Counter Terror Gazette

Of Politics, Profiles and Passengers: our confusion over civil aviation security

15 Feb 2011

The recent furore over full-body scanning and its ancillary counterpart, the “invasive” pat-down, are but the latest issues in the ever-entertaining world of civil aviation security.  Virtually every innovation involving screening of passengers and their baggage over the past forty years has involved a similar uproar and protestations of diminishing civil liberties.  These most recent events are no exception.  First to inveigh against such intrusions are the politicians. 

Representative John Mica (R-FL), a major critic of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), has opined that “When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees…It’s a big Kabuki dance.”  This becomes somewhat disingenuous when you consider that Mica was one of the original authors of the bill that created the “unwieldy bureaucracy” ten years ago. 

In place of the present system, some critics advocate for methods that have been used with some success by the Israeli government.  Their model utilises sophisticated profiling techniques directed towards passengers and has been successful with respect to flight operations of their national airline, El Al. What is often left unsaid, however, is the fact that El Al operates a total of approximately 40 aircraft (including cargo aircraft) and engages a total of approximately four million passengers per year.  The United States, in comparison, operates approximately 7,000 aircraft and carries over 700 million passengers annually.[1] Clearly, we’re not comparing apples to apples here.  More like watermelons to sesame seeds.  

The TSA has in fact begun to develop and launch a programme based on the Israeli model.  Called SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques), it is, despite the predictable sniping and critical initial reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a good start.  Yet, despite the TSA’s attempt to be sensitive to and adoptive of best practices, the critics remain sceptical.  “It’s not an Israeli model, it’s a TSA, screwed-up model,” says Mica. “It should actually be the person who’s looking at the ticket and talking to the individual. Instead, they’ve hired people to stand around and observe, which is a bastardisation of what should be done.”  This begs the question: given the enormity of US civil aviation, how would this model avoid creating more bureaucracy?  Seen in this light, the political juggling act over the years, with respect to civil aviation, wherein our elected officials relentlessly criticise the very organisation they helped create (while gaining political points in the process), is Kabuki theatre at its best.

One wonders what experience base or data source the politicians and other vocal critics use when making these statements.  Could there possibly be some logical reason that the TSA decided to move beyond the smaller-scale Israeli model and develop a behavioural analysis capability for other portions of their workforce?  Is SPOT, per se, an inferior construct?  The statement that “…it’s a TSA, screwed-up model” seems to sum up the critics’ feelings on the subject. MORE ONLINE