The Spectacle Blog
With the holiday travel season approaching fast, public anger at the federal Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) increasingly invasive airport passenger screening procedures - full body scans and pat downs - seems to be growing louder by the day. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano argues that these measures are necessary to maintain an adequate level of security for the nation’s air travel.
Indeed, some types of safety measures, including passenger screening, are needed for air travel safety. The problem with the current security regime is its structure. In a way the TSA can’t help annoying travelers with petty, intrusive rules. It is in its nature, as a top-down, government regulatory bureaucracy. By design, it’s good at promulgating and enforcing rules, not so much at turning on a dime to react quickly to potential threats, which have an annoying habit of turning up unexpectedly and be ever shifting.
Hopefully, the public anti-TSA backlash can lead to greater public debate over the nature of government institutions and the incentives they face, compared to those in the private sector. At Forbes, Rhodes College economics professor Art Carden launches a strong early volley in this debate, arguing for abolishing the TSA.
But won’t that compromise safety? I doubt it. The airlines have enormous sums of money riding on passenger safety, and the notion that a government bureaucracy has better incentives to provide safe travels than airlines with billions of dollars worth of capital and goodwill on the line strains credibility. This might be beside the point: in 2003, William Anderson incisively argued that some of the steps that airlines (and passengers) would have needed to take to prevent the 9/11 disaster probably would have been illegal.
This makes me wonder, as I often have, of what exactly goes through the mind of Naderite self-styled safety advocates when they advocate some new “safety” requirement. Do they really believe that companies have no economic self-interest in helping protect the safety of their customers? An auto manufacturer whose vehicles can’t withstand accident impacts or a restaurant where people routinely get food poisoning won’t stay in business for long.
That kind of failure to account for incentives underlies a lot of economic fallacies. It also distorts the political debate, by making possible the notion that taking an activity out of the marketplace somehow obviates any self-interest surrounding it. In fact, government intervention simply shifts self-interest from the voluntary exchange of the market to the coercive functions of government. The TSA debate is no different, as Washington Examiner columnist and former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Tim Carney notes.
If you’ve seen one of these scanners at an airport, there’s a good chance it was made by L-3 Communications, a major contractor with the Department of Homeland Security. L-3 employs three different lobbying firms including Park Strategies, where former Sen. Al D’Amato, R-N.Y., plumps on the company’s behalf. Back in 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed D’Amato to the President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism following the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Also on Park’s L-3 account is former Appropriations staffer Kraig Siracuse.
Finally, as David Henderson notes at EconLog, in his discussion of Carden’s article, private responses to terrorist threats can be as valuable as government-directed ones.
The clearest cut success stories we have are of other passengers using their local knowledge to thwart the shoe bomber, the underpants bomber, and the United flight #93 bombers. Of course, there’s a huge difference between my first two examples and the third. In the third case, all the passengers died. But, as I said to a flight attendant when I traveled on a Boeing 777 from LAX to Boston on September 22, 2001, on a nearly empty flight that United had offered to let me out of with a full refund, “The reason we’re safer now is that we passengers are never again going to think about a hijacking the same way. We’re not going to sit passively as the FAA told us to.”
The TSA isn’t probably going away any time soon. However, the backlash can bring about some needed changes, in addition to introducing more questions about the role of government into the public debate - all the while air travel becomes even more unpleasant.
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PCC| 11.15.10 @ 4:49PM
Dear Mr. Osorio,
You "wonder what exactly goes through the mind of Naderite self-styled safety advocates...do they really believe that companies have no economic self-interest in helping protect the safety of their customers?"
Here's what they're thinking:
That economic theory led Ford Motor Company in the 1970s to conclude it would be cheaper to pay for the insurance than to fix the problem that caused the Pinto's gas tank to explode in a rear-end collision, thereby killing and maiming its customers.
Must try harder.
Robert Bell| 11.15.10 @ 6:48PM
A minor note on "Naderite". In the paragraph following the one you quoted, Dr. Henderson says that Ralph Nader himself is actually *opposed* to these strip searches.
"At the Left-Right conference on war and peace last February, when I talked to Ralph Nader about the TSA's new naked-picture policy, he said he thought we could beat this one."
Curly Smith| 11.15.10 @ 6:56PM
If you want to understand what has people so worked up over ObamaCare all you need do is look at the TSA. Do you seriously believe that the hoop jumping policies and procedures for a service that your life depends on will be any less intrusive, onerous, or incomprehensible?
George S| 11.15.10 @ 7:47PM
These TSA security screenings have nothing to do with economics, nor do they have anything to do with protecting the interests of the airlines. The Naderites goal was to get government to control and regulate private businesses, in the name of "safety". The TSA's goal is to condition the population to violations of civil liberties in the name of national security. Once we are used to being groped and probed for air travel, it will slowly creep to rail travel and bus travel, culminating in randon "security" checks by police. The objective is for us to accept the suspension of the Constitution when there's a national security concern. Any doubts? Both the shoe bomber and underwear bomber got on board the airplane outside the US, so there was nothing that airlines here at home were careless about. Yet the TSA jumps in, for the airline's benefit, of course. If airlines were allowed to do their own screening, there would be lawsuits flung left and right. Mainly by Homeland Security's first cousin, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. Funny, it's not our civil rights that are defended, but the ones of the enemy.
Occam's Tool| 11.15.10 @ 11:39PM
Here's an interview with the former head of El Al security in 2003. Note that his advice was not followed. Tim* and SL Toddard, feel free to avoid this as it might sully your pristine antisemitism:
000 0Share0Share0Share7Share1Share Home > Security
Q&A: Former El Al security chief Isaac Yeffet on border, airport security
He remains skeptical of the money being spent on IT for security
By Dan Verton
May 22, 2003 12:00 PM ETRecommended (6).Computerworld - Isaac Yeffet is the former director of global security at El Al Israel Airlines, whose record on security and passenger screening is unsurpassed. At El Al, Yeffet was responsible for formulating the airline's total security system, developing passenger-profiling and -screening programs and training security personnel. Yeffet is also a former senior intelligence director for the Israeli Secret Service, where he oversaw security for all Israeli embassies, consulates and delegations worldwide.
Now president of Yeffet Security Consultants Inc., a New York-based firm that specializes in airline security, Yeffet is fighting an uphill battle to convince anybody who will listen, especially members of Congress, that the billions of dollars being spent on information technologies to secure airports and borders is merely window dressing. Computerworld interviewed Yeffet via telephone from his New York office.
What concerns do you have, if any, about the way the U.S. is going about deploying technological solutions, such as biometrics and other information technologies, to screen travelers for potential terrorist activity? We do not rely on well-trained, qualified professionals to screen passengers. The majority of security screeners cannot identify an explosive detonator. When I was at El Al, the technology that we had helped the well-trained and qualified human being, but it never replaced him.
Today, we have 55,000 security people at 424 airports around the country, but 22,000 of them are working without background checks. At JFK International Airport, 50 security screeners were found to have criminal backgrounds. This is our security?
Put yourself in the position of a border crossing agent. Does the proposed system of biometric identifiers and biometrics-enabled passports still have loopholes? Yes. There is technology that can determine in three to five seconds if a passport is fake or real. But a recent terrorist recruit who has a legitimate passport and identity but who is not on a watch list has a loophole. When a person comes to the border and presents their documents, believe me, through a few questions you can determine who is suspicious. This is how we at El Al were able to arrest a passenger on the ground at London's Heathrow Airport and Zurich airport, both of whom had explosives. You can do it at the borders, too. But we don't want to spend the money in this country.
Can the U.S. achieve the same level of efficiency and success in weeding out terrorists from legitimate travelers as El Al airlines has had? We can do it. We don't have magicians in Israel. We have people like you andme. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on technology and finding Osama bin Laden, give me a small percentage of that and I will show you what kind of security we can have in this country. At Continental Airlines at Newark Airport, to see their adoption of El Al's security program for all flights to Tel Aviv and Amsterdam, it cost them money. But they recognized that money is important but life is more important.
Hellion| 11.16.10 @ 4:34AM
I hope everyone realizes that these TSA measures are designed only to protect you from the attempt that already failed several years ago.
You are still taking off your shoes because of that failed shoe bomber. You are now being patted down because of that failed underwear bomber. Printer cartridges are now being banned because that's the only thing you can put things in that might be explosives.
Should the exact same thing be tried again, there is the possibility this screening could be useful. Just like boarding up the 6th floor windows of the Texas School Book Depositary from 1964 onwards would be.
Meanwhile, the 4th plot from the same geniuses involved explosives concealed in the rectum. Those, unlike the other 3, actually exploded. So the case could be made that a finger up your bung hole for every flight is now the most useful screening measure possible based on this scenario of protecting yourself from danger in case of accidental time machine usage.
Hellion| 11.16.10 @ 4:47AM
"feel free to avoid this as it might sully your pristine antisemitism"
I have no idea what this means, but to cut that guy's long story short, the first measure to implementing El Al style success is to throw out everything that has been written since 2000, tell your staff that there is no terrorism threat and that their only job is to stop heroin being smuggled by passengers.
Ever read a newspaper report that someone got caught by security because they were acting "terrorismy", or does it usually just say "suspicious" and the reason you want to check those people stands, regardless of the reason.
david| 11.16.10 @ 8:06AM
government sanctioned child pornography!
Unfortunately, genital pat downs are not new. It has been done frequently for many years now. Ever see a curtain off area next to the security area. That's where it happens. My father who traveled internationally and domestically on business were frequently subject to genital pat downs. It was blood-boiling to hear how he was somehow "randomly chosen" again from his business trips. If you were wondering, my father is 100% Asian. (korean)
I never believed that the back scattering images can be secure. all it takes is a TSA agent with a cell phone camera. Or a eager person with a mirror and a zoom capable camcorder. How do you safe guard against that ?
I want to see members of congress and their families, all the TSA agents and their families get pat down and/or get their naked picture taken my the scanners. But I am naive to believe that they travel on via commercial airlines, huh ?
Speaking of children, do they pat down the children too? They Have to. what if a bomb is attached to a child? It is government sanctioned groping of children or production of child pornography. When every child in all the airports get genital patted down by grown men or women. Or get their naked picture taken. Of course, the parents will have to watch all this happening or face a $10,000 fine per refusal. This may sound extreme but think about it.
It is wrong when my father had to go through it all those years. And it is wrong now.
Rick V.| 11.16.10 @ 10:02AM
These procedures would stop tomorrow if all Congressmen and Senators - and their staff and family - were subject to the same examination every time they enter or leave their offices in the Capitol. After all, if it's all in the name of "security," how can we be any less diligent regarding the safety and security of our beloved leaders? Yep, body scans and pat-downs for Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Harry Reid, et al. How long does anyone think that would last?
Dale Cord| 12.5.10 @ 9:29AM
The TSA is nothing but a bunch of criminals getting away with the crime of violating the American people, just as some crazed escaped drug addicted mental patient would, on the streets of any country that has no ethical or moral system of justice. I mean, come on people, lets get real here, and approach this crime with common sense and logic, something that has been missing from the majority of the American people and their intellect to discern right from wrong, for way to long now. You have in your government 535 senators in congress, who did not even bother to uphold and follow our Constitution, in demanding valid proof of US citizenship, from a native born subject of Kenya with Muslim heritage.Who now is occupying the highest office in our land,President Barack Husain Obama, who has directed his administration of "czars", to set up another powerful bureaucracy the TSA to control and violate his enemies the American people. Do you people even know anything about the country of Kenya and the violence,death and destruction its government has been responsible for? Do you really think anyone growing up in this environment would be of a sound mind to lead a country as great as America? Remember Muslims have sworn to kill and dismember any infidels as they call anyone, who does not believe in their ideology and radical Islamic religion. Muslims have killed and dismembered a multitude of people in the past to infiltrate and take over many countries in their quests for world dominance. The end result is always the same, millions of innocent men,women, and children are murdered by the same mental insanity that rose to power in Hitler of Germany,Stalin of Russia,Mussolini of Italy, Chiang Kai-shek of China, Hirohito of Japan,Paul Potts of Cambodia, and the list go's on and on. Good grief, has this generation lost all historical recollections of the past atrocities perpetrated on humanity, by mentally disturbed people as mentioned in this truthful and fact based comment and warning of things to come? if we continue to sleep at the wheel of our freedoms! Will are epitaph read one day soon "America a Gangsters Paradise" as some rappers coined the phrase in song years ago?. Muslims attacked New York city,Killing thousands of men,women and children, they attacked a military installation in Texas killing 14 American soldiers and wounding countless others,they have killed thousands of Americans for year throughout this country and our sitting Presidents country of "Kenya" that the bias news media will not report to its citizens, and now in Afghanistan they continue to butcher our Military men and women. These are true facts and statistics! Look it up for yourself in the thousands of books available to the public in this country.For heavens sakes, "Get a life and you just might still save yours".