hand-waving, guns in checked baggage are not illegal (though they are supposed to be disclosed to the airline and packed unloaded). Nor are they a threat to the safety of flights. And the idea that TSA should minutely inspect everything in checked bags would not only add costs and time to the bag-screening process. It would also make an already overly-intrusive TSA into even more of a threat to people’s privacy and liberty.

We need to distinguish here between what is being looked for at passenger checkpoints and what is being looked for in checked baggage. At the passenger checkpoint, TSA is instructed to look for anything that might be used as a weapon by a passenger during the flight—knives, guns, explosive vests, underwear bombs, shoe bombs, etc. Many aviation security experts believe, correctly in my view, knives and guns are not as serious a threat as they were prior to 9/11. That’s due to both strengthened and locked cockpit doors and the vigilance of passengers and cabin crews to resist any attempt to gain access to the cockpit.

Checked baggage screening is a different story. Here, the threat being guarded against is explosives. It is to detect explosives in checked bags that airports and the TSA have spent billions purchasing several thousand huge explosive detection machines. They use equipment similar to CAT scanners to check for objects with a density similar to known explosive substances. If a potential object of this type is detected by the machine, the bag is flagged for closer visual inspection.

If TSA policy were changed to require the baggage-screening system to flag any bag containing a long list of items not permitted in carry-on bags (knives, guns, etc.), the number of flagged bags would soar. Inspecting all of them by hand would require more airport security screeners, and significantly more time. That would balloon TSA’s already bloated budget and could easily make flights depart late, further inconveniencing air travelers.

Even more serious, in my view, is that this would further interfere with the right to travel unmolested. TSA is not a law enforcement agency. Yet mission creep has affected the agency from the start. A good example is its Behavior Detection Officer program, which now has several thousand agents standing around observing passengers in airport terminals, taking aside for questioning any that look suspicious (based on a check-list each BDO must memorize). That program has not caught a single would-be terrorist. But TSA touts as successes its having nabbed scores of illegal aliens, people carrying small amounts of drugs, etc. There are serious civil liberties issues in giving a non-law-enforcement agency this kind of power. Pawing through people’s checked luggage for things that pose no threat to aviation would only expand this threat.

TSA Security Fee: Another Federal Revenue Grab

Posted on September 28, 2011, 9:16am | Samuel Staley

As part of its budget deficit reduction plan, the White House has proposed raising the "security fee" levied on each segment of a trip traveled by air from $2.50 to $5.00. Since many, if not most, trips now entail two segments (changing planes once) per trip, that means $10 per one-way ticket and $20 per round trip ticke. The argument is that airline users should pay the cost of security services provided to keep them safe. Intellectually, that's a good argument and one Reason Foundation supports.

The problem with this particular fee is that the evidence that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is effective in securing the skies is sketchy at best. A lot of this money is simply squandered searching the millions of travelers each year who are no threat at all. We are, in essence, throwing money into a system that has no effective way of discerning a credible threat. (Another way of looking at this problem is that the airline security procedures under the TSA's current approach may be an excellent example of a wasteful, ineffective government program presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged to shut down on the campaign trail.)

As the New York Times (Sep. 26, 2011) recently noted:

"That oversight has mostly e from the Government Accountability Office, which has issued a string of reports critical of the Transportation Security Administration’s tendency to purchase equipment without first evaluating its effectiveness or conducting a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

"Most notably, machines that puffed air on travelers to check for explosives had to be scrapped because they broke down frequently. The G.A.O. has also expressed concerns about the use of baggage scanning machines that did not meet current explosives detection standards and the more than $750 million spent on about 3,000 behavioral detection officers at airports without enough evidence that the program’s results justified its cost."

Indeed, this point came home to me recently when I was subjected to a full-body scan on a recent commercial flight on Reason Foundation business out of my home city of Dayton, Ohio: Despite having a passport for more than 30 years, flying hundreds of thousands of miles each year on business, a decades long record of steady employment, and a 23 year long marriage, the TSA screening process has no way of eliminating me as a terrorist. So, they default into treating everyone as if he or she is a terrorist.

Reason Foundation's Bob Poole told the New York Times that airline security measures ae plagued with "wasteful T.S.A. spending" (Sept. 26, 2011). The saving grace might be a real user fee (if the revenues were not used to reduce the deficit and preserve wasteful spending elsewhere) that changes the incentives within the system:

“If the whole program costs were coming out of the hides of airlines and their passengers, I think we would see a lot more focus on why does this cost so much and where is the bang for the buck,” Mr. Poole said.

Airport Policy and Security Newsletter: Airport Security 10 Years After 9/11

Posted on September 9, 2011, 2:54pm | Robert Poole

In this issue:

• Taking stock of aviation security, 10 years after
• Did airport screening fail on 9/11?
• TSA's unvalidated behavior detection program
• Trusted Traveler questions
• Paying for airport security
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

Taking Stock of Aviation Security Since 9/11

Since this month marks the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I am devoting most of this issue of the newsletter to aviation security issues. Several thoughtful studies have been released recently, assessing improvements made since then and challenges remaining in aviation security.

The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, released a report August 30^th called Tenth Anniversary Report Card: the Status of 9/11 Commission Recommendations.  The report takes a broad-brush approach, with transportation security getting only two of the report's 24 pages. Its main recommendation in this area is for beefed-up efforts to detect explosives on passengers at checkpoints-a task that is likely not possible to achieve without far more intrusive techniques than today's body scanners. Missing altogether from this discussion is the larger question of moving toward a far more risk-based approach.

By contrast, a more detailed and thoughtful overview is offered by the new RAND Corporation book, The Long Shadow of 9/11, edited by Brian Michael Jenkins and John Paul Godges. It covers a wide variety of terrorism-response and homeland security issues, but from a better-informed and more-sophisticated perspective than most such overviews. Especially recommended is Jack Riley's chapter, "Flight of Fancy? Air Passenger Security Since 9/11," which offers a seriously risk-based perspective.

And on September 7^th, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on "Progress Made and Work Remaining in Implementing Homeland Security Missions 10 Years After 9/ll." (GAO-11-919T, available on the GAO website). On aviation security, it gives the TSA credit for implementing the Secure Flight program for better pre-screening of passengers and for implementing more-professional passenger and baggage screening than existed at the time of 9/11. But it faults TSA for not adopting a risk-based strategy or using cost-benefit analysis, repeats its earlier findings about the potential ineffectiveness of body scanners, reminds us that TSA has still not validated the science underlying its Behavior Detection Officers program, and notes also that there is still no plan to deploy improved checked  baggage screening technology in response to current explosive detection requirements.

And yet despite these serious concerns, the previous day the Senate Appropriations Committee's homeland security subcommittee approved an increase in TSA's budget for FY 2012 that would enable TSA to buy an additional 275 body scanners and add another 174 Behavior Detection Officers. If we had anything like a risk-based and evidence-based approach, the BDO program would be suspended until TSA could provide a rigorous justification of its cost-effectiveness, and body scanners would be used only for secondary screening of high-risk passengers-in which case, no more would need to be procured.

I'm also dismayed that after 10 years, there is still no serious discussion of eliminating the serious structural flaw that was built into TSA by the original 2001 ATSA legislation: the agency's conflict of interest between being the aviation security regulator and also being the provider of nearly all passenger and baggage screening. No other developed western country combines those functions in a single entity. In nearly every case, a national government body sets aviation security policy and regulates airlines, airports, and the providers of both equipment and services (such as checkpoint screening). Only in the United States does the airport screening provider regulate itself. That is bad policy and bad governance.

Did Airport Screening Fail on 9/11?

Sensationalist news reports on a lawsuit about security screening at Boston's Logan Airport are reviving a myth about pre-9/11 airport security: namely, that the terrorists got onto the planes because of the poor quality of airline-hired screening contractors. The Bavis family, whose Mark Bavis died on United 175 out of BOS, has filed a wrongful death suit against United, its screening contractor Huntleigh USA, and Massport, the owner/operator of BOS. Clueless Boston Herald reporter Joe Dwinell described the screening shortcomings-poor English skills of some screeners, their manager being unaware of a federal security alert that Osama bin Laden's network was targeting U.S. aviation, etc.-as "catastrophic failings." U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein dismissed Massport as a defendant on July 27^th, but United and Huntleigh will face these allegations when the trial begins in November.

Thus, it's important that we understand who was and was not at fault on Sept. 11, 2001. It's quite true that the quality of airport passenger screening at the time was poor. As far back as 1987 the GAO recommended that performance standards for screening be established, but the FAA-which was in charge of airport security until the creation of TSA-did nothing. By 1996, Congress required FAA to "certify companies providing security screening and to improve the training and testing of security screeners through development of uniform performance standards for providing security screening services." The FAA finally got around to issuing a proposed rule in January 2000, which would have held the companies to minimum performance standards. With the rule still not finalized by November 2000, Congress ordered the FAA to issue the final rule by May 31, 2001.When FAA failed to meet that deadline, Congress required the agency to report twice a year on each missed statutory deadline. By Sept. 11, 2001, there were still no certification or performance standards in effect.

As Patrick Smith (of "Ask the Pilot" at Salon.com) wrote recently, "If Bavis insists on suing, she ought to be filing against the U.S. government. The 9/11 plot was always a stone's throw from being infiltrated, and it's possible the attacks would never have taken place if not for a lack of cooperation and the power games going on at the time between the FBI and CIA. A number of the hijackers, including Mohammad Atta, were known to both agencies and were under prior surveillance. The FBI sensed they were up to something but did not know where they were. The CIA knew their whereabouts, but did not share this knowledge in time. That, not some hapless security guard at Logan, is what allowed the scheme to unfold."

Not only that, Smith reminds us, but the boxcutters the hijackers apparently used as weapons were legal at the time. But even if boxcutters had been prohibited, "They could have made knives out of anything. Ballpoint pens would probably have sufficed. They were not relying on metal blades; they were relying on the element of surprise, exploiting a loophole not in security but in our mindset-our presumptions of how a hijacking would unfold. It was elementary and brilliant, dependent on absolutely no physical weaponry beyond the steely resolve of the perpetrators themselves."

Yet in its haste to "fix" the problem of mediocre screening, the Senate raced ahead, ignorant of the facts, and decided that since screening contractors had "failed," the only solution was to "federalize" the screening process, parachuting an army of federal employees into 450-odd U.S. airports. The Senate bill passed 100-0. Taking a bit more time, and actually listening to evidence, the House took a different approach. Under the leadership of Aviation Subcommittee Chair John Mica (R, FL), they learned that there were only two other countries that delegated passenger screening to airlines, as an unfunded mandate-Bermuda and Canada. Nearly every country in Europe made airports responsible for screening, under national government supervision. And already, as of 2001, nearly all major airports in Europe used private security firms under some kind of "performance contracting" model. The GAO reported on these practices in a 2001 report.

The resulting House bill (properly) removed screening from the airlines and gave it to the airports, under federal supervision and allowing for European-style performance contracting. Both airport trade associations (AAAE and ACI-NA) supported the House bill, which passed 286-139. But when the Bush White House admitted that it would sign a final bill along Senate lines, the House conference committee negotiators had the ground cut out from under them, and we ended up with the TSA as the airport screening provider (apart from a small opt-out program). Canada, by contrast, created a new entity for airport security but built it around performance contracting with private security companies.

Thus, the TSA's takeover of airport screening was based on a mistaken belief that screening failures-rather than intelligence failures-- allowed the 9/11 attacks to succeed. We are still living with the consequences of that mistake.

Note: You can find documentation of the points made here in my September 2002 Reason policy study #298, "Improving Airport Passenger Screening," available at http://reason.org/news/show/improving-airport-passenger-sc.

TSA Is Expanding Behavior Detection, Still Unvalidated

As you know from recent news reports, the TSA has begun a pilot program to expand the use of its growing corps of Behavior Detection Officers. Under the new program at Boston's Logan Airport, instead of just observing passengers randomly and singling out a few for questioning, BDOs in Terminal A will systematically engage waiting passengers in brief conversations, watching for signs of nervousness as indicated by avoidance of eye contact or facial "micro-expressions." For the pilot program, 70 BDOs (all with college degrees) have undergone a four-day classroom course and 24 hours of on-the-job experience prior to being turned loose on the travelers waiting to be screened.

In May 2010, the GAO issued issued a critical report on the existing BDO program, pointing out that the theoretical basis for it was practically non-existent. Citing a detailed 2008 report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, GAO advised Congress that "a scientific consensus does not exist on whether behavior detection can be reliably used for counterterrorism purposes." GAO also noted that after having been in operation for several years, the BDO program had failed to identify a single would-be terrorist at an airport. Moreover, GAO analysis found that at least 16 individuals allegedly involved in six terrorist plots later foiled by law enforcement agencies had passed through eight airports where the BDOs had been operation at the time. Yet none of them had been spotted by BDOs as suspicious.

On April 6, 2001, GAO's Stephen Lord testified before the House Science Committee's subcommittee on investigations and oversight about the TSA's (and parent agency DHS's) response to its 2010 report. (GAO-11-461T on the GAO website)  DHS's Science & Technology Directorate has contracted with the American Institutes for Research to conduct a validation study of the BDO program, but to the best of my knowledge, this study has not been released, though it was supposed to have been completed by the end of April. From the wording of his testimony, it appears that Lord does not consider this an "independent assessment" of the program. He also pointed out that the data needed to conduct such an assessment had not been systematically collected during the program's three years in operation, such that "meaningful analyses could not be conducted to determine if there is an association between certain behaviors and the likelihood that a person displaying certain behaviors would be referred to a law enforcement officer or whether any behavior or combination of behaviors could be used to distinguish deceptive from non-deceptive individuals."

In other words, the scientific basis for the entire BDO program is still non-existent. Consequently, Lord made a modest suggestion: "Congress may wish to consider limiting program funding pending receipt of an independent assessment." Merely freezing the program at 2010 levels would save $20 million per year or $100 million over five years. And when the validation is completed, "Congress may also wish to consider the study's results-including those on the program's effectiveness in using behavior-based screening techniques to detect terrorists in the aviation environment-in making future funding decisions regarding the program."

What a thought! Insist on evidence before making policy? Not a chance. As reported previously in this issue, the Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee voted this week to add 174 more BDOs.

Trusted Traveler-a First Step Toward Risk-Based Security

The idea of a Trusted Traveler program has made sense to me ever since I read the article "E-Z Pass for Aviation," by Michael E. Levine and Richard Golaszewski, in the November/December 2001 issue of Airports magazine. The idea that pre-vetted passengers (e.g., those with a federal security clearance) could be exempted from much of the checkpoint security hassles seemed pretty obvious. Since the overwhelming majority of those who fly are not a threat, it makes sense to devote more resources to those more likely to be a threat. Better pre-screening should be able to identify both higher-risk passengers (based on intelligence information, as incorporated in watch lists) and lower-risk passengers (based on background checks), leaving a group of occasional travelers in the middle, for intermediate levels of screening. The idea would be to refocus airport security on keeping bad people off planes, rather than bad objects.

The idea was sound enough that Congress included it in the 2001 ATSA legislation, yet factions within TSA have always held back from implementing what Congress intended. The failed Registered Traveler program, for example, did not offer any reductions in checkpoint hassle-in large part because the TSA itself did not submit the application materials to the FBI for the intended criminal history background check. Without that reduced hassle factor, far fewer frequent flyers were willing to pony up the $100-200 annual fee charged by authorized RT companies.

All this seems to have changed under TSA Administrator John Pistole, who has promised a real Trusted Traveler program, the first phase of which will get under way this fall for selected Delta frequent flyers at Atlanta and Detroit and American frequent flyers at DFW and Miami. Pistole has given speeches and interviews all year long explaining Trusted Traveler as the first step toward risk-based security (which is now becoming known as RBS). So after championing the idea for nearly a decade, I'm pleased to see if finally getting under way.

However (you knew there was going to be a however, didn't you?), I must remind you that the devil is always in the details. Bits and pieces that I've picked up in conversations and emails with various security people over the last several months have raised questions about how TSA is conceiving the program. One source relayed a conversation with TSA officials suggesting that the program would be "less a trusted traveler than a trusted ticket." The idea would be that TSA software would review the travel information of all the passengers on each flight, whether there would be an air marshal on board, etc. and make a determination near the departure date whether the TT member would get expedited screening, that fact being embedded in the bar code printed on the passenger's boarding pass. Under this model, travelers wouldn't know from one trip to the next what kind of processing they could expect, and would probably still have to get to the airport early enough for the long lines of regular checkpoint processing.

In an Aug. 23^rd interview with Travel Weekly, Pistole was asked the question, "If you are a member of the program, can you go to the airport knowing that you are always going to get the expedited measure?" His reply was ambiguous: "Not 100 percent," he said. "There's a possibility and a probability as the system matures, but it won't be a guarantee because I don't want terrorists to start flying a lot and being able to game the system." That could just be referring to a small random probability that a few TT members each day will be selected for ordinary screening-but it could also mean the alternative suggested in the previous paragraph.

I'm also worried that the TT program as currently conceived may not involve a background check. In the same interview, Pistole distinguished between existing risk-based frequent traveler programs for border crossing-Global Entry and Nexus-and Trusted Traveler. Those programs, he said, "require a background check, a criminal history check, fingerprints and perhaps other biometrics." That certainly implies a lower standard for TT, which seems inconsistent in terms of overall DHS risk-based policy. Frequent flyer and other travel history data are certainly useful indicators of lower risk, but since DHS requires background checks and biometrics for its other programs, why not also require them for Trusted Traveler? TSA itself requires such background checks for several million airport employees who need regular access to the secure areas of airports, so the logistics of handling large numbers of applicants should not be an obstacle.

The fact that the initial Trusted Traveler program will not charge a fee also suggests that TSA will not be paying for background checks or biometric ID cards (to verify that the person who shows up at the checkpoint is the same one who was pre-vetted). Yet we know from a recent survey of air travelers, conducted by the U.S. Travel Association last spring, that 45% of all travelers said they would pay $100-150 to enroll in such a program (and that 75% of business travelers would be willing to pay something for the convenience and time saving).

Once TSA gets beyond the initial pilot program, I hope Pistole and his team will consider the merits of a more robust Trusted Traveler program, open not just to high-status airline frequent flyer members (and those with security clearances) but to anyone who can pass the same kind of background checks used for other DHS risk-based programs and for airport employees. And because a biometric ID card is essential to ensure that the person presenting the boarding pass is actually the person who has been pre-vetted, a biometric ID should also be part of the permanent program.

Paying for Airport Security

Currently there are two dedicated taxes (called "fees") that help pay for the TSA's aviation security activities. One is the passenger security fee, included in the ticket price. The other is the aviation security infrastructure fee (ASIF) paid by the airlines. Together, they offset $2.1 billion of TSA's $5.2 billion (gross) aviation security budget-about 40%. That percentage is lower if you include the $0.8 billion cost of the Federal Air Marshals (FAM) program in the aviation security total, as one should. On that basis, the aviation industry covers 35% of what TSA spends on aviation security. (All numbers here are for FY 2010, as enacted.)

Both of these fees have been in the news recently. The Administration has proposed a three-year phased-in increase in the passenger security fee, upping it initially by 60% in FY 2012 and by 120% as of FY 2014. The airline fee was the subject of a long legal battle, resolved in July by the US Court of Appeals in DC. ASIF is intended to have the airlines pay to TSA the same amount they themselves were spending on airport security prior to 9/11. There has been a long-running dispute about how much that really was, with the airlines objecting that numbers from 2000 overstate the case, because in those pre-9/11 days many non-passengers went through screening to see off departing passengers or to meet and greet arriving ones. Dueling studies by outside consultants, based on different estimates of non-passenger screening, produced a difference of $115 million per year in what the airlines would owe-either $305 million or $420 million. The Court of Appeals ruled in favor of TSA.

Assuming the airlines don't appeal to the Supreme Court, and their new number stays around $420 million, and that Congress goes along with the Administration's passenger fee increase request, by FY 2014 the passenger security fee would be bringing in about $4.6 billion a year. Adding that to the airline fee produces a total of about $5 billion. If the TSA budget remained at present levels (as the House is trying to arrange), that would mean fees from airlines and passengers would cover about 83% of TSA's aviation security spending.

Needless to say, the airlines have been urging Congress not to increase the passenger security fee, pointing out that ticket prices already include a number of aviation excise taxes (though they generally don't make clear that most of this money goes to the Aviation Trust Fund for investments in air traffic control and airports to better serve airlines and their passengers, and another chunk goes directly to airports in the form of Passenger Facility Charges, used for improvements in runways and terminals).

The broader question we ought to ask is this: From a public policy standpoint, who should be paying for aviation security? Airlines the world over make the argument, which has some merit, that the terrorist threat to air travel is akin to a military threat, so therefore-just as with national defense-general taxpayers should foot the bill for aviation security. But as I discovered several years ago in researching this question for the OECD's International Transport Forum, governments generally don't buy that argument. In Canada, 100% of the costs of aviation security are met via air security fees. After last year's increases, those fees range from C$7.50 (one-way domestic flight) to C$25 (one-way international flight). In Europe, nearly all security costs are recovered from airlines and passengers, though the specifics vary by country. Thus, the United States is the only major western country in which general taxpayers pay for two-thirds of the cost of aviation security.

Although my airline friends will disagree, I've concluded that the cost of aviation security measures is somewhat analogous to insurance. If you engage in risky behavior (drive a sports car, live in a beach house, etc.) you expose yourself to higher risks, and you rightly pay somewhat more for the relevant kind of insurance. Likewise, while it's not the fault of air travelers or airlines that aviation is a high-profile terrorist target, the fact is that it is. So from a resource-allocation standpoint, I think a sector-specific user-tax approach is less bad than having general taxpayers pay for this.

There is also a pragmatic advantage to this being the policy. If TSA were funded entirely by general taxpayers, the cost per taxpayer would be so small that taxpayers would not be concerned about bloated TSA budgets or non-cost-effective programs. But with airlines and their passengers paying the bills, there are strong constituencies for holding TSA accountable for results, pushing Congress to mandate risk-based policies, cost-benefit analysis, and all the rest.

News Notes

Bids Submitted for Madrid and Barcelona Privatizations

Despite political and economic uncertainties in Spain, six teams submitted bids for 20-year concessions to operate Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona El Prat airports on September 6^th.  Five of the six teams bid for both airports; among the major firms involved are Ferrovial, Changi Airports Group, Fraport, Aeroports de Paris, and Abertis. The estimated value of Madrid-Barajas is $5.2 billion, and for Barcelona El Prat is $2.3 billion. State aviation agency AENA is offering 90.05% of each airport company.

12 Teams Seek San Juan, Puerto Rico Airport

The Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnerships Authority and the Puerto Rico Airports Authority have received 12 responses to their request for qualifications from teams hoping to lease and upgrade Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan. Potential bidders include ASUR, OMA, Macquarie, Ferrovial, Fraport,  GMR Infrastructure, and GE Capital Aviation. The lease is expected to be 40 to 50 years. Details are available at www.p3.gov.pr/?page_id=960&lang=en.

Noibi Pleads Guilty to Stowing Away

The Nigerian-American who used fake or stolen boarding passes to board several U.S. flights earlier this year, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to one count of stowing away on a vessel or aircraft. Olajide Noibi faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. A separate count of using false documents to enter the secure area of LAX was dropped under a plea bargain. Still unanswered is the question of how Noibi several times managed to get through TSA security screening with false documents.

Over 32,000 MANPADs Destroyed, Says State Department

Since 2003, the U.S. government has found and destroyed over 32,500 "excess, loosely secured, illicitly held, or otherwise at-risk" man-portable air defense systems in more than 30 countries. Over a million MANPADs are estimated to have been produced, and an unknown number remain in illicit hands. Since 1975, 40 hits on civilian aircraft have led to 28 crashes and more than 80 deaths-mostly in developing countries. The two most recent attacks were in Iraq in 2003 (in which the plane landed safely) and in Somalia in 2007 (in which the plane crashed, with 11 deaths).

Mixed News on Body Scanners

In mid-July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected a constitutional challenge to airport body scanners, on grounds that air travelers have the alternative of a pat-down. On July 30^th, German federal police concluded, based on a 10-month trial of body scanners at Hamburg airport, that the scanners are too inaccurate for regular use. In Australia, Sydney and Melbourne airports are testing a new type of scanner based on TeraHertz waves given off by people and objects; they are being used only for secondary screening of potentially high-risk passengers.

Chicago Requests Another Midway Extension

On August 1^st the city of Chicago asked for yet another extension of its slot in the federal Airport Privatization Pilot Program. Dow Jones Newswires reports that "the new request could signal a change of heart by new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who previously has come out against the Midway privatization effort."

Port Authority Receives Airport Expansion Ideas

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has received numerous responses to its request for comments on possible expansion of LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark airports, the worst in the nation for delays and cancellations. The request cited a detailed study released in January by the Regional Plan Association, which made a serious case for expanding the airports' capacity.

St. Louis Cargo Proposal Under Fire

The proposal for state and federal taxpayers to subsidize a massive air cargo hub at St. Louis's Lambert International Airport, which I wrote about last issue, has started to attract critical scrutiny. In July, St. Louis Today interviewed Greg Lindsay, co-author of the recent book Aerotropolis, who said, bluntly, "I don't think it will work."  The free-market think tank, the Show Me Institute, trashed the proposal as a boondoggle. And in mid-August, the Kansas City Star editorialized against it, in a piece headlined "A Huge, Questionable Taxpayer Subsidy for Aerotropolis."

BAA May Appeal Forced Airport Sale

In mid-July, the U.K. Competition Commission re-affirmed its 2009 decision that privatized airport operator BAA must sell Stansted airport and one of its two Scottish airports, to un-do a near-monopoly situation created when the airports operator was privatized as a single company (rather than selling off the individual airports). A week later BAA announced that it was considering an appeal, which it has until Sept. 19 to file. Last year BAA sold Gatwick airport, leaving it with Stansted and Heathrow in the London air travel market.

Quotable Quotes

"Performance measures for TSA, it seems, have yet to be developed, even though it is now a decade since 9/11. For example, the agency has publicly stated that its top goal is to be able to detect explosives reliably, something TSA has yet to achieve. How is this considered when TSA's performance is evaluated? It is entirely appropriate for Congress to have all TSA goals clearly identified in detail, kept up-to-date, and then determine either achievement of such goals or progress toward them, if any. Only in this way can a beginning be made on judging how well TSA is performing. Only in this way can the relationship between TSA costs and benefits at least be approximated after-the-fact. In turn, the knowledge and insights obtained can be deployed to develop cost/benefit expectations for new TSA initiatives."

--Aaron Gellman, Northwestern University, "Making TSA More Accountable," EnoBrief, July 2011. (www.enotrans.com)

"I think there may be a point in the not too distant future where we see AIP [Airport Improvement Program grants] go away. So we have to start taking a new look at the way we finance our capital projects; we don't need to depend on handouts from anybody. . . . PFCs are local revenue. And the government should step out of the role of dictating to local communities what they need to be doing to facilitate their needs with local revenues. De-federalize as much as we can and put this back at the local level."

--Kelly Johnson, Director, Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, "Time to Get Local," interview by John F. Infanger, Airport Business, July 2011.

"Last week's big story was about terrorists planning to blow up airplanes using surgically implanted explosives. . . . Playing straight into the hands of the contractors and lobbyists, the press and pundits are asking all the wrong questions. The buzz is all about ways of jiggering airport security. How can we upgrade our scanners and detectors in order to meet this 'new level of threat'? We're already peering through people's pants. Are full-on X-rays and CAT scans next? Nobody will admit what's obvious. First, that we cannot protect ourselves from every conceivable threat. And equally important, that this isn't an issue for airport security at all. As I've been emphasizing for years, the real job of keeping terrorists away from planes does not belong to guards at the checkpoint. It is higher up the chain-to the people at the FBI, Interpol, the CIA, and elsewhere among law enforcement and intelligence ranks. Plots need to be foiled in the planning stage. Once a saboteur has made it to the terminal, chances are it's too late-he or she has  figured out a means of getting through."

--Patrick Smith, "How Real Is the 'Surgical Explosive' Threat?" Salon.com, July 11, 2011. (www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2011/07/11/surgical_explosives)

"I don't think anybody was really comfortable with the airline-provided security contractors that existed before 9/11. Then came this huge political upsurge by the government which led to the creation of the TSA. I think the industry went from one extreme to another without pausing in the middle. There was a missed opportunity to have airport operators move into that line of work; they already had substantial law enforcement responsibilities, and many had their own police departments."

--James Wilding, former CEO of Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, in "An Airport Retrospective," Brad McAllister, Airport Business, August 2011.

"We're beginning to see pushback, where people are almost becoming adversaries of the security systems that are put in place to protect them. Now that's a good way to destroy a security system, and we have to address that as an issue. . . . We are throwing down a billion dollars to deploy body scanners at airports across the country. The terrorists invested a few thousand. We throw down a billion. . . . We're going to lose that battle in the long run."

--Brian Jenkins, RAND Corporation, in "Aviation Security Re-Examined," Patrick Healy, NBC Los Angeles, Sept. 6, 2011.

"The TSA is in a losing battle. So here's a brighter idea. The government could recognize that it's impossible to screen passengers (and cargo) for every type of banned material. If a terrorist plot has gone undiscovered by the world's intelligence agencies, by the U.S. military, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and by local law enforcement, the chance is high that the plotters are also more sophisticated than the TSA. It's better to accept some level of risk, minimize the TSA's ever more intrusive disruptions to American life, and redirect some of its enormous budget to agencies that can eliminate terrorist plots before they mature to the point that conspirators are boarding planes."

--Jeffrey Goldberg, "TSA's Forced Indignities Don't Make Us Safer," Bloomberg View, July 11, 2011

 

New at Reason: Annual Privatization Report 2010

Posted on February 10, 2011, 3:32pm | Leonard Gilroy

I'm pleased to announce that today marks the launch of Reason Foundation's Annual Privatization Report 2010 (reason.org/apr2010). Now in its 24th year of publication, the Annual Privatization Report is the world's longest running and most comprehensive report on privatization news, developments and trends.

Readers will notice that we've made a significant change with APR 2010, publishing it as a series of reports arranged by topic, rather than one consolidated report as in previous years. We expect that this will make it easier to use as a resource and find the information you're looking for. The individual sections of APR 2010—which will be released over the next two weeks—include:

• Air Transportation
• Surface Transportation
• Federal Privatization
• State Privatization
• Local Privatization
• Education
• Telecommunications
• Corrections
• Water

We started the rollout today with the APR 2010 Air Transportation section. It provides a comprehensive overview of the latest news on domestic and international airport privatization, the privatization of airport security - including passenger and baggage screening and the federal Registered Traveler program, and domestic and international trends in air traffic control reform. 

» Annual Privatization Report 2010: Air Transportation [pdf, 800kB]

» Complete Annual Privatization Report 2010

TSA Blocks Private Screeners Despite Success and Good Reasons to Outsource Airport Security

Posted on January 31, 2011, 12:13pm | Robert Poole

After the close of business last Friday, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole announced that no more airports will be permitted to participate in the congressionally authorized program under which all U.S. airports are allowed to have passenger and baggage screening performed by TSA-certified private security firms instead of TSA’s own federal workforce.

"Shortly after beginning as TSA Administrator, I directed a full review of TSA policies with the goal of helping the agency evolve into a more agile, high-performing organization that can meet the security threats of today and the future,” Pistole said. “As part of that review, I examined the contractor screening program and decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports as I do not see any clear or substantial advantage to do so at this time.”

This decision is bad news for airports, air travelers, and for effective airport security.

In fact, the opt-out program should be expanded, not frozen, for at least five good reasons.

First, privatized screening is at least as effective as TSA-provided screening. A detailed assessment commissioned by TSA in 2007 (but never released) compared screening performance at six outsourced airports and six comparable TSA-screened airports, using four years worth of data, and four measures of screener effectiveness. Performance results of the certified security firms were “equal to or better than those delivered” by the TSA screeners.  The only reason we know this study even exists is because the Government Accountability Office blew the whistle on TSA in a 2009 report (GAO-09-27R).

Second, the security firms have much greater flexibility to ensure that the right number of screeners are on the job at each hour of the day, day of the week, and month of the year. Airlines are a very dynamic business, continually adding and dropping flights, adjusting schedules, and (sometimes) going out of business. TSA is constrained by its own bureaucracy, civil service rules, and (probably soon) union work rules. So all too often it has either too many or too few screeners on duty at each specific airport. Too many means wasting taxpayer money; too few means lines longer than they should be, needlessly wasting travelers’ time.

Third, wider use of certified security firms might produce budgetary savings. The 2007 comparative study found that based on the way TSA keeps the books, outsourced screening appears to be 9% more costly than TSA-provided screening. But the GAO points out that TSA’s cost accounting leaves out things like workers’ compensation, general liability insurance, and some retirement costs which are still paid for by federal taxpayers but are not included in TSA’s budget. In addition, current federal law requires certified security firms to pay exactly the same salary and benefits to their screeners as TSA pays, even in parts of the country where the cost of living is low and qualified people would be willing to work for less.

Fourth, airports that operate with certified security firms (like San Francisco and Kansas City) are full of praise for the quality of service provided by their motivated employees and managers. This probably stems from the companies’ understanding that if they don’t provide good service, their contracts can be terminated or not renewed. And individual screeners know that if they have a bad attitude toward passengers or perform poorly on screening tests, they can be terminated—something much harder to do today at TSA and likely to be even harder in the near future if screeners are unionized.

Finally, screening should be outsourced to remove TSA’s egregious conflict of interest. This single agency is both the aviation security regulator and the provider of the largest portion of airport security (in terms of staff and budget): passenger and baggage screening. Consequently, when TSA reviews the security performance of airlines, airports, freight forwarders, etc., it is dealing with them objectively, at arm’s length. But when TSA reviews the performance of passenger and baggage screeners, it is reviewing the work of its own staff. And its incentive there, like any other bureaucracy, is to make its own people look good. Case in point: the 2007 comparative study which TSA commissioned from Catapult Consultants and then suppressed because it did not like its results.

No major European country handles airport security this way. Each makes and enforces aviation security policy at the national level, with individual airports responsible for providing functions such as passenger screening. Those airports either hire their own screening staff or contract with certified security firms. Canada created a new agency for airport security after 9/11, but the agency contracts with certified security companies for all airport screening.

This year is the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, and also the 10^th anniversary of the ill-advised bipartisan law that created the TSA. It is past time for Congress to revisit and reform its creation. High on the agenda of TSA reform should be removing the conflict of interest that makes TSA both the aviation security regulator and the operator of airport screening.

Will Airports Punt TSA?

Posted on January 2, 2011, 6:48pm | Adrian Moore

A detailed Washington Post article, As frustration grows, airports consider ditching TSA, points out that:

Some of the nation's biggest airports are responding to recent public outrage over security screening by weighing whether they should hire private firms such as Covenant to replace the Transportation Security Administration. Sixteen airports, including San Francisco and Kansas City International Airport, have made the switch since 2002. One Orlando airport has approved the change but needs to select a contractor, and several others are seriously considering it.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which governs Dulles International and Reagan National airports, is studying the option, spokeswoman Tara Hamilton said.

The article is quite in depth, looking at the causes and the debate over this idea. The timing of course reflects the change in Congress. Again from the WaPo article:

Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), the incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has written to 200 of the nation's largest airports, urging them to consider switching to private companies.

The TSA was "never intended to be an army of 67,000 employees," he said. "If you look at [the TSA's] performance, have they ever stopped a terrorist? Anyone can get through," Mica said in an interview. "We've been very lucky, very fortunate. TSA should focus on its mission: setting up the protocol, adapting to the changing threats and gathering intelligence."

That is a shift that is long overdue. The TSA should never have taken over the hand's on work of checking passengers. They should be the one's overseeing/regulating airport security, analyzing intelligence, identifying risks, establishing priorities, even training agents to examine and question people in the airport looking for suspicious behavior that merits additional screening.  This is the kind of approach Reason proposed back in September 2002, one year after the 9/11 attacks.

Right now, no one is watching the watchmen. TSA is largely unaccountable and increasingly bloated and unresponsive. Their "let them eat cake" response to the arbitrary application of patdowns highlighted the problem, the likelihood that screeners will unionize and the union begin putting screeners ahead of the public is but the latest manifestation.

Privatizing the screeners would put TSA back in the proper role for a security agency and allow airports to get back to providing service to customers, with security integrated into that goal, not contradicting it. As the WaPo article concludes:

Orlando's two commercial airports, Orlando International and Orlando Sanford International, were bringing in Covenant and FirstLine last month for presentations on taking over airport security. Orlando Sanford approved the change to privatization in October, before the uproar over the TSA's screening methods even began.

Orlando Sanford President Larry Dale said private screening would be "more enjoyable" for the traveling public and potentially spur business.

"This country was built on competition, on private investment," Dale said, "and I've gotten a lot of complaints from passengers about the new screening. We're a business after all, and we have to look out for our customers."

Other airports, including Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport and Indianapolis International Airport, have said publicly they are studying whether a change would improve their bottom line.

The Kansas City airport, which was one of the first to choose a private security operator, said the biggest difference in using private screeners is the ability to get security issues resolved quickly.

"Unlike a government job, these contract employees can be removed immediately with poor performance, attitude or unsuitability," said Kansas City airport director Mark VanLoh. "It shows in our passenger surveys for customer satisfaction each year."

Piling On For Sanity in Airport Security?

Posted on December 27, 2010, 2:17pm | Adrian Moore

Salon's aviation writer, Patrick Smith, is bullish on a plan most recently proposed by the International Air Transport Association to bring some sanity to airport security.

The International Air Transport Association, the airline industry's global advocacy group, is proposing a radical change to existing airport security checks.

Under the IATA plan, unveiled last week, each passenger will be categorized into one of three risk groups, and then screened accordingly. Biometric proof-of-identity, such as a fingerprint or encoded passport, will be checked against a stored profile containing various personal data, and also against passenger watch lists. This, together with flight booking data, will determine which of three screening lines a traveler is then assigned to.

Those in the first line would receive little more than a cursory bag check, while those in the third line would be subject to an "enhanced"-level check similar to the Transportation Security Administration procedures that are currently applied to all passengers.

It might not be a perfect solution, but this is easily the best idea I've yet heard with respect to restoring sanity to airport security.

This is far from a new idea, indeed it is exactly what Reason has been pushing for since 2002, and continued to develop ever since.

 

The Case for Profiling Air Travelers

Posted on December 10, 2010, 11:38am | Robert Poole

One of the results of the recent TSA debates has been a full-blown campaign to demonize any proposal for risk-based airport security screening as “racial profiling.” In the much-talked about CBS News poll on airport security a few weeks ago, respondents were asked about their views on (1) body-scanning machines and (2) “racial or ethnic profiling”—as if those were the only choices available for American security policy. 

An attack on my long-standing advocacy of risk-based screening by two writers from The Nation included a three-paragraph excerpt from my recent blog post on the subject, followed immediately by a reference to “high-profile charlatans pushing racial profiling as the alternative to TSA pat-downs and body scans.” 

And it’s not only pundits on the left playing this game. Gabriel Schoenfeld of the conservative Hudson Institute attacked the strawman of “religious profiling” as an unacceptable alternative to body scans in an op-ed defending the TSA in The Wall Street Journal.

So I guess it’s time for a careful defense of real profiling—not the caricature that numerous opponents and some inexact supporters portray it as. 

Many security professionals separate “profiling” into two categories. The first, positive profiling, means using techniques such as detailed background checks and other factors to assign certain people to the “low-risk” category and treat them accordingly. 

The TSA itself recently (and rightly) conceded that airline flight crews—both cockpit and cabin—fit into this category, and will no longer have to undergo the demeaning security theater procedures the rest of us must face. Security resources, and taxpayer dollars, are not unlimited. Since we have already decided these pilots are trustworthy enough to fly planes with hundreds of passengers, it isn’t a good use of resources to pat them down or measure their shampoo bottles.

RAND Corporation has advocated positive profiling for many years, and the concept is the basis for a true Trusted Traveler program, in which frequent fliers who volunteer for and pass a stringent background check get a biometric ID card and can thereafter bypass some or all of the regular screening, just like flight crews will soon be able to do. I would also extend the Trusted Traveler concept to those holding federal security clearances. If we can trust someone with nuclear weapons secrets, shouldn’t we trust them to not blow up airliners?

Positive profiling is already in use by Customs & Border Protection (TSA’s sister agency) for people who are frequent border crossers, via at least three voluntary background-check programs: Global Entry for air travelers returning from abroad; Nexus, for frequent visitors to and from Canada; and Sentri, for frequent visitors to and from Mexico. If applied to airport screening, it would allow the TSA to shift resources from people who are not a threat to those who are more likely to be (and not just those trying to board planes, but also those loading baggage and cargo, visitors seeking targets in crowded ticket lobbies, etc.). 

It would also spare a large fraction of air travelers (primarily frequent fliers who voluntarily opt-in) from the wasted time and indignity of current screening practices. This can be an important safety tool because frequent business travelers do an estimated 50% or more of the nation’s flying. Recognizing that not everyone presents an equal threat allows security to focus resources on those that may present more danger.

There are some, including the ACLU, who argue against a Registered Traveler system because they say it will create a new vulnerability as terrorists learn to beat the background checks. Is this possible? Of, course. Anything is possible. We cannot eliminate all risks from flying or driving or anything else in life. But if terrorists are volunteering for FBI-quality background checks, undergoing interviews and credit checks, and ultimately obtaining trusted status then we have dramatically bigger security failures and problems than we imagined. It’s far more likely the terrorists would turn their attention to different, softer targets. 

With positive profiling reducing the number of travelers the TSA has to expend time and money on, the attention then shifts to negative profiling.  When most people hear the term profiling they envision people being grouped or targeted solely based on race or religion. When security professionals use the term negative profiling they mean deciding that a small subset of travelers deserves closer scrutiny due to some combination of background factors, previous travel behavior, and suspicious behavior at the airport itself. 

The TSA already does this type of profiling in a minor way: that’s what the selectee and no-fly lists are all about. We learned of some of these factors in the days after the 9/11 attacks. Buying a one-way ticket at the counter with cash was, and probably still is, something that would get you more attention from security. 

Previous travel history would have flagged the underwear bomber last Christmas since he paid for his ticket in cash, had recently flown out of terrorist haven Yemen, and his suspicious behavior at the airport (that you’d like a trained security guard to catch) reportedly included not having a jacket or any checked luggage despite flying from Amsterdam to Detroit during winter.

It is also important to note that negative profiling is already mandated—by the TSA—for those flying to the United States from the overseas airports it has defined as “extraordinary locations.” While I have not seen a list of those specific airports, both times I’ve flown back to this country from Madrid in recent years, I’ve been interviewed in some detail by employees of a private security company, under contract to the airline in question, as required by TSA’s Aircraft Operator Standard Security Program (AOSSP).

In short, profiling is a legitimate technique for deciding how to allocate security resources. Catching terrorists is tough. Making the TSA pat-down or body-scan every single person on every single U.S. flight (which the current policy calls for by the end of 2011) does not increase the chances they’ll find a terrorist (TSA has never found one). 

Pretending that everyone is equally likely to attack us wastes precious resources on low-risk travelers, which just makes us more vulnerable. Unless, and until, we adopt a risk-based airport screening system (i.e., forms of profiling), the TSA will continue to treat everyone as a potential suicide bomber and Americans will continue to be harassed and groped by TSA’s out-of-control screeners.

Israeli air security experts insist their methods better than U.S.

Posted on November 27, 2010, 11:33pm | Adrian Moore

The Washington Post reports:

Israel has long held the reputation as home to the world's most stringent airport security procedures. But most passengers aren't frisked, there are no intimately revealing body-imaging scanners, and security experts dismiss as misguided the new, more intrusive American approach that requires pat-downs or highly detailed scans of every passenger.

Instead, they focus on identifying fliers that need more scrutiny because something about them indicates they are riskier.  I.e. they fit a risk profile.  This explicitly means people are NOT treated equally.  If you are much less likely to be a risk, you are much less likely to face additional scrutiny.

Israeli Arabs, who make up about one-fifth of Israel's population, are regularly subjected to a more intensive questioning that goes beyond the routine queries, such as "Where did you just arrive from?" and "Who packed your bags?" They also are subjected to body and bag searches more frequently than Jewish passengers.

Our current system, checking everyone, demonstrably fails as TSA fails to find fake bombs the GAO sends through to test the system. While the Israeli system demonstrably succeeds, having protected them for decades from terrorist threats arguably much fiercer than the U.S. faces.

Profiling may be too politically controversial and time-consuming to implement at much busier American airports. Still, Israeli experts say they believe it is inevitable that the United States will move in their direction, rather than continuing to evaluate millions of passengers as if they are potential threats.

"The profile system gives you the right, logical way to know who to check," Shif said.

Reason has laid out how the U.S. could move away from this empty security theater we practice today and to a more effective system, with three reforms to address the three fundamental flaws in the current approach. First, to remove the inherent conflict of interest, the TSA should be phased out of performing airport screening services. Instead, its role should become purely policymaking and regulatory (and better balanced among all transportation modes). Second, the screening functions should be devolved to each individual airport, under TSA oversight. And third, screening and other airport security functions should be redesigned along risk-based lines, to better target resources on dangerous people rather than dangerous objects.

 

It's Not About NO Airport Security, but BETTER Airport Security

Posted on November 27, 2010, 6:06pm | Adrian Moore

Steve Horwitz has a column emphasizing that objections to the TSA are about finding ways to improve security, not eliminate it.

Marcotte should take seriously the libertarian alternative, which is to turn security over to the airlines themselves. Aside from the very obvious fact that the airlines have the most to lose if a plane gets blown up, which provides them with strong incentives to get it right, the airlines would not want to create a security system that discourages people from purchasing their product. What profit-seeking entity would want to enrage its potential customers with intrusive methods such as nude scanners and intimate body searches? Only an institution that had no incentive to care what its “customers” think, nor any way of figuring out what trade-offs they would accept, would do so. And that institution is the government or any other monopoly provider.

TSA: Travel is a Privilege

Posted on November 26, 2010, 2:56pm | Samuel Staley

It's been a few days, but I'm still struck by the utter boldness of Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole's public and presumably intended to be quoted comment: “I see flying as a privilege; it’s also a public-safety issue." This is truly a startling attitude, but perhaps I'm more surprised that an agency head can be so blatant about it than the fact an ex-FBI agent actually thinks it.

Up until now, most U.S. citizens likely took personal travel for granted. The idea that the government would give you permission to travel was understandably the province of totalitarian governments, not democracies that had formalized protections for civil liberties (i.e., the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights). Indeed, some of us probably thought the the right to travel from point A to point B was fundamental to the values of individual liberty and personal freedom that were cornerstones of the U.S. form of government.

Not so. According to Pistole, no one has a right to travel (at least air travel in this particular case). In Pistole's case, travel is the subject of security agencies' whim based on the principle that anyone and everyone is a potential terrorist. I have had a U.S. passport for more than 30 years, logged well over a 100,000 miles traveling by air in the past year alone, lived in the same house for nearly two decades, and work for an organization that values peace and individaul liberty. I've worked in the freedom think tank world for more than two decades. Yet, I do not have a right to travel. I can get on a plane only if the TSA says I can even when it has no evidence to even suspect that I might be a threat.

While the public outrage now revolves around TSA, the threat to freedom to travel more broadly has been rising for years, perhaps decades. Many metropolitan planning agencies are adopting policies intentionally designed to reduce travel, either indirectly by allowing traffic congestion to rise to the point peopel will no longer travel or through more direct policies euphemistically called "demand management." Many urban and transportation planners openly advocate policies that severely discourage (and in some cases physically limit) the purchase and use of automobiles. Some of these policies include maximum parking regulations (to limit auto ownership), road tolling that specifically limits investments in new road capacity to reduce vehicle miles travelled (and hence travel), and even-odd license plate policies along the lines of Singapore and Beijing that limit access to downtowns to certain days for travelers and commuters.

The danger is that the TSA position will be seen as a further justification for limiting travel more broadly. After all, Tim McVeigh used a truck to destroy the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Using Pistole's rationale, isn't any driver a potential terrorist?

And car drivers don't have to be the only target. Some of the least secure transportation systems in the U.S. are public transit networks, where security and screening is practically is non-existent. As many travelers on the Washington, D.C. metro likely recognize, a suicide bomber could paralyze the city by detonating a bomb at the right place in the network and kill hundreds of people in the process.

If concern for security is a justification for revoking a fundamental right to travel, then everyone stepping out their door is at risk under TSA's current policies and rationales.

Only 400 of 2,200 Body Scanners Are In Place at Airports So Outrage at TSA Likely to Grow as More Are Installed

Posted on November 24, 2010, 10:05pm | Robert Poole

Defenders of the TSA’s intrusive new airport screening procedures (including The Nation) keep pointing to last week’s CBS News poll that showed 81% of Americans supposedly support full-body airport scanners. CBS said:

Although some civil rights groups allege that they represent an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, Americans overwhelmingly agree that airports should use the digital x-ray machines to electronically screen passengers in airport security lines, according to the new poll. Eighty-one percent think airports should use these new machines -- including a majority of both men and women, Americans of all age groups, and Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike. Fifteen percent said airports should not use them.

That number seemed completely out of whack with the widespread opposition we’ve been seeing. First of all, there are only 400 body scan machines in place and operating at U.S. airports. There are 2,200 screening lanes at 450 airports, and unless Congress forces a change in policy, all of those lanes will get body-scanners—but not until the end of next year. So even if every adult citizen in the CBS poll had taken one flight recently, he or she would have had an 82 percent chance of going through a lane without a body-scan machine. It’s easy to tell a pollster the politically correct answer if you’ve never actually encountered the new screening procedure. But as more scanners are installed and people are forced to choose between body scans and pat-downs, the public is likely to become more infuriated with the TSA.

This may already be happening anyway. Two other surveys came out this week that countered the CBS findings. Zogby International, polling likely voters, found:

The implementation of full body scans and pat downs by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as part of security enhancements at our nation's airports will cause 48% of Americans and 42% of more frequent fliers to choose a different mode of transportation when possible, a recent Zogby International Poll finds.

Overall, 61% of the 2,032 likely voters polled from Nov. 19 to Nov. 22, oppose the use of full body scans and TSA pat downs.  Republicans (69%) and Independents (65%) oppose in greater numbers than Democrats (50%).

And a USA Today/Gallup poll of adult fliers (people who have flown at least twice in the past year) found nearly the same percentage—57%--bothered or angered by the new procedures. Asked more specifically about just the body scanners, only 42% are angry or bothered by them, which suggests that the aggressive pat-downs are the greatest source of upset, as might be expected.

Polling guru Nate Silver looked at an ABC News poll and concluded “that the public scrutiny of the new screening procedures is significantly increasing.” Silver wrote:

It is perhaps foolish to predict how the T.S.A. will respond this time — when they have relaxed rules in the past, they have done so quietly, rather than in response to some acute public backlash. But caution aside, I would be surprised if the new procedures survived much past the New Year without significant modification.

Hopefully, what we've been seeing the past week or so is that Americans are not willing to continue to give up more personal liberty for what amounts to enhanced security theater at the airport.

TSA Pat Downs Kill

Posted on November 24, 2010, 12:48pm | Adrian Moore

Well, not directly. But one consequence of making airport security more ridiculous and intrusive is more people will choose to drive instead, and more driving means more acidents, injuries and deaths.  This segment on CNBC does a nice job discussing it with my friend economist Steve Horwitz  and Cliff Winston from Brookings.

 

 

Robert Poole Talks Airport Security on CNBC

Posted on November 23, 2010, 10:54am

Reason Foundation's Robert Poole, who advised the Bush White House and members of Congress against creating the TSA back in 2001 (see here, here and here), talked about private airport security screeners and a trusted traveler program on CNBC's Power Lunch yesterday:

 

Some of Poole's recent airport security work:

TSA, Don't Touch My Junk!

TSA Needs a Risk-Based Approach to Airport Security

Will We Get Serious About Aviation Security?

Airport Security Newsletter

Getting TSA Out of Passenger Screening

Posted on November 19, 2010, 2:03pm

In a column for the Daily Beast, Reason Foundation's Robert Poole expands on his earlier thoughts on fixing airport security: 

People are outraged at the TSA’s aggressive pat-downs and privacy-invading scans. Yet the TSA continues to foolishly pretend that everyone boarding a plane is equally likely to try to blow it up. This equal-risk assumption has caused knee-jerk reactions to the shoe-bomber (take your shoes off), the liquids bombers (small toiletries, no liquids through the checkpoint), the underwear bomber (body scans and pat-downs). Heaven help us the first time a would-be suicide bomber is caught with explosives hidden in a body cavity. By the TSA’s logic, they would have to make body-cavity searches routine for all of us.

This nonsense needs to stop, and that means shifting to a risk-based screening system. Passengers should be divided into three risk groups and dealt with accordingly: high, medium, and low-risk.

...Once that is done, maybe we can get TSA out of the screening business altogether. TSA shouldn’t be both the provider of airport screening and the regulator of all aspects of aviation security. TSA regulates itself and has hidden its mistakes in the past. It suppressed a report in 2007 showing that private security companies were at least as effective as TSA screeners and that if more careful accounting were done, were probably less costly, too. TSA never released that report, but the Government Accountability Office blew the whistle on TSA’s attempted coverup.

In Europe, regulators require each airport to be responsible for its security, and those airports are free to hire government-licensed security firms to carry out screening—which is the pattern in nearly every Western European country. In Canada, the government created an airport security agency following 9/11, but empowered it to contract with private security firms to do all airport screening in Canada. The United States is the only Western country that combines aviation security regulation and airport screening in the same entity.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) was the Aviation Subcommittee chairman back in 2001 and voted to create the TSA, like nearly every other member of Congress not named Ron Paul. But Mica also wisely created a provision that allowed airports to opt-out of the TSA and use private screeners instead. He is strongly encouraging airports to opt-out of the TSA now.

In January, Congressman Mica will chair the House Transportation Committee and if his fellow Republicans are truly committed to smaller government then they can start radically reforming the incompetent, privacy-invading TSA monster they helped create.  

Full Column Here

Poole's April column "Get the Government Out of Airport Screening" and his piece last December on the underwear bomber, "Will We Get Serious About Aviation Security."

 

TSA Needs a Risk-Based Approach to Airport Security

Posted on November 17, 2010, 2:13pm | Robert Poole

As I’ve frequently noted in my Airport Security Newsletter, intrusive screening of everyone is inherent in the TSA’s current approach to airport security, which treats all air travelers as equally likely to be a terrorist threat. The only feasible way to remove body-scanning (or the intrusive pat-down alternative) as standard procedure is to change TSA’s screening model to one that is risk-based. In practice, that would mean separating air travelers (other than those on the No-Fly list, who are automatically denied passage) into three basic groups:

1. Trusted Travelers, who have passed a background check and are issued a biometric ID card that proves (when they arrive at the security checkpoint) that they are the person who was cleared. This group would include cockpit crews, anyone holding a government security clearance, anyone already a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Global Entry, Sentri, and Nexus, and anyone who applied and was accepted into a new Trusted Traveler program. These people would get to bypass regular security lanes  upon having their biometric card checked at the airport, subject only to random screening of a small fraction.
2. High-risk travelers, either those about whom no information is known or who are flagged by the various Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence lists as warranting “Selectee” status. They would be the only ones facing body-scanners or pat-downs as mandatory, routine screening.
3. Ordinary travelers—basically everyone else, who would go through metal detector and put carry-ons through 2-D X-ray machines. They would not have to remove shoes or jackets, and could travel with liquids. A small fraction of this group would be subject to random “Selectee”-type screening.

This type of risk-based screening would focus TSA resources on the travelers that should receive the most scrutiny by reducing the use of resources on low-risk travelers. It would also save considerable sums of taxpayer dollars, reducing screener payroll and equipment costs - no more body scanners would be purchased since TSA already owns enough to use only for the secondary screening needed for the above program.

As for TSA claims that Trusted Traveler would be too risky, they cannot make that claim with a straight face, for two reasons. First, their parent agency DHS operates the three border-crossing programs noted above (Global Entry, Sentri, and Nexus) which operate on exactly the same principle. Second, TSA itself applies this principle for the hundreds of thousands of people who work at airports and need access to secure areas to do their jobs. Those people must pass an FBI criminal history background check, which entitles them to an ID card giving them unescorted access to secure airport areas. Some of these people have access to planes on the tarmac, which means they could do damaging things to those planes. Yet TSA accepts this risk trade-off.

Still Fighting the Last War on Air Cargo

Posted on November 2, 2010, 8:55pm | Robert Poole

The discovery of two apparent bombs being shipped on cargo planes seems likely to set off a whole new wave of fighting the last war—i.e. enacting costly, poorly-thought-out regulations based on the specifics of a new incident. Initial U.S. government reactions—sending two USAF F-15’s to escort Emirates flight 201 from the UAE into JFK Airport last Friday and a ban effective Nov. 2 on passengers carrying printer toner cartridges in carry-on bags—look to me like pure security theater. And the ever-vigilant Rep. Ed Markey (D, MA), author of the 2007 law mandating that all belly cargo on passenger planes be physically screened, has announced he will push for new legislation to require 100% physical screening of all air cargo, period.

Before we go off half-cocked on yet more such regulations, it might be worthwhile to pause and ask several questions. First, assuming this latest incident was an Al Qaeda project, what might have been its real purpose? Initial AP and CNN reports on the “bomb” intercepted in the U.K. suggested that it was a toner cartridge with wires and a circuit board attached in a way that “made it resemble an improvised bomb,” but no explosives were found. Even if one or both intercepted devices did include explosives, the intended objective is obscure: to damage a passenger plane, to damage a cargo plane, or to damage the intended recipient in Chicago? Or something else?

What no one seems to have considered is that this stunt, including crude “bombs” and a convenient tip-off, may have been intended not to blow anything up but to panic politicians into enacting draconian regulations intended to cause large-scale economic damage to international goods-movement.

Physically screening all air cargo entering the United States and all domestic air cargo flown on freighters would be hugely costly and disruptive to our economy. One major problem is that the TSA cannot dictate inspection requirements for overseas airports from which numerous cargo flights originate. So a global program like the TSA’s Certified Cargo Screening Program (for domestic belly cargo) is highly unlikely for incoming air cargo. But the alternative of physically inspecting all incoming cargo when it is unloaded at U.S. airports is nightmarishly complex and costly. Most of what comes in on cargo planes arrives on pallets or in shipping containers—and TSA has yet to certify any screening technology that can reliably inspect such large items. The alternative of unpacking them would require massive new on-airport facilities and would thoroughly gum-up air-cargo logistics, potentially wrecking the economics of time-sensitive air cargo. Accomplishing that could well be Al Qaeda’s real objective.

But let’s suppose this misguided effort were actually put into place over the next five years or so. How might Al Qaeda respond? Not by trying to send more bombs on cargo planes but in any number of other ways: assisting domestic terrorists to bomb sports venues, shopping malls, or any of millions of other targets; bringing in bad stuff in maritime containers (whose volume dwarfs air cargo) or by rail and truck from Canada and Mexico (proven channels used by smugglers of people and drugs).

It’s high time we stopped playing this nasty and expensive game. The limited funds this country has for homeland security would be far better spent, first of all, on better intelligence on terrorist groups and continued strikes against their leaders and infrastructure. In addition, we should cease pretending that any target-hardening strategy could ever be 100% effective and, instead, devote more of our security resources to beefing up resiliency and recovery capabilities.

Tarmac Delay Rule Will Cause Flight Cancellations

Posted on April 29, 2010, 8:40pm | Robert Poole

Katherine Mangu-Ward has done a great job explaining how badly the new government rules on tarmac delays are going to turn out for passengers.

Having been stuck once on the runway for more than two hours, I was overjoyed by the pilot’s decision to return to the gate and let those (like me) who wanted to get off the plane to do so. In my case, the two-hour delay meant I’d miss a meeting in Washington (my only reason for this day-trip), and my least-bad option was to get off the plane to someplace where I could take part in the meeting by phone. Nevertheless, I am strongly opposed to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s draconian tarmac delay rule that goes into effect today.

Besides my philosophical objection to the feds imposing a rule on airlines that compete vigorously for business, I’m concerned that this blunt instrument will cause more passenger delays than it will prevent.

No airline will risk paying a fine of up to $27,500 per passenger. At a typical plane-load of 135 people (on a 150-seat plane), that comes to over $3.7 million per flight. At the typical domestic “yield” of 14 cents per available seat mile, that 150-seat plane on a typical (2008 average) trip of 873 miles brings the airline about $18,000—for the entire flight. And that’s gross, not net, revenue. So any flight that comes close to two or two and a half hours on the taxiway is going to turn around and go back to the terminal rather than risk that outrageous fine.

When it does, a long list of problems will ensue. First, there may be no gate for it to return to. Second, it may have to replace some or all of its crew, due to FAA duty-time limits, meaning further delays. If it eventually departs the gate after all that, it goes to the end of the taxi line; it can’t go back to its “original” place in line, because taxiways don’t have passing lanes. And if it finally takes off and reaches its destination, all of its passengers that needed to connect will miss their connections and may be stranded somewhere else.

In many cases it will be simpler for the airline to cancel the flight, rather than reschedule it to run much later. That’s when its passengers’ problems really start. At today’s typical 90% load factors, only 10% of the seats on other flights to the plane’s original destination will be available. So to accommodate all 135 passengers from our original flight in batches of 15 (10% of 150) will take nine planes. But if there are only three flights a day to the destination in question, it will take three days to get everybody to that destination. And this is just from one flight that was cancelled in response to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s rule.

And by the way, if this DOT rule is supposed to be for the passengers’ protection, how much of that $3.7 million fine would go to compensate the passengers? Zero.

The tarmac delay problem that led to this rule has been grossly exaggerated. During the first eight months of 2009, taxi-out delays greater than two hours averaged 0.02% of all flights. That’s not two percent; it’s two/one-hundredths of one percent. In the worst month, June, it was 0.03%. So we’re talking about a miniscule problem—though certainly one that’s horrible for the scores or hundreds of those involved in such an incident.

The good news is that airlines that put passengers through such ordeals suffer big reputational penalties; JetBlue went to huge lengths after its fiasco several years ago. And for the past several years, airports and airlines have been working out contingency plans to accommodate stranded passengers, to make it more feasible for planes to return to the terminal in the event taxi-out delays become lengthy.

There are also policy changes that would help. One would be for more U.S. airports to shift to the kinds of common-use gates that are commonplace in Canada and most of Europe, especially with privatized airports. I’ve sat on taxiways many times after arriving early (or late at night) and waited half an hour because “my” airline had no gate available—yet we could see empty gates sitting there unused.

And since a huge fraction of these delays occur at a handful of the most congested airports during bad weather, market pricing of runway access would allow the most time-sensitive travelers to book trips on “premium” flights that pay extra for take-off priority when weather imposes serious constraints.

In short, the feds should butt out, and let competition, pricing, and airport-airline cooperation continue developing workable solutions.

Get Government Out of the Airport Security Screening Business

Posted on April 9, 2010, 12:48pm | Robert Poole

My new op-ed for the Washington Times' "Cut or Be Cut" series explains why it is time to get the TSA out of the passenger and baggage screening business:

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, governments across the world increased airport security, and rightly so. But in a hasty overreaction to that tragic day, Congress gave the job of screening passengers and baggage to a new federal agency: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). As a result, taxpayers pay for more than 48,000 airport security screeners and TSA has requested nearly $8.2 billion in funding for 2011.

Creating the massive bureaucracy was a mistake. Even though the quality of airport screening was low before Sept. 11, it was not a failure of the "rent-a-guard" screeners that let those 19 terrorists board planes "armed" with box cutters. Those "weapons" were perfectly legal at the time. The real failure was one of policy, which didn't make use of passenger history and law enforcement information that should have flagged most of the terrorists as suspicious characters who warranted enhanced scrutiny.

Even with today's bloated TSA, that problem still exists. Consider that our various intelligence agencies failed to share vital information, and a suspected terrorist, the underwear bomber, was allowed to board - and tried to blow up - an international flight bound for Detroit on Christmas. Thankfully, the Obama administration last week took some needed steps to help fix this problem.

Following Sept. 11, most other countries increased their standards for airport security by letting each airport implement its own procedures under government supervision. In Europe, that led to nearly all major airports hiring certified private security firms to do their screening. Canada created a new federal agency to implement better screening but outsourced the actual screening. This kind of high-performance contracting permits better training and airport-specific flexibility (e.g., higher pay scales in Canada's jobs-rich oil patch) and it better matches screener numbers to changing travel patterns and airport passenger levels.

In contrast, the system Congress and the George W. Bush administration created came with a massive conflict of interest: TSA serves as both the aviation-security regulator and the provider of key security. Who's watching the watchmen? When it comes to baggage and passenger screening, TSA is regulating itself. As with any bureaucracy, its natural incentive is to hide errors and make itself look good. In addition to the obvious conflict of interest, this also makes for fragmented airport security.

Full Column

Steps to Fix Airport Security

Posted on January 15, 2010, 12:20pm | Robert Poole

President Obama has announced some overdue steps to make better use of intelligence information in identifying bad people—those who should at least be subject to mandatory “secondary screening” when they show up ready to fly and, in extreme cases, forbidden to fly altogether. This is a welcome step toward shifting from the post-9/11 security policy of, for the most part, treating every passenger as equally likely to be a threat and therefore subjecting everyone to ever-expanding hassles at the checkpoint. We need to go further toward focusing limited aviation security resources on bad people rather than banned objects.

In doing so, however, it’s important that we build in safeguards to avoid ensnaring innocents onto the “selectee” and “no-fly” lists. I was alarmed to read Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Diane Feinstein’s comment, just prior to the president’s speech, that the no-fly list (which now contains only 4,000 names) should be expanded to include anyone about whom there is a “reasonable suspicion.” That comment appears to reflect a misunderstanding of the difference between the two lists.

The selectee list (currently about 14,000 names) is what Feinstein should be talking about in those terms. A risk-based system would have a much larger list of those who require more intensive and thorough screening because there are reasonable suspicions about them. Those on that list should, properly, be scanned by a whole-body scanner and/or receive a thorough pat-down (though in these days of underwear bombers, if pat-downs are used, they will have to be a lot more thorough than current practice). Their carry-ons should be inspected by hand and with explosive trace detection.

In addition, to keep terrorist groups off-guard, the current practice of randomly selecting some ordinary travelers for secondary screening should be continued, distasteful as that may be.

The no-fly list is another thing altogether. Preventing someone from flying, especially a U.S. citizen with a constitutional right to travel, should be invoked only in cases of those who are known bad-guys posing a real threat to aviation.

One measure that will help prevent people getting onto either list in error (due to similarities of name and other snafus) is the TSA’s long-delayed Secure Flight system, now being implemented airline by airline over a several-year period. Basically, Secure Flight shifts the function of checking passengers against the two watch lists from individual airlines to the TSA itself, while requiring the airlines to collect from passengers their full legal name, gender, and date of birth. The new system will be faster and more up-to-date, more secure, as well as being far more accurate. One thing the Obama administration could do is to speed up Secure Flight’s implementation.

The other most important next step toward a more risk-based system is to implement a real “Registered Traveler” or “trusted traveler” system, in which people who pass rigorous background checks can get expedited processing through airport checkpoints. The nominee for TSA Administrator, Erroll Southers, said in his confirmation hearing that he supports such a program. I hope he really means it.

Airport Security Newsletter

Aviation Security Research

Is This the Oversight for Security We Need? 88 is the Same Number as Piano Keys

Posted on January 9, 2010, 10:54pm | Shirley Ybarra

I found this editorial interesting in the New York Times just for the number.

"Congress is eagerly announcing assorted hearings into last month’s attempted airliner bombing near Detroit. So far, five different panels plan to grill security and intelligence officials, and more are expected to seek their time in the limelight.
The rush to inquire while public anxiety is high is understandable, but, unfortunately, it’s also evidence that one of the main valuable recommendations of the 9/11 commission continues to be ignored by Congress: the need to reform its own fractured oversight of intelligence and homeland security programs.

There are 88 separate committees and subcommittees claiming authority in the homeland security field, plus a parallel welter of panels for intelligence."

That is the same number as the number of keys on a piano.