TSA: The Shutdown Shows We Just Don’t Need It

Surely by now we can all board airliners without having to trundle through long screening lines, right? Of course we can. You go first.

A friend used to delight in telling a joke about the Georgia State Patrol officer who pulls over a couple of rednecks in a pickup, taps his nightstick on the driver's window then reaches in and pummels the guy for two minutes.

"Why'd you do that?" complains the driver. The officer explains one should never hesitate in producing license and registration, writes the ticket and instructs the driver to wait. He walks to the other side of the vee-hick-ul and pummels the passenger.

"Why'd you do that?" whines the passenger. "I'm just giving you your wish, son. I know you were thinking, ‘I wish he would come over and do that to me.'"

You probably have to be from the South to get it, but I thought of it when I was composing this week's Question of the Week, the lead query being would you fly if there were no airline security at all. Almost half responded that they would. I wonder if those numbers would hold when it came time to actually walk down the jetway.

The context, of course, is that during the current government shutdown, the TSA is functioning, but at reduced efficiency. Pilots love to say the TSA is nothing but security theater, so why not take this opportunity to eliminate it entirely, since it doesn't do anything useful?

Interesting thought experiment. If we did that, it would roll the clock back to about 1968. You may have forgotten this, but between that year and 1972, hijackers took over a commercial airliner about every other week, according to The Skies Belong to Us by Brendan Koerner. No ID required, no metal detectors, hardly any airport security and the concept of sterile airside was unknown. It was another age.

Eventually, the flying public got fed up with the hijackings and the airlines dropped their opposition to pre-boarding security—bad for business, you know. By 1973, passenger screenings were universal in the U.S., if not worldwide.

But, proving that such security really was just theater, the hijackings continued. Oh, no … wait. They declined by more than two-thirds and dropped even more sharply with the additional security in place after the 9/11 attacks. Probably just a coincidence, because theater can't possibly be effective, especially if government is in charge of the casting, just on principle.

The airline threat environment has metastasized into something else entirely since 1968, a fact that came to be noticed on Sept. 12, 2001. The entire world—and especially the developed world—responded with costly and cumbersome agencies and bureaucracies, hence the TSA we all love to hate, perhaps not without good reason.

Has it been effective? There have been a half-billion U.S. airline flights since 2001 and no hijackings. Passenger screenings are only a part of a multi-pronged approach to commercial airline security, along with ongoing intelligence operations, airport security, hardened cockpit doors and the Federal Flight Deck Officer program that trains armed pilots. The TSA never supported that program, but Congress forced the issue, rightfully, in my view.

And let's not forget the passengers. I don't think a 9/11-style aircraft takeover with box cutters could possibly succeed today. I think the passengers would rapidly seize control of the cabin and the aircraft. Would-be hijackers would be lucky to escape death by beating.

Amuse yourself by contemplating the outcome if a single or multiple malefactors boarded with firearms, which they presumably could do minus any screening at all. If this were a U.S. airliner, you'd get to watch the OK Corral at FL330, because as surely as bad guys board with firearms, so do good guys. All in all, that alone prompts me to want to avoid screen-free airline travel, thanks. And that doesn't even get into explosives, which the TSA has seized a few times, too.

While I'm on the subject of firearms, something I find utterly baffling is how anyone can go through a TSA screen line without realizing they have a loaded firearm with one in the chamber. Yet, reports The Washington Post, the TSA snatched nearly 4000 firearms in 2017 and more than that in 2018—more than 10 a day. A third were loaded with a round chambered. The fine for this can be as much as $13,000 and the most common explanation by the gun owner is "I forgot it was there." You forgot?

Any responsible firearm owner will tell you that being responsible means you never forget you have a weapon. (Or that you don't.) You never forget whether the weapon is loaded. You never forget and leave it somewhere unsecured, like on the dining room table with kids in the house. If you do, that is, de facto, not responsible. I'm all for people carrying who wish to, but if you can't do it responsibly, I'd just as soon the TSA mail it back to your house. Maybe some people who aren't those people ought to be allowed to attend FFDO training and be, you know, authorized.

Obviously, under even the slightest scrutiny, the idea of eliminating passenger screening is ludicrous. But that doesn't mean the way the TSA does it shouldn't be overhauled. For instance, we were supposed to stop X-raying shoes five years ago, but it's still going on as a result not of risk but of momentum. The entire process remains thing oriented rather than people oriented, which means we continue to roust innocent citizens in search of the odd bomb, gun or knife. A few still slip through, as one did recently when a passenger admitted it on a flight to Tokyo. He had passed through Atlanta, which leads the league in passengers getting caught with heat.

Ironically, those 4000-plus citizens who stumbled into the line were almost certainly just clueless, not threatening, assuming they'd have made the trip without accidentally discharging a weapon and blasting a hole in the overhead. Or worse. Even a trained FFDO found a way to puncture an airplane with an accidental discharge.

TSA-Pre and Global Entry are great programs—I participate in both—and the government ought to expend more money expanding them, leaving more time to look for the real threats which, while not absent, are somewhat diminished. Meanwhile, wouldn't it be great if, while we're waiting vainly for this to happen, Congress and the executive branch actually got something done.

I know it's a plaintive howl in the wind, but it's all I've got.