P.S. After millions of miles and dozens of international flights, we gave up on air travel six years ago, and now devote our travel time to seeing America. It is a beautiful country.
Airport Security Is Making Americans Less Safe
The
TSA was created to replace the patchwork of private security companies
that handled airport security in the pre-9/11 era. Its budget quickly
ballooned: Since 2002 the number of TSA agents has risen from 16,000 to
more than 50,000. Still, to a traumatized public, any amount of
overreaction in the name of preventing another terrorist attack seemed
acceptable.
More than a decade later, it’s time to move on. For one thing, the attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is out of proportion to the relative threat it presents. Since 2000 the chance that the death of a U.S. resident resulted from a terrorist attack was 1 in 3.5 million, according to John Mueller and Mark Stewart of Ohio State and the University of Newcastle, respectively. Out of the 150,000 murders in the U.S. between 9/11 and the end of 2010, Islamic extremism accounted for fewer than three dozen. In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 annual deaths worldwide, outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq—the same number, notes Mueller, that occur in bathtubs in the U.S. each year.
Yet the TSA still commands a budget of nearly $8 billion—leaving the agency with too many officers and not enough to do. The TSA’s “Top Good Catches of 2011,” reported on its blog, did include 1,200 firearms and—their top find—a single batch of C4 explosives (though that payload was discovered only on the return flight). A longer list of the TSA’s confiscations would include a G.I. Joe action doll’s 4-inch plastic rifle (“it’s a replica”) and a light saber toy. For all the face cream, breast milk, and live fish that vigilant screeners collected in airport security lines last year, the TSA didn’t spot a single terrorist trying to board an airline in the U.S.
It doesn’t have to be this way. As long as passengers aren’t flying to the U.S., Canada allows them to keep their shoes on and their iPads in their bags (where they are less prone to being nicked). The U.K. will allow you to carry small decorative snow globes onto a flight, deeming tolerable the risk of onboard snowpocalypse. And those fancy new backscatter scanners where you stand with your legs apart and stick your thumbs on the top of your head as agents get to see what you would look like if you were naked and very furry? They’ve been banned in the European Union.
In the U.S., kids and old people can now keep their shoes on through security, while the backscatter scanners—which have been linked to cancer—are being moved out of major airports. These are small signs of progress, but they’re far from adequate. According to an estimate by the New York Times, the 9/11 attacks caused $55 billion in “toll and physical damage” to the U.S., while the economic impact was $123 billion. Costs related to increased homeland security and counterterrorism spending, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, totaled $3,105 billion. Mueller and Stewart estimate that government spending on homeland security over the 2002-2011 period accounted for around $580 billion of that total.
As Rand Corp. President Emeritus James Thomson argues, most of that expenditure was implemented “with little or no evaluation.” In 2010 the National Academy of Science reported the lack of “any Department of Homeland Security risk analysis capabilities and methods that are yet adequate for supporting decision making.” DHS (and the TSA in particular) is spending huge bundles of large denomination bills completely blind.
All this spending on airline security is worse than wasteful. Following the official rules while still attempting to show decency toward passengers all but forces TSA employees to delay, embarrass, and inconvenience many thousands every day. Faced with the prospect of such unpleasantries this holiday season, countless Americans will skip the flight to grandma’s house and drive instead.
More than a decade later, it’s time to move on. For one thing, the attention paid to terrorism in the U.S. is out of proportion to the relative threat it presents. Since 2000 the chance that the death of a U.S. resident resulted from a terrorist attack was 1 in 3.5 million, according to John Mueller and Mark Stewart of Ohio State and the University of Newcastle, respectively. Out of the 150,000 murders in the U.S. between 9/11 and the end of 2010, Islamic extremism accounted for fewer than three dozen. In fact, extremist Islamic terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 annual deaths worldwide, outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq—the same number, notes Mueller, that occur in bathtubs in the U.S. each year.
Yet the TSA still commands a budget of nearly $8 billion—leaving the agency with too many officers and not enough to do. The TSA’s “Top Good Catches of 2011,” reported on its blog, did include 1,200 firearms and—their top find—a single batch of C4 explosives (though that payload was discovered only on the return flight). A longer list of the TSA’s confiscations would include a G.I. Joe action doll’s 4-inch plastic rifle (“it’s a replica”) and a light saber toy. For all the face cream, breast milk, and live fish that vigilant screeners collected in airport security lines last year, the TSA didn’t spot a single terrorist trying to board an airline in the U.S.
It doesn’t have to be this way. As long as passengers aren’t flying to the U.S., Canada allows them to keep their shoes on and their iPads in their bags (where they are less prone to being nicked). The U.K. will allow you to carry small decorative snow globes onto a flight, deeming tolerable the risk of onboard snowpocalypse. And those fancy new backscatter scanners where you stand with your legs apart and stick your thumbs on the top of your head as agents get to see what you would look like if you were naked and very furry? They’ve been banned in the European Union.
In the U.S., kids and old people can now keep their shoes on through security, while the backscatter scanners—which have been linked to cancer—are being moved out of major airports. These are small signs of progress, but they’re far from adequate. According to an estimate by the New York Times, the 9/11 attacks caused $55 billion in “toll and physical damage” to the U.S., while the economic impact was $123 billion. Costs related to increased homeland security and counterterrorism spending, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, totaled $3,105 billion. Mueller and Stewart estimate that government spending on homeland security over the 2002-2011 period accounted for around $580 billion of that total.
As Rand Corp. President Emeritus James Thomson argues, most of that expenditure was implemented “with little or no evaluation.” In 2010 the National Academy of Science reported the lack of “any Department of Homeland Security risk analysis capabilities and methods that are yet adequate for supporting decision making.” DHS (and the TSA in particular) is spending huge bundles of large denomination bills completely blind.
All this spending on airline security is worse than wasteful. Following the official rules while still attempting to show decency toward passengers all but forces TSA employees to delay, embarrass, and inconvenience many thousands every day. Faced with the prospect of such unpleasantries this holiday season, countless Americans will skip the flight to grandma’s house and drive instead.
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