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Kill the TSA
Opinion · May 8, 2002

Before Sept. 11, when airlines still paid for their own security, critics charged that profit-hungry carriers had quietly run a chilling cost-benefit analysis. Since it was virtually impossible to create an airtight security system, the airlines decided to hire the cheapest guards and buy the least expensive screening equipment.

And they did. Minimum-wage workers staffed checkpoints, acting mostly as a psychological deterrent to amateur criminals. Airline safety seemed as much of an oxymoron as airline service, which suited the carriers just fine until they lost four planes on a single day last fall.

Now the government is in charge of airline safety and taxpayers are essentially being asked to run the same difficult cost-benefit analysis. How much security is too much? At what point does the expense of providing a first-rate security system outweigh the benefits?

It looks as if the airlines may have been right all along: there's a point of diminishing returns. The price of security can be too high. That, at least, is the conclusion more and more passengers, security experts and industry trade groups are reaching as the expense of safety escalates beyond what anyone seems willing to pay.

The growing disenchantment over the cost of airline security may pressure Congress to diminish - if not defund - the new Transportation Security Administration, the agency charged with protecting our transportation systems. But it must act soon before the TSA becomes too big and powerful.

The TSA was funded at a cost of $2.4 billion last year, which is more than enough for your average federal agency. Turns out the TSA wasn't average at all. In a gross misinterpretation of its charter, it demanded an additional $4.4 billion for this year alone, which reportedly will make it larger than the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service and the Border Patrol combined. No other government entity in the recent past - not even the wartime military - has developed such an appetite for money and manpower so quickly after its creation.

In response, House leaders this week obediently heeled. They announced plans to double the security fee airline passengers pay per flight leg, from $2.50 to $5, a move that would effectively raise the per-ticket security fee from $10 roundtrip to $20.

"You don't get a bill every time you call for a cop," fumed David Stempler of the Air Travelers Association, which represents passengers. Kevin Iwamoto, the president of the National Business Travel Association, denounced the planned increase as "the equivalent of raising airfares." Airline representatives were incensed, too, accusing the government of quashing an already weak recovery in air travel by imposing the new fees.

But this is not really a question of the airlines' financial health or of who foots the bill for aviation security. It's about whether any of this is going to make a difference.

It won't. If a terrorist wants to bring another plane down, he can still do it, despite the billions of taxpayer dollars we've already invested in security. No screening system is perfect. No amount of biometric devices or highly-trained security screeners can stop a few motivated terrorists from inflicting another 9/11 on us, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can tame this parasite called the TSA.

We'd be better off either curbing the TSA by insisting that it re-evaluate its mission, or killing it outright and re-assigning another agency its duties. We'd be better off with a rational approach to airline travel - one that acknowledges that flying isn't without its risks and one that concedes there's no such thing as flawless security, no matter how much money you throw at it.

We'd be better off admitting that the billions more we are about to waste on airline safety are better spent elsewhere.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.