[Infowarrior] - End, don't mend, the Transportation Security Administration

[Richard Forno]

End, don't mend, the Transportation Security Administration
Passenger pat-downs haven't dug up a single terrorist.
By Becky Akers
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1208/p09s02-coop.html

from the December 8, 2008 edition  (Christian Science Monitor)

New York - Sometime in 2010, the Transportation Security  
Administration (TSA) will stop swiping airline passengers' bottled  
water and cups of coffee at security checkpoints. Instead, the agency  
will once again permit us to carry liquids and gels aboard planes.

It's not that the TSA has finally realized mouthwash and moisturizer  
really can't explode, not even at 30,000 feet. Rather, it claims it  
has a combination of new contraptions to prove that. Advanced  
Technology X-ray machines, bottle scanners, and spectrometers will  
confirm that your unopened, factory-sealed Listerine is, well,  
Listerine.

The ban on liquids and gels has plagued passengers for over two years  
now, ever since British police insisted they had foiled a plot for  
bombing jetliners en route from London to the US and Canada.  
Supposedly, terrorists planned to smuggle the ingredients of an  
explosive elixir aboard their flights in soft-drink containers, then  
combine them to blow the planes sky-high.

Horrific, murderous – and virtually impossible. The TSA makes it sound  
as though anyone with a year of high-school chemistry and some  
hydrogen peroxide can whip up explosives in an airplane's restroom.  
But mixing a truly explosive bomb is a delicate operation. It requires  
exact temperatures, precise measurements and methods, and specialized  
equipment – all more commonly found in laboratories than lavatories.  
The procedure takes a while, too. And the fumes are likely to alert  
the passengers shifting from foot to foot in the aisle as they await  
their turn in the washroom.

In fact, chemists worldwide doubt that even the most accomplished  
terrorist can concoct such a combustive cocktail high above the  
Atlantic. A British jury this summer didn't buy the allegations,  
either. Due to lack of evidence, only eight of the plot's original 25  
suspects finally made it to trial. As it turns out, police should have  
freed all the defendants: jurors refused to convict anyone of  
terrorism. They exonerated one man, returned no verdict on four  
others, and settled on lesser charges for the remaining three.

But none of these facts seem to matter to the TSA. It needs something  
to justify its existence: Despite six years of patting down  
passengers, it hasn't reported uncovering a single terrorist. No  
wonder it latched onto the nonsense about liquid bombs. Ferreting out  
and confiscating everyday substances not only makes work for 43,000  
screeners, it also fools us into thinking this protects us.

The TSA has always been a political, not practical, response to 9/11.  
It hassles us at checkpoints not because of penetrating insights on  
security or some brilliant breakthrough, but because politicians  
handed it power. Specialists in security didn't invent the TSA; the  
Bush administration imposed it on us. So we might hope the incoming  
president would abolish this absurd agency.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama wants to improve the TSA rather than send  
it packing. His suggestions for that improvement? Passengers still  
aren't screened against a comprehensive terrorist watch list, his  
website proclaims. Such a list must be developed.

Why? The watch list has already kept Rep. John Lewis (D) of Georgia  
and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts off planes: Will a  
comprehensive list bar Republican congressmen, too? That'll protect us  
about as well as unionizing screeners will – another change the  
campaigning Obama said he favors.

An administration serious about preserving passengers' lives rather  
than screeners' jobs would dismantle the TSA. Experts in the field,  
not the government, should design security. And it's senseless to fear  
that without the TSA airlines won't protect us. Businesses never  
willingly risk their inventory or customers; the aviation industry is  
no exception.

Eliminating the TSA allows airlines to protect their customers and  
multimillion-dollar jets with real security, tailored to each  
company's needs. AirTran, for instance, confronts different challenges  
from Air Jamaica, just as banks in midtown Manhattan deal with  
different dangers than do those in suburban Sioux City. In a world  
free of the TSA, an airline might arm its pilots or hire private  
security firms.

More likely, ideas and options we nonexperts can't imagine would  
render aviation's security as unobtrusive and effective as it is in  
other industries. There's no limit to human ingenuity and innovation –  
until the government stifles them with one-size-fits-all regulation.

Unfortunately, we can expect the airlines to fight as hard as the TSA  
for its survival: requiring security and establishing a bureaucracy to  
run it sticks taxpayers, rather than airlines, with the bill.

We've paid aviation's operating costs long enough. It's time to bring  
down the curtain on the TSA's security theater.