[Infowarrior] - Paper: Financial Costs of the No-Fly List

[Richard Forno]

Just How Much Does That Cost, Anyway? An Analysis of the Financial  
Costs and Benefits of the “No-Fly” List

Marcus Holmes

The purpose of this article is to identify the financial costs  
relative to the benefits of the “no-fly” list. Numerous scholars,  
security experts, lawyers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),  
journalists, and bloggers have commented on the well-known flaws in  
the current terrorist watch list system. Lawyers have pointed out the  
many civil liberty issues associated with the list and its hindrance  
of due process. 1  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has  
repeatedly published the many flaws it sees in the way that the list  
is administrated. 2  Bruce Schneier, a popular security columnist and  
blogger, documents the various reasons why the no-fly list serves no  
benefit at all, providing only “security theatre” rather than actual  
protection. 3  Each of these analyses is useful and contributes to an  
understanding of whether or not the no-fly list is, in aggregate,  
helpful in protecting citizens against terrorism, and at what social  
and civil liberty cost.

What is missing, however, is an analysis of the no-fly list from a  
financial perspective. This article is interested in understanding the  
monetary costs of the program. As such, it seeks to answer some basic  
and fundamental questions that have not yet been answered (or asked):  
How much does the no-fly list cost to create and maintain? What are  
the costs of the consequences, both intended and unintended, of the  
list? How many resources, both governmental and private, are involved  
in the operation of the list? And, what are the benefits, both  
tangible (i.e. monetary) and intangible, that the list provides? This  
is an important set of questions because without understanding the  
monetary costs of a protection program relative to the benefits, it is  
difficult to assess whether or not the program is worth the costs.  
Further, without such an understanding it is impossible to  
intelligently decide how anti-terror money should be allocated. It is  
surprising that, given the importance of these questions, they have  
not been asked and addressed in a systematic fashion.

Consequently this article represents a “first take” at addressing  
these questions by assessing the financial costs of the no-fly list  
program. It does not, however, seek to serve as a comprehensive answer  
to the question of “is the no-fly list worth the money we are putting  
into it?” The reason is that one cannot begin to conduct such an  
analysis without aggregating the costs and benefits first and then  
placing the no-fly list in context of the other anti-terror programs  
and their associated costs. The no-fly list might very well be worth  
the expense if it is the government’s only tool in preventing  
terrorist attacks. It might also be the case that the list is less  
valuable given redundancy in the “layered security” model of securing  
air travel. These are important questions and ones that can only be  
addressed after having identified the financial costs and benefits of  
the program. Thus this article should be viewed as the first step in  
what will hopefully become a systematic and comprehensive approach to  
understanding whether or not the no-fly list provides added value in  
the context of the government’s anti-terrorism campaign.

As will be analyzed below, it is estimated that the costs of the no- 
fly list, since 2002, range from approximately $300 million (a  
conservative estimate) to $966 million (an estimate on the high end).  
Using those figures as low and high potentials, a reasonable estimate  
is that the U.S. government has spent over $500 million on the project  
since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Using annual data,  
this article suggests that the list costs taxpayers somewhere between  
$50 million and $161 million a year, with a reasonable compromise of  
those figures at approximately $100 million. Clearly the no-fly list  
is a program that is not without substantial cost. It represents, at  
least financially, a large part of the government’s protection of air  
travel. 4 In order to begin to analyze whether or not the benefits are  
worth the costs, both must be identified and analyzed. It is that task  
to which the article will now turn.

< - >

http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=5.1.6