nc – at: terrorism – link turn – at: HTIC report

Unfortunately, what the House Committee has produced is not an evaluation of privately- and publicly-managed airport screening systems. It is a comparison of data from two airports, one of which happens to use private screening and one of which doesn’t, that attributes all differences in screening costs and performance to the private or public management of the screening systems, with no consideration for the many other factors that might account for these differences (such as the age of the technology being used, the layout of the screening areas, or the type of passengers being screened). To point out just one major factor that I didn’t even see mentioned in the report: 15 million passengers on international flights pass through LAX each year, compared to 8 million at SFO, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. I imagine having nearly twice as many international passengers to screen might slow down your efficiency a bit. The report goes on to make generalizations, based on this very shaky, limited data, about potential cost-savings from a nation-wide conversion to private screening. Unfortunately, the unfounded claim that privatizing airport security could save $1 billion over five years is now getting media coverage, when the truth is we really don’t know which system is better or cheaper. A post on The Heritage Foundation’s blog The Foundry glosses over the study’s serious weaknesses and claims in bold text that, “SPP saves taxpayer dollars,” and, “[p]rivate screeners are more efficient.” I’m not sure what caused the post’s author, Jena McNeill, to conclude, “The committee’s report makes a pretty compelling case… that privatization of screening functions makes absolute sense,” but I can pretty much guarantee that, if Rep. Mica asked the GAO to review his own committee’s report, they would tear it to shreds.

Here’s why we need to nail down a comparison of private and TSA-managed screening performance before we even start to look at costs: With goods and services that are simple to measure, such as providing garbage pickup or manufacturing license plates, it’s easy to determine how well a government agency or private contractor is doing the job and at what cost. When the good or service in question is a complex one like education or healthcare, measuring success is much more difficult and it’s harder to hold an agency accountable for the quality of services it provides. The performance measurement problem plays out differently for government agencies and private contractors. Government bureaucracy can hinder innovation and responsiveness, as we saw when the TSA refused to respond to public anger over invasive screening techniques. The million dollar question in that debate was a performance measurement question we didn’t have the answer to – was the TSA keeping us safer (i.e. performing better) by doing the screenings? If we had hard data showing that the answer was no, these screening techniques would already be gone. When private firms provide publicly funded services that are difficult to measure, the problem has less to do with bureaucracy and more to do with profits. Government agencies have a tendency to operate up to their allotted budgets, while private contractors try to kept their costs as low as possible to maximize profit. When it’s hard for us to hold private firms accountable for their performance, their incentive to skimp on costs is greater. This is why privately-run prisons have encountered so many problems and, as the LA Times reminds us, it’s part of the reason the TSA was created in the first place.

Council general manager Max Kershaw says the council could not justify the extra insurance as it is unlikely a terrorist would ever strike at the airport. "In the area of the threat of terrorism to the Gunnedah airport, the council considers it a very low risk and therefore deem that the considerably high cost of insurance premiums is not warranted," he said.

Security fiasco Since the attempted terrorist attack on a plane on Christmas Day I have heard nothing but “experts” giving all sort of reasons and explanations and “assurances” that our government is watching the situation closely and will find out who is behind it.

The Transportation Security Administration says none of the 73 airport workers found to have unspecified ties to terrorism is actually a suspected terrorist or threat to aviation security. The TSA's deputy assistant administrator, Stacey Fitzmaurice, says a review concluded that they were not a threat. The Homeland Security Department's inspector general earlier found that the airport workers had terrorism-related activity codes associated with their names in a government terrorism database, and called them a 'potential transportation security threat.'

U.S. government insurance that guarantees airlines are covered against terrorism and war was extended for four carriers, including Virgin America Inc., that otherwise would have lost coverage at the end of the year. President Barack Obama extended the insurance for as long as one year while on vacation in Hawaii, according to the order distributed by e-mail. Congress must also approve the extension, according to the order. The companies covered also include Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison’s Island Air, an intra-Hawaii carrier based in Honolulu. The U.S. stepped in to guarantee that airlines could receive insurance after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackings. Most carriers remain covered under a law passed in 2002 and extended by Congress in a measure funding the Federal Aviation Administration into 2014. Virgin America, Island Air and two others weren’t covered by the extension, so Obama had to issue his order covering them, according to an FAA statement. “We have participated in this approval process every time our insurance has renewed since our launch in 2007,” Abby Lunardini, a spokeswoman for Burlingame, California-based Virgin America, said in an e-mailed statement.