As Scott Anderson has reported, TSA wants vendors to build new machines that will let us stop taking off our shoes before we board the plane. If the vendors can come up with a product that works, that will certainly be good. But it’s only a first step.
Everyone agrees that we need to do aviation security security differently. Critics say that the whole checkpoint process is ineffective and nothing more than “security theater.” In their view, threats to aviation are already well handled by other steps (like hardening cockpit doors). And it seems that almost every traveler has some TSA checkpoint horror story to tell — delays, rudeness, items confiscated (or, more tellingly, missed) during screening, and the like.
Even TSA Administrator John Pistole knows that change is necessary. He gave a speech to the American Bar Association earlier this month in which he called for streamlining the checkpoint experience and focusing resources on higher risk passengers. A blue-ribbon panel chaired by former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge recommended something similar — using a risk-based approach to passenger screening and doing away with the “one size fits all” mentality that every traveler should be screened the same.
But what does this mean in practice? One way to implement a risk based approach to airport screening that some have suggested it to adopt the Israeli model of intensive questioning. With more than 2 million people getting on planes each day, however, that might prove resource intensive. Put another way, eight times as many people go through Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta every year than go through Israel’s one international airport. So that sort of screening will require more resources.
The other alternative is to collect more information about individuals in advance of their travel and analyze it, and then use the result of that analysis to determine who gets additional screening. If the collection of that information is mandatory, that itself creates significant privacy concerns.
So that leave us with a voluntary program — where those who are willing to give the government access to data about them get through security more quickly. That seems unobjectionable — unless you’re one of the people who doesn’t want to give access to their personal data and winds up stuck in the longer line at the airport.
Much as the need for a new aviation security paradigm is clear, it remains a work in progress.
