George Leef’s latest column for Forbes probes — no pun intended — problems associated with the federal Transportation Security Administration.
The TSA has an annual budget of $7.9 billion and employs 62,000 people. Its principal function is to operate the passenger screening function at more than 450 commercial airports. Keeping dangerous people off airplanes is unquestionably important, but is it wise to entrust this to a federal bureaucracy? There is solid evidence that the TSA is not very good at this job, but spends a lot of money uselessly.
Exhibit A is the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT, naturally) program. The idea behind SPOT is that government observers in airports can detect individuals who are intent on terrorism merely by looking at them and discerning behavioral clues. SPOT was begun in 2007 and employs some 2,800 TSA personnel.
Does it do any good? According to a report issued last November by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), it does not. “The subjectivity of the SPOT behavioral indicators and variation in BDO (Behavior Detection Officer) referral rates raise questions about the continued use of behavior indicators for detecting passengers who might pose a risk to aviation security,” the study concluded.
The GAO concluded that the TSA’s study purporting to validate this approach was badly flawed and recommended defunding SPOT.
So did Judicial Watch, whose president, Tom Fitton was quoted in this Washington Post article as saying, “The TSA continues to treat all fliers as a potential threat. They’re just looking at behavior and not looking into other things, like travel patterns. They’re not focused on what they ought to be focused on.”
Getting a government agency to stop wasting money is like pulling teeth – only much, much harder. Instead of ending SPOT, the TSA actually expanded it in April, adding BWI International. …
