Ever since the barbaric events of September 11, 2001, the air
traveling public has become used to longer lines and ever more
bothersome requirements at airport security. The Transport
Security Administration (TSA) has become the butt of jokes — TSA
stands for Thousands Standing Around. Yet terrorists, from shoe
bomber Richard Reid to Times Square bomber Faisal Shazad, have
gotten through their lines and boarded planes, despite being
known to the authorities. The TSA’s repeated failure comes at an
extremely high cost. We need a new approach to airport security.
According to transportation expert Bob Poole of the Reason
Foundation, long airport lines cost the U.S. economy about $8
billion a year in wasted time. That means that in the nine years
since 9/11, we have lost about $70 billion. Worse still, the
lines have caused people to drive rather than fly. Overall,
driving is more dangerous than flying, and research suggests the
lines have led to an extra 1,200 deaths a year since 2001 — so
the death toll from people trying to avoid lines is now much
higher than the carnage of 9/11! This is truly a case of “death
by regulation.” The Department of Transportation values loss of
one life at just under $6 million, so the lives lost in car
accidents just about double Poole’s cost estimate.
Given its failures, does the TSA approach justify the $140
billion national investment? Clearly not. Yet there is no reason
to think that the only alternative to the TSA approach is
multiple terrorist attacks. There are three things that could be
done now to reduce lines and increase the effectiveness of
airport security.
First, a degree of competitive discipline must be
introduced into the TSA. The agency has become a bloated
bureaucracy, with all that entails. A 2007 study found that
private screeners performed better than the nationalized industry
that is TSA, but the TSA suppressed the results (and was heavily
criticized by the Government Accountability Office for doing so).
By giving airports a genuine ability to opt out of the TSA
program and to use qualified private screeners instead, the TSA
would be forced to get its act together.
Second, the risk model that assumes every passenger is
equally capable of being a terrorist must be revised. This
suggestion normally triggers an outcry that it will result in
racial profiling. That is not the case. Racial profiling is just
as crude and ineffective as equal risk assumption and should be
avoided like the plague. Instead, as noted military strategist
Edward Luttwak
pointed out in the Wall Street
Journal in January, “easily recognizable groups that
not even the most ingenious terrorists could simulate” pose
little risk. Examples of such groups include “touring senior
citizens traveling together (a category that contains a good
portion of all American, European and East Asian tourist
traffic), airline flying personnel who come to the security gate
as a crew, families complete with children.” As Luttwak suggests,
the critical question would be whether members of those groups
“recognize each other as such.”
Finally, a genuinely risk-based Registered Traveler Scheme
should be adopted. The most recent attempt to create one failed
because it relied on the equal risk assumption, with no genuine
background checks involved that would exempt one from the
security rigmarole. All it could offer was the ability to jump to
the head of the line, which was not enough to lure enough people
to purchase an expensive pass. Instead, the TSA should agree to
undertake the sort of full background checks for registered
travelers that would enable one to get clearance to work in an
airport or obtain a DOD security clearance. That level of
clearance should then allow registered travelers to bypass
airport security almost entirely, and would be far harder to fool
than the current system.
With these improvements in place, the TSA could be
streamlined, airport lines would shrink dramatically, and
terrorists would be more likely to be caught rather than hiding
in the herd. The cost to the nation would decrease dramatically,
more lives would be saved on the road, and, who knows, airlines
might become profitable again. That’s a small price to pay for
upsetting one ponderous bureaucracy.
