All their disads are non-unique – a Privatization’s inevitable internationally

Speaking from the White House Tuesday, Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Americans can be confident airports around the country are secure and that President Obama still has confidence in the TSA. "The President does believe the American people should feel confident in traveling airports all across the country because there are security measures in place to protect the traveling public," Earnest said. "The President does continue to have confidence that the officers of the TSA do very important work that continues to protect the American people and continue to protect the American aviation system." "Now, what's also true is that there were specific concerns that were raised by this classified report that was conducted by the independent inspector general and in response to that report the Director of Homeland Security directed the TSA to undertake seven specific steps to address those concerns. That's everything from new, intensive training for supervisors across the country, to revising standard operating procedures, retesting screening equipment and even redoubling our efforts to ensure that the most up to date, modern screening equipment is being used in airports across the country to keep us safe," Earnest continued. "Our efforts to develop a multi-layered security approach means that we have effective measures in place to counter threats to our aviation system and we are always looking for ways to strengthen those efforts. Efforts to refine those security strategies are sometimes visible to the traveling public, sometimes those strategies are not obvious."

LISBON, Portugal — President Barack Obama on Saturday acknowledged some travelers' "frustrations" with having to go through full-body pat-downs and scans at airports, but he said the enhanced security measures are necessary to keep America safe. In response to a question at a press conference in Lisbon, where he was attending a NATO summit , the president said that the Transportation Security Administration has been "under enormous pressure" to find better ways to screen for explosives and other dangerous items ever since the attempted 2009 Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner over Detroit. In that case, a passenger with links to an al-Qaida extremist group tried to set off plastic explosives concealed in his underwear. "I understand people’s frustrations, and what I’ve said to the TSA is that you have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through are there other ways of doing it that are less intrusive," Obama said.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Congress needs to drastically overhaul the nation’s airport security process after a report last week documented a series of undercover sting operations in which agents tried to pass through security with prohibited items. “We need to totally revamp ... the TSA process,” McCaul (R-Texas) said on Fox’s “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday. “We need to look also at whether private screeners are better than public screeners,” he continued. “I think they can be more efficient, more effective.” The report, from the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general, found undercover agents made it through security in 67 of 70 tests, including one instance in which a TSA screener failed to find a fake bomb even after it set off a magnetometer. The screener in that instance reportedly let the agent through with the fake bomb taped to his back, having missed it during a pat-down. The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), dismissed a majority of the TSA’s operations at airport checkpoints as “security theater.” Johnson said bomb-sniffing dogs would likely be more effective at catching the types of prohibited devices that were missed by TSA workers and equipment in the failed bomb tests. “We need to think outside the box,” he said. “We’ve got to think smarter. And so from my standpoint, if you have got a very high percentage in terms of effectiveness of a bomb-sniffing dog, I think that solution is pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Democrats also expressed outrage at the TSA’s failure to find fake explosives and weapons in internal tests at almost all of America’s busiest airports, but they stopped short of calling for the privatization of the agency.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The American Federation of Government Employees today praised Transportation Security Administration Administrator John Pistole for putting a stop to the privatization of this country's airport screening function, also known as the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). "The nation is secure in the sense that the safety of our skies will not be left in the hands of the lowest-bidder contractor, as it was before 9/11" AFGE National President John Gage said. "We applaud Administrator Pistole for recognizing the value in a cohesive federalized screening system and workforce." Airports have had the option of opting out of the federal screener system since TSA was created, but in those nine years only a handful out of 450 have chosen to do so. Today, Pistole issued a memo to the TSA workforce stating "to preserve TSA as an effective, federal counterterrorism security network, SPP will not be expanded beyond the current 16 airports, unless a clear and substantial advantage to do so emerges in the future." AFGE is the nation's largest federal employee union and the only union to represent TSOs since the agency's inception. With more than 12,000 dues-paying members in 38 AFGE TSA Locals across the country, AFGE is the union of choice for TSOs across the country. For more information, please visit www.tsaunion.com< http://www.tsaunion.com/ >. AFGE is the largest federal employee union representing 600,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia, including tens of thousands of DHS employees in Border Patrol, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FEMA, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Federal Protective Service, Office of Immigration Statistics and TSA.

Their health, their safety, their welfare is number one. It is easy to sit back and try to quarterback the other teamn. This is in the sense that we made a TSA and I'm going to believe that TSA wants to do the right thing. That does not necessarily mean that I or my colleagues will agree with those decisions. But first of all, I want to make sure that those decisions are based in a culture of integrity, that's number one, number two, I want to know that they are informed decisions. That is that you have gathered information and your decisions are based upon information that is accurate. Number three, I want to know that the decisions were based upon and consistent with the goals of TSA. Now, we all know that sequestration has had this impact. It has had a tremendous impact. If it can have an impact on John Hopkins University which is smack dab in the middle of my district which is now having to end research on some life-saving types of research, it certainly can have an impact on TSA. What we -- what I'm interested to know is number one, you know, how these decisions were made, number two, what, was there some room to do things differently, number three, were they consistent with making sure that the public is safe. And certainly we all want to know that there is a balance, but safety is number one and convenience is down the line. I don't want to sacrifice convenience for safety. So, I want you to -- I'm hoping that the testimony will shed some light on what I just said. Finally, let me leave you with this. In the end, the republic is looking at us as members of Congress and I'm sure asking, why can't you all get this right? I'm not going to sit here and blame TSA, I'm going to blame us. We are the ones who are responsible for sequestration because of our failure. You know, that does not lead TSA off the hook. But we've got our own whole work to do. And in the midst and I saw my kids, I tell them that, usually, in bad situations, people do not so bright things, under the pressure people do not so bright things.

The FAA oversees air ambulance operators, but the agency's oversight goes beyond inspection and surveillance. The FAA uses a risk-based system that includes the initiatives outlined below which focus on the leading causes of accidents.

The CAA does not have adequately trained and qualified technical personnel; the CAA does not provide adequate inspector guidance to ensure enforcement of, and compliance with, minimum international standards; and the CAA has insufficient documentation and records of certification and inadequate continuing oversight and surveillance of air carrier operations, the FAA said. (MNS)

McCartney suggests that TSA may be engaged in “mission creep,” a well-known phenomenon among government agencies that need to come up with new justifications for their existence after their statutory purpose has been accomplished. TSA’s response to the second incident suggests that mission creep is indeed underway: TSA spokesman Greg Soule says airport screeners are trained to “look for threats to aviation security” and discrepancies in a passenger’s identity. TSA says verifying someone’s identity, or exposing false identity, is a security issue so that names can be checked against terrorism watch lists. Large amounts of cash can be evidence of criminal activity, Mr. Soule says, and so screeners look at the “quantity, packaging, circumstances of discovery or method by which the cash is carried.” In short, the agency appears to believe that its authority extends much more broadly into law enforcement than merely ensuring that persons entering the sterile zone of the airport do not possess weapons or explosives. Whether TSA actually fulfills its statutory mission is unclear. System tests are performed frequently but results are typically classified. Sometimes, poor results are leaked anyway. In 2007, the Government Accountability Office succeeded in evading TSA’s systems for excluding liquid explosives and components. Given these problems, mission creep is a sensible bureaucratic strategy because it provides additional ways for the agency to show success. It also may help with personnel recruitment (by making transportation security officer [TSO] positions more attractive) and retention (by creating new pathways to performance rewards). However, giving TSOs general law enforcement authorities also invites, and may well guarantee, abuse of discretion. Unlike law enforcement, airport security proceeds without probable cause; all passengers must submit to it. TSOs have the power to cause passengers to miss their flights if they resist, and that threat alone will be sufficient to motivate the vast majority of passengers to relinquish legal rights that many would defend in another setting.

A national ID system would divert resources from more productive counter-terrorism measures. One estimate of the initial cost of such a program goes as high as $25 to $30 billion dollars, with another $3 billion to $6 billion per year to run it. Our limited resources could be better spent on increasing border security and dealing with the two-year backlog of intelligence needing to be translated at the FBI.