Reason Foundation

The Top Transportation Issues to Watch in 2013

Posted on January 8, 2013, 10:57am | Baruch Feigenbaum

After detailing the 12 biggest transportation stories of 2012, it is time to detail the transportation issues to watch in 2013. 

1) New Ports/Waterways Bill: Ports, inland waterways, and the freight they move are often overlooked in transportation. Currently, the federal government collects a harbor maintenance tax for maintenance dredgings. However, the Army Corps maintains the trust fund and decides to whom and how to distribute that funding. Tax money from ports, such as Los Angeles, that have naturally deep harbors support ports such as Charleston that do not. And other port users such as ships do not pay anything to maintain the harbor. The Army Corps typically spends less than half of that funding on dredging and keeps the remainder in an account. Inland Waterways have a separate trust fund supported by a $0.20 per gallon tax on barge fuels. But $0.20 raises very little funding; it is not a sustainable, robust funding source for waterways. Meanwhile, East Coast ports are seeking earmarks to permanently deepen their harbors ahead of the Panama Canal. However, with the earmark ban in the house, it is not clear how they will obtain any funding. Senators Graham and Lindsey introduced a bill last October and will likely introduce a similar version in the 113^th Congress. But whether there is sufficient motivation for a bill is unclear. 

2) Sustainable Funding Source for Transportation: While Congress recently approved a new 2-year surface transportation bill, 2 years passes very quickly. As a result, the transportation committees in Congress will be hard at work on a new bill. The top issue to address is funding. For the past 50 years, Congress has been able to rely on the gas tax as the major source of transportation funding. As the federal government has funded ever more transportation projects, Congress has started tapping the general fund. Due to inflation and more fuel-efficient vehicles the gas tax has lost more than 50% of its buying power since it was last increased in 1994. For MAP-21 rather than increasing taxes or cutting bloated unnecessary programs, Congress created an accounting gimmick that uses 10 years of transportation revenue to create a 2-year program. While the gas tax will continue to play a role in the future, Congress will need a new funding source. More general funding is possible; but this further exacerbates the debt and has no users-pay users-benefit link. A national sales tax is another option but it also suffers from the users-pay problem. TIFIA and bonding are excellent ways to leverage funding but require a base amount of money and are not appropriate for every project. Value Capture works well for some but not all transit projects. A combination of mileage-based-user fees and tolling are most experts top choice. But an MBUF system is several years from a national rollout. And both MBUF and tolling are opposed by short-sighted politicians. States are likely to take a larger role in funding transportation because the funding challenge for the next bill will be major. 

3) Ray LaHood: President Obama asked Secretary LaHood to stay on temporarily past the election to provide stability in his cabinet. It is not clear if LaHood will stay on for another term. LaHood announced he was leaving after one term but then walked the decision back last fall. Transportation types are hoping Mr. LaHood goes. LaHood, with no professional transportation knowledge of any kind has not been a forceful advocate for transportation and many industry types hold LaHood and Obama responsible for not enacting a new 6-year transportation bill in 2009. A new transportation secretary could explain the importance of transportation to both the President and the American people. He or she could bring analytics back to the DOT and make substantial changes to policy. The three most likely candidates are Ed Rendell, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Steve LaTourette. Of those three, Rendell is the strongest choice. He has been a mayor, and a governor and has worked in policy. He helped set up Building America’s Future to address infrastructure challenges. And as a moderate Democrat from a swing state he could be politically useful to the administration. Villaraigosa has shown a passion for infrastructure. And the President would like to add a Hispanic to his cabinet. But Villaraigosa has no statewide experience. He is not as much a national figure as Rendell. And he is more of a cheerleader for transportation than an analyst. The next Secretary of Transportation should be part cheerleader, but he also needs to understand transportation and be able to balance facts objectively. LaTourette is the weakest choice of the 3. LaTourette abandoned transportation in the House to serve on Appropriations. He announced in early 2012 he wanted to reclaim his seniority on the Transportation and Infrastructure committee and run for Chair. And, the House steering committee's decision to give the gavel to somebody actually on the T & I committee played a promiment part in LaTourette's decision to retire from the House. LaTourette may not have the best personality for a cabinet position as he has a bit of a temper. 

4) Changes to TSA: The organization set up by Republicans in the wake of 9/11 has proven to be an enormous mess. And fixing the problem is a challenge. Last year Congress required TSA Administrator Pistole to start approving contracted screening at interested airports. Pistole stopped TSA contracting in 2011 because he concluded that there were no cost-savings from contracting. (The facts said otherwise.) But even with the program restarted only 16 airports have opted out in the 11 years the program has been in existence. The TSA has failed to improve security because it concentrates on screening passengers at the front of the airport but leaves the back door wide open. There is no protection from intruders entering the secure side of an airport through a fence or waterway as happened earlier this year at Kennedy International Airport. In Newark a knife-wielding intruder got onto the tarmac by scaling an eight-foot fence. In Dallas a group bypassed all security and posted a video of themselves on YouTube. These problems could be remedied if airports and not TSA oversaw screening on their property. Currently, TSA has dual purposes—conducting the screening and overseeing the screening process. Having airports run security screening and allowing TSA to focus on overseeing screening would end this conflict. But this would require interim legislation. With John Mica in charge of the oversight committee and TSA disapproval from both Democrats and Republicans, Congress could pass a bill to make small but significant changes to TSA. But real change may have to wait until the next aviation bill and a new president. 

5) Bill Shuster in charge of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: Shuster formerly headed the Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee but with former chair John Mica term-limited, and now on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, Shuster takes the Chairman’s gavel. Nobody knows how Shuster will differ from Mica. But most transpo types believe he will be less partisan and have better working relations with the Senate. Shuster’s priorities include a new water resources bill, a railroad reauthorization and groundwork for the 2014 surface transportation bill. Shuster believes that high-speed rail can work in the northeast but not the rest of the country and wants to privatize Amtrak. Shuster is as much if not more of a transportation wonk than Mica and has an ability to explain complex transportation terms in simple language. While Shuster’s dad, Bud, ran the T & I committee with an iron fist from 1995-2001, and earmarked numerous pointless projects for his Pennsylvania district, Shuster Jr. will be more likely to seek consensus. 

6) New Amtrak Bill: With Amtrak up for reauthorization in 2013, this could be a critical year for the government corporation. Amtrak has never made a profit; only its higher speed Acela service makes money. All other lines require large annual subsidies from the government. Republicans want to end subsidies and privatize the successful Acela service. There is some precedent as other countries such as Japan have privatized some of their high-speed rail lines. Much has changed in the 163 years since the B & O railroad reached the Ohio River. Passenger service was initially profitable for railroads but with new more cost-effective forms of transport such as cars, buses and planes and faced with bankruptcy, Class I railroads offloaded their passenger service to the federal government in 1970. With the exception of the northeast corridor, passenger rail service has continued to lose money over the last 43 years. With planes offering the speed advantage, buses offering the price advantage, and cars offering the customization advantage, passenger-rail has no advantage over the other transport modes. However, politics are powerful and with jobs at stake Amtrak will most likely continue to receive enough support to survive although not enough to create a robust system. 

7) HSR in California: High-speed-rail in California moves onward. CA HSR is similar to the latest big movie flop. It is completely unbelievable but the producer (CA governor Jerry Brown) and the director (Chairperson Dan Richard) want a legacy. That the legacy will be the state drowning in debt is less important than that they will be remembered. Only in this story, federal taxpayers, not the studio head, will be on the hook. And unlike the studio head who could kill this mess, taxpayers seem powerless to derail this project. Republicans from California tried. But since Democrats now have a supermajority in Congress, even with many Democrats trying to kill the project it may live on. What are the facts? To reduce costs the latest version of the CA HSR business plan proposes for commuter and high-speed-rail trains to share tracks around Los Angeles and San Francisco. While this cuts $30 million from the costs, it makes the system less than high-speed. Further, it makes impossible one of the explicit reasons for building the system—to provide a 2 hour and 30 minute trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The slower speed will make it more challenging for the service to attract passengers. Most other high-speed-rail lines have attracted primarily airline passengers. Drivers are unlikely to use rail because they value the flexibility to stop for food or stretch their legs or need the car at the other end of their destination. The funding plan relies on money from a cap and trade pollution system intended for environmental purposes and private investors who want to lose money. The circuitous route through the mountains further increases the costs. As a result the GAO estimates the project needs $42 billion from U.S. taxpayers, most of who live far from California. It was time to pull the plug two years ago and concentrate on HSR in the Northeast Corridor. But the politics says this project limps on. 

8) Space Travel: With the end of NASA’s space shuttle, privatized space travel is likely to take off over the next five years. While NASA can pay the Russians to get people and cargo to the international space station, Russia-U.S. relations may not make that realistic. Four private companies are competing to provide a vehicle for the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability program. SpaceX, the farthest along, has already carried people and cargo to the space station. Blue Origin, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada are also in the running. NASA has unfunded agreements to collaborate on tourism efforts with United Launch Alliance, Alliant Technsystems/ATK, and Excalibur Almaz. Another company, Golden Spike, plans to charge $1.5 billion for a round-trip expedition to the moon. NASA would like additional federal funding to speed-up development of its craft. But in a time of high budget deficits, it is hard to argue space travel is needed. What is more likely is that a private company such as SpaceX develops a system for tourists and NASA forges a partnership with the company to use its vehicles for its missions as well.

Airport Should Ditch Agency to Provide Better Security at a Lower Cost

Posted on December 14, 2012, 2:45pm | Baruch Feigenbaum

In the following Commentary which first ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on December 11th, I discussed how Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport could improve its airport security by directly managing the security process. Airports that manage security hire, train, and staff screeners comply with all regulations and provide substantially better service at a much lower cost.

The full commentary is available here. 

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the busiest airport in the world, has been honored for its efficiency. However, there’s one thing many travelers at Hartsfield-Jackson would like to see improved: airport security.  

In the wake of 9/11, then-President George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). In doing so, they mistakenly made TSA both the provider of airport screening and the aviation security regulator. This conflict of interest makes the TSA answerable to no one.       

“Security screeners at two of the nation’s busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60 percent of tests last year, according to a classified report,” USA Today reported in 2007.

ABC News reported another classified report found screeners in Newark failed to spot bombs in 20 out of 22 tests.

And it’s not just passenger and baggage screening that needs to be improved. Over the past 10 years, there have been 1,300 instances of people trespassing in supposedly secure airport areas. Hartsfield-Jackson is not immune. Last month, a woman threw a bag over the security fence to a man standing next to a luggage cart. This unscreened bag could have easily been placed on a plane. Last year, a whistle blower was able to sneak unscreened food and drinks from outside the airport onto a plane. 

TSA isn’t held accountable for these security failures, despite spending $3 billion of taxpayers’ money each year. A large part of TSA is simply security theater: take off your shoes, remove your laptop and no liquids over 3.4 ounces. It’s the illusion of security.

The most effective way to improve the screening quality at Hartsfield-Jackson is to let the airport directly manage the entire security process. After 9/11, five airports were allowed to use private screeners instead of TSA screeners. At one of those airports, San Francisco International (SFO), screening costs 40 percent less per capita than TSA screening at Los Angeles International (LAX). SFO screeners also process 65 percent more passengers than LAX screeners. Estimates show Atlanta could reduce costs by 42 percent and be 65 percent more efficient by replacing TSA screeners with private screeners.

Additional U.S. airports are being allowed to use private screeners, and 16 airports now do so. Hartsfield-Jackson should follow suit. (There’s an application process to go through to prove you are hiring qualified screeners and saving money.) The responsibility for screening baggage and passengers would be shifted from TSA to the airport. This makes the entire security system — passenger screening, perimeter security, employee screening, etc. — seamless.

Hartsfield-Jackson would hire, train and staff screeners, working with certified security companies. It would comply with all TSA regulations. And by removing its conflict of interest, which currently encourages it to cover up mistakes and security weaknesses, TSA could focus on its oversight role of finding and fixing security flaws at airports.

The entire Commentary is available here.

10 is Enough (Years for TSA): How to Provide Better Airport Security at a Lower Cost

Posted on November 21, 2012, 4:39pm | Baruch Feigenbaum

This week the Transportation Security Administration reaches its 10-year birthday. But instead of celebrating with a cake, most transportation types are trying to figure out how to blow out the candles for good on many aspects of the TSA. While millions of Thanksgiving travelers take off their shoes and surrender their plastic knives, the problems at TSA continue. 

For the past 10 years, the Transportation Security Administration has had a dual role serving as both the provider of airport screening and the aviation security policy-maker and regulator. In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress built this dual role into TSA’s job description. Unfortunately, this federal agency is answerable to no one. There is little evidence that the TSA has substantially improved security despite dedicating $3 billion per year to security spending. 

TSA has focused on passengers and their bags but not the rest of the airport. Over the past 10 years there have been 25,000 breaches of airport security including 1,300 instances of people trespassing in secure areas. There is no protection from intruders entering the secure side of an airport through a fence or waterway as happened earlier this year at Kennedy International Airport. Two trespassers, one each at Kennedy International and Charlotte, managed to stow away in the wheel wells of airplanes. In Newark a knife-wielding intruder got onto the tarmac by scaling an eight-foot fence. In Dallas a group bypassed all security and posted a video of themselves on YouTube. Unfortunately, a large part of current aviation security is an illusion.

The most effective way to increase the screening quality and eliminate this dual role is to devolve the screening function to the airports, which should be able to carry it out either by creating its own screener workforces (meeting TSA selection, training, and performance requirements) or by contracting with a TSA-approved security company of its choosing. If the cost comparison between TSA screening at Los Angeles International Airport and the outsourced screening at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is accurate, applying SFO-type best practices nationwide could reduce screening costs by about 40%. Most airport chiefs support devolving screening. A 2005 proposal by then TSA administrator Michael Chertoff which would have kept the TSA in place but contracted out its screening duty was stopped due to political opposition in Congress. 

How would the contracting process work? The recently passed 2012 aviation bill allows airports with TSA's approval to contract their passenger screening and security services if …“Contractors can do the job as good or better than federal screeners without affecting costs.” The wording “Good or better” is vague qualitative language. Although TSA administrator John Pistole approved contracting for Orlando-Sanford airport he has previously said he does not see any clear and substantial advantage to the program. Many aviation researchers are doubtful that the number of airports with contracted screening will increase significantly. Ideally, the next Congress will draft legislation requiring airports to contract service. Currently sixteen airports including San Francisco contract out their screening process. 

In a national program, the airport director would be in charge of securing the airport premises under the supervision of the TSA. The responsibility for screening the baggage and passengers would be shifted from the TSA to each airport. The airport would decide who would conduct the screening. Since screening is similar to other operations where the airports hire their own staff for some duties and contract out other duties, this would not be a problem. The airport would still have to comply with all TSA regulations. 

The hiring and training of screeners would also be devolved. The TSA could do this by providing training requirements and a core curriculum that could be used by airport, certified screening contractors, and screener training firms. 

Funding allocations should be made monthly because passenger levels change based on the time of year. Monthly funding can be targeted more exactly to passenger levels. Airports should receive a lump-sum amount of funding that would be required to be spent solely on airport security purposes. 

Currently the federal government determines the pay for all of its workers. Each airport should be free to set its wage scale based on local living conditions. Some smaller airports may want security workers to monitor perimeter areas to provide better security. These airports may also want employees to work split shifts. Currently unionization rules prevent such freedom. 

Some airports may want to examine the use of automation to improve the screening process. Currently, certain airports use EDS machines for explosive detection. These EDS machines can lead to a personnel reduction from 19 to 4.25; this is a 78 percent reduction. Other automated systems could lead to similar personnel reductions. 

The devolution of funding from TSA to individual airports has another advantage. Airports would have incentives to develop long-term scanning efficiencies something current governmental rules do not encourage. 

Has the contracted screening model been tried anywhere else? European countries offer an example of such a model. Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were early adapters. By the late ‘90s 13 countries had switched to a public-private type model. The GAO has visited five countries that use the model: Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom. GAO found better overall security system design, higher qualifications and more substantial training requirements for screeners. For example, France requires 60 hours of training and the FAA requires 12. Despite worries to the contrary, privatized security offers better pay and benefits. The U.S. can adopt this model where companies that do not meet the standards have their contracts cancelled. Companies can bid on a whole package of security services not just passenger screening. Bidding on a package avoids undue cost pressures on any one element. Standards are set and enforced by a government agency. The government certifies security companies where the government agency reviews the financial fitness of each firm, licenses the employees, sets standards for compensation and benefit, and trains the managers and the operating personal even setting goals and objectives. In these countries, the government conducts periodic audits and random unannounced testing. 

Other transportation types have suggested reforming TSA along similar lines. My colleague Bob Poole detailed how to privatize some aspects of Airport Security in Annual Privatization Report 2011: Air Transportation. RAND released a report titled Aviation Security: After Four Decades, It's Time for a Fundamental Review. The traveling public has suffered through a bloated pointless bureaucracy for long enough. Instead of celebrating any more TSA birthdays, travelers can lift a glass to an eliminated or substantially reformed TSA.

Airport Screening Did Not Enable the 9/11 Attacks

Posted on October 8, 2012, 11:00pm | Robert Poole

 

 

Last month federal judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected a motion by American Airlines and United Continental to dismiss a lawsuit that blames the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 on flawed airport screening. The suit, brought by WTC tenants seeking compensation, will presumably proceed to trial.

The connection to these two airlines stems from the way airport screening was carried out in those days, prior to creation of the TSA. The FAA was responsible for aviation security regulation, and it imposed an unfunded mandate on airlines to provide checkpoint screening. It’s never been clear to me why the mandate was imposed on airlines rather than airports, but apparently since the original purpose of checkpoint screening was to prevent weapons from being brought on board airliners, and since in many cases specific airlines more or less ran concourses of gates devoted mostly or entirely to their flights, there was a certain rough logic to this policy.

But that’s where the logic of this case stops. Since the unfunded mandate was imposed by the FAA on airlines, they understandably sought to comply with the mandate at the lowest possible cost—just as they do with all other operating costs. And since there were essentially no standards for FAA-mandated screening, this led to a low-cost system using security contract firms selected by low-bid. GAO and FAA’s own “red teams” documented the poor performance of this screening as far back as 1978. GAO in 1987 recommended that performance standards be established, but the FAA failed to act. Congress eventually ordered (in the 1996 FAA reauthorization act) the agency to develop certification requirements for airport screening companies, as well as the implementation of uniform performance standards. It took the FAA more than three years to come up with a proposed “Certification of Screening Companies” rule in January 2000. When that rule had still not been finalized by November 2000, Congress ordered FAA to issue the final rule by May 31, 2001. After FAA failed to meet that deadline, Congress required the agency to report twice a year on the status of each missed statutory deadline. The attack on 9/11 occurred without the new rule and standards in place.

So point 1 is that airlines, as of 9/11, were complying with the regulations in place as of that date, no matter how pathetic those regulations were.

Point 2 is that, as most people know, the apparent weapon used by the 9/11 terrorists—box cutters—were not prohibited items at that point in time. So no matter how low the quality of airport screening may have been at that point, it was not the failure of either the screening companies or the airlines that employed them that led to the successful take-overs of the cockpits of those planes.

Point 3 is an intelligence failure, in which the various agencies charged with protecting this country from terrorism failed to connect the dots that would have identified the terrorists and either prevented them from flying or at the least subjected them to heightened inspection at the checkpoint. This could have been done, in part, by an information system called CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System) that had been in operation since 1998, had that system been allowed to be used to identify higher-risk passengers. But a 1999 FAA regulation limited CAPPS to determining which passengers’ checked bags should be screened for explosives. For fear of being accused of allowing “discrimination,” FAA barred airlines from using CAPPS to identify passengers who should be searched and questioned. Nine of the 9/11 hijackers had been flagged by CAPPS, but none were searched at the checkpoints.

Thus, if any party should be sued for damages over the destruction of the World Trade Center, it should be the FAA. That agency failed to provide standards for passenger screening companies, like those that were in place at the time at numerous European airports that use certified security firms for screening. And it prevented airlines from using a tool that could have stopped at least nine of the hijackers from boarding the flights in question.

The WTC tenants’ suit against the airlines is completely wrong-headed and should have been dismissed. And if there is any justice in the world, the court will find that there is no cause to hold the airlines responsible for the 9/11 tragedy.

 

 

House Homeland Security Committee Holds Hearings on Airport Security

Posted on July 11, 2012, 1:58pm | Baruch Feigenbaum

Yesterday the House Homeland Security Subcommittee held a hearing titled “Perspectives on the future of Transportation Security”. The subcommittee examined ways to improve the Transportation Security Administration. Americans who have flown over the past ten years have experienced the security screenings operated by the TSA.

Chairman Mike Rogers (R) from Alabama who oversaw the hearing offered this opening statement (part below):

Let me start by saying that giving up on TSA without having something better to fill its place is not an option.

For all of its faults, the fundamental reason TSA was set-up after 9/11 was to deploy enhanced security measures to prevent another attack on aviation.

That security mission is just as important today, if not more important than it was eleven years ago.

Having said that, letting TSA carry on the way it has for the last eleven years is equally not an option.

TSA’s poor conduct is sending a strong message to American taxpayers. 

That message is: TSA doesn’t care or doesn’t know how to best serve and protect the traveling public.

I am convinced we need to undertake major reforms to the federal government’s role at our airports.

Several experts testified including my colleague Bob Poole. Bob’s full testimony is available here. Bob discussed four major topics. The first is TSA’s conflict of interest:

I served as an advisor to the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in the days following the 9/11 attacks, as Congress was grappling with how to improve aviation security. The legislation that created the TSA—the Aviation & Transportation Security Act (ATSA) of 2001—built in a conflict of interest in the new agency. On the one hand, TSA is designated as the agency that establishes transportation security policy and regulates those that provide transportation operations and infrastructure (airlines, airports, railroads, transit systems, etc.). But on the other hand, TSA itself is the operator of the largest component of airport security—passenger and baggage screening.

When it comes to screening, therefore, TSA has a serious conflict of interest. With regard to all other aspects of airport security—access control, perimeter control, lobby control, etc.—security is the responsibility of the airport, under TSA’s regulatory supervision. But when it comes to screening, TSA regulates itself. Arm’s-length regulation is a basic good-government principle; self-regulation is inherently problematic.

The second is how the U.S. is out of step with other countries:

In 2008 the OECD’s International Transport Forum commissioned me to do a research paper comparing and contrasting aviation security in the United States, Canada, and the European Union. In the course of that research, I was surprised to discover that the conflict of interest that is built into TSA does not exist in Canada or the EU countries. If you go to Canada or any of the major EU countries, airport screening looks similar to what you experience at U.S. airports. But the way in which this service is provided and regulated is quite different. In all these cases, the policy and regulatory function is carried out by an agency of the national government, as in the United States. But actual airport screening is carried out either by the airport itself or by a government-certified private security firm. Legally, in Europe airport security is the responsibility of the airport operator. Whether the screening is carried out by the airport or a security company varies from country to country, but in no case is it carried out directly by the national government aviation security agency.

The third is the difference between TSA’s current contracting and performance contracting:

Competitive contracting has been widely used at local, state, and federal levels of government. In recent decades, it has been embraced by elected officials of both parties as a way of achieving greater value for the taxpayer’s dollar. One of the most influential books on the subject was Reinventing Government by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, advisors to Vice President Gore’s National Performance Review project. Under this approach, a government wanting a service delivered more cost-effectively must define the outcomes it wishes to achieve, leaving qualified bidders free to propose their own procedures and technology for achieving those outcomes. Such contracts typically stress measurement of outcome variables, and often provide financial penalties and bonuses.

By contrast, under the Screening Partnership Program (SPP) set up by TSA’s interpretation of the opt-out provisions in the ATSA legislation, the entire process is micromanaged by TSA. Instead of permitting the airport in question to issue an RFP to TSA-certified firms, TSA itself selects the company and assigns it to the airport. And TSA itself manages the contract with the screening company, rather than allowing the airport to integrate screening into its overall security program, under TSA supervision and regulation. Moreover, TSA spells out procedures and technology (inputs) rather than only specifying the desired outcomes of screening, thereby making it very difficult for screening companies to innovate. Moreover, the ATSA legislation mandates that compensation levels for private screeners be identical to those of TSA screeners.

Finally, Bob offered several steps to improve TSA in the future:

Based on the foregoing assessment, I have two recommendations for improving airport screening.

The most urgent one is to further reform the current SPP. Recent legislation that puts the burden of proof on TSA in denying an airport’s request to opt out of TSA-provided screening is a modest step in the right direction, but does not correct TSA’s overly centralized approach. SPP should be further reformed so that:

·      The airport, not TSA, selects the contractor, selecting the best-value proposal from TSA-certified contractors.

·      The airport, not TSA, manages the contract, under TSA’s overall regulatory oversight of all security activities at the airport in question.

I believe these changes could be made by directing TSA to adopt them as policy changes, without the need to revise the actual language of the ATSA legislation.

Second, I recommend revising the ATSA legislation to remove the conflict of interest that Congress built into that law. The revision would devolve the responsibility for passenger and baggage screening from TSA to individual airports, as part of their overall security program. Airports would have the option of either hiring a qualified screener workforce or contracting with a TSA-certified security firm. As is already standard practice when airports join SPP, current TSA screeners would have first right to screening positions at the airports shifting over, subject thereafter to the airport’s or the company’s rules and human resources policies. This change would produce greater accountability for screening performance and would also bring the United States into full conformity with ICAO regulations.

Other experts who testified include Dr. Richard Bloom and Mr. Rick Nelson. The full list of witnesses and witness testimony is available here.

The TSA has a certain intransigence to improving itself. For example, let us examine privatizing airport security screening. In the past airports were able to privatize their airport screening functions. When TSA chief John Pistole was confirmed as TSA administrator he decided not to expand the private screening beyond 16 airports because he saw no advantage to it. Since an airport had to prove that there was “a clear and substantial advantage to private screening” and Pistole was the official deciding what clear and substantial advantage meant, not a single airport was able to implement private screening between the beginning of his tenure and early 2012. Pistole’s position appeared to contradict ATSA legislation that allows all airports that want to take part in airport privatization to participate.

When Congress passed the FAA reauthorization bill earlier this year, it tried to fix the problem. TSA chief John Pistole is now required to approve airport requests to privatize screeners unless he determines it would harm security. Recently, Pistole approved private screening at Orlando-Sanford airport in T&I leader John Mica’s district. While the approval is a positive sign, as Pistole is ideologically opposed to privatized screening I am worried that in the future Pistole could find bogus reasons to deny contracting out screening.

It is important that the Homeland Security committee and other relevant committees hold hearings to examine how best to improve airport security. The U.S. airport security system could be much better. Countries from Canada to Germany have much to teach us. Burying our heads in the sand and resisting change is not the way to fix our system.

Among Continued TSA Bungling, One Positive Sign

Posted on June 13, 2012, 3:15pm | Baruch Feigenbaum

While the TSA continues to make major mistakes, the agency made one smart decision last week. The disciplining of 43 TSA employees at Southwest Florida International Airport proves that there are continuing issues at TSA. But the agency’s approval of private screeners at Orlando-Sanford Airport, indicates the agency may finally be considering the traveling public rather than itself.

Regarding the security lapse in Fort Myers according to the News-Press:

Five Transportation Security Administration workers at Southwest Florida International Airport have been fired and another 38 suspended after an internal investigation found they failed to perform random screenings last year.

The 43, a combination of front-line screeners and supervisors, represent about 15 percent of the roughly 280 TSA employees at the airport. The number of workers involved makes it one of the largest disciplinary actions TSA has taken in its 10-year history, TSA spokesman David Castelveter confirmed.

The workers were notified of their punishment Friday and are being given an opportunity to appeal, he said. The agency has brought in screeners from other airports to fill in.

During a two-month period last year, as many as 400 passengers who underwent routine screening never got additional random checks, Castelveter said. About 3.8 million passengers departed from the airport last year.

Castelveter said TSA officials were alerted by a fellow employee at the airport who reported at least one violation during the two-month period. The agency then conducted its own probe and found other violations. 

First, why was no one checking on the screeners? One problem with the federal government handling both the screening duties and overseeing the screeners process is that the same agency that is conducting the screening is managing the screening process. This is a conflict of interest. The DOT Office of Inspector General monitors the TSA but its job is to stop systematic problems--not this type of random problem. If the screening force is privatized, then the government will monitor the private contractors. There will be no conflict of interest for the government to release reports critical about the private contractors. But when the government monitors itself, taxpayers have to rely on the government to release audits critical of itself. 

In the Fort Myers situation, the TSA did not report the problem until more than six months after its occurrence. During the investigation the government kept the problem secret; nobody outside TSA was aware there was a problem. Did the screeners change their behavior in the last six months? Was this a problem up until the termination of 5 of screening supervisors? We do not know. 

Further, why were the screeners allowed to keep screening passengers? Why were they not placed on administrative review? And why did the review take so long? The continual screening of passengers by TSA employees when TSA leadership knew these employees were not doing their job is particularly troubling. Breaking of the incident on a Friday evening seems designed to quell media coverage. While it may not have been TSA’s intent, it appears the agency is trying to sweep this incident under the rug. 

Perhaps the most bizarre statement by came from TSA spokesman David Castelever. According to Castelever:

“It’s the random secondary (checks) that did not happen,” he said. “At no time was a traveler’s safety at risk and there was no impact on flight operations.” 

But if travelers are not at risk, why is TSA performing the random secondary checks? The agency has shifted its security approach very slightly to a more risk-based approach. While this is far short of the comprehensive shift needed, it is a step in the right direction. Yet the same TSA that for the last several years has been adamant about random searches is now claiming those random searches are not necessary. Has the agency changed its mind? I doubt it. The latest response seems geared more towards framing the media coverage and focused less on actual policy. 

However, TSA has taken one positive step. Earlier this week the TSA finally approved Orlando-Sanford’s application to use private screeners. (The airport is in the district of Transportation and Infrastructure Chair John Mica’s district.) Earlier this year the TSA approved private screening for a seasonal airport at West Yellowstone, MT. The agency had previously denied both the West Yellowstone and the Orlando-Sanford applications.

Trying to understand TSA is frustrating. TSA did approve the Orlando-Sanford screening privatization and may consider adopting a more risk-based approach to airport security. But then the TSA sweeps a major problem under the rug while a high-placed agency spokesman denies the problem exists. What is going on? TSA’s first mission is to protect TSA; logic, rationale, and cost-savings are unimportant. This is typical behavior for a large U.S. government agency. Protect the agency but not the American people.

The question is whether TSA is serious about privatization and a risk-based system or is intent on trying to get Rep. John Mica off its back. I believe it is the second option; let us hope I am wrong. 

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."