The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) was created by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001 that was passed with only minuscule opposition in the U.S. House of Representatives and signed into law by George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. It amended federal transportation law to make the TSA responsible for security in all modes of transportation, including:
(1) civil aviation security, and related research and development activities;
(2) security responsibilities over other modes of transportation that are exercised by DOT;
(3) day-to-day federal security screening operations for passenger air transportation and intrastate air transportation;
(4) policies, strategies, and plans for dealing with threats to transportation;
(5) domestic transportation during a national emergency (subject to the secretary of Transportation’s control and direction), including aviation, rail, and other surface transportation, and maritime transportation, and port security; and
(6) management of security information, including notifying airport or airline security officers of the identity of individuals known to pose a risk of air piracy or terrorism or a threat to airline or passenger safety.
Although the TSA was originally part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), after the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the TSA was transferred to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.
According to the TSA website, the agency’s mission is to “protect the nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” Its vision is to “provide the most effective transportation security in the most efficient way as a high performing counterterrorism organization.” Its core values are “integrity, innovation, and team spirit.” Its work-force expectations are “hard work, professionalism, and integrity.” The TSA employs about 55,000 people and has a budget of more than
$7 billion a year.
The most common task of TSA Transportation Security Officers (TSO) is to screen passengers and baggage destined for commercial airline flights. Airports are allowed to opt out of federal-government-provided security under the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program (SPP) and have private contractors provide their airport security. However, airports must apply to the TSA and be approved, the TSA is the entity that selects the contractors, and the contractors must still follow TSA procedures. There are currently 21 airports that have been approved to participate in the SPP, the largest one being the San Francisco International Airport.
The biggest complaint about the TSA is the long wait times to get through its security lines. At Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport last year, two- to three-hour waits forced 450 passengers to miss their flights on American Airlines and the head of the TSA had to visit the Chicago airport and issue an apology.
In 2011, the U.S. Travel Association (“the national, non-profit organization representing all components of the travel industry”) concluded a year-long project to formulate recommendations for travel-enhancing changes to the goals and performance of the TSA. A blue-ribbon panel that included a former secretary of the DHS and the CEO of American Airlines issued a report, “A Better Way,” which made fourteen recommendations for reforming the TSA based on “the experience of security professionals, input from industry stakeholders, advice from privacy advocates and surveys of travelers.” The U.S. Travel Association has just issued a new report — this time with fifteen recommendations in seven areas — that urges “the new administration and the new Congress to place a renewed focus on refining and enhancing the operations of the TSA.”
“Transforming Security at Airports: An Update on Progress and a Plan for the Future of Aviation Security” offers “achievable steps Congress and the TSA can take right away to improve security and give travelers a better flying experience.” The fifteen recommendations outlining how the TSA can improve include redirecting airline passenger fees to cover the cost of and improve TSA screening operations, expanding the TSA PreCheck program to qualified travelers, ending repetitive security checks for bags that have already been screened, deploying modern staffing solutions, further utilizing canine screening units, and encouraging stakeholders to improve the checkpoint experience for travelers. On the basis of its research, the U.S. Travel Association believes that “travelers would take between two and three more trips per year if TSA hassles could be reduced without compromising security effectiveness — and these additional trips would add $85 billion in spending and 888,000 more jobs to our economy.”
Other criticisms of the TSA focus on the agency’s ineptitude, criminal activity, inefficiency, waste, sexual assaults, and abuses, which are all notorious and legion. In tests conducted by undercover teams at dozens of airports, TSA screeners failed to detect explosives and weapons a majority of the time. Hundreds of TSA personnel have been fired for stealing items from travelers’ luggage. The millimeter wave scanners used to scan passengers have high false-positive rates, resulting in many unnecessary pat-downs. The TSA’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT), in which Behavior Detection Officers (BDO) observe passengers as they go through security checkpoints and look for behaviors that might indicate a higher security risk, was reviewed by the Government Accountability Office and found to be ineffective. Many passengers have reported that TSA screeners used pat-downs as a means to sexually assault them. TSA agents at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport detained a 9-year old boy and his family, causing them to miss their flight and wait 15 hours for another one, because they mistook the boy’s pacemaker for a bomb hidden in his chest.
Citing national-security concerns, the TSA has never in all the years of its existence provided any evidence that it has actually stopped a single terrorist from boarding an airplane. There is, in fact, no evidence that the TSA has prevented any more terrorist attacks than the private contractors who handled the airport security checkpoints before the Aviation and Transportation Security Act went into effect.
