God Save The Points says that the U.S. has the best airport security and immigration in the world, acknowledging that this take is “controversial.” He argues this because Global Entry, PreCheck and CLEAR let you (at least American citizens, in some cases others) buy out of long waits.
The very fact that you can ‘buy out of’ the process underscores the extent to which the process is broken. That it is also broken in other countries doesn’t change that. But to claim that security and immigration in the U.S. are ‘best’ I think it’s necessary to look more broadly at ways in which the U.S. compares poorly.
- TSA isn’t actually very good at catching dangerous items. The TSA’s own tests have shown 95% failure rates finding items going through the checkpoint on multiple occasions though they’ve done as well as finding one out of five. When their Inspector General has come out with scathing reports about their effectiveness, they’ve classified the findings to keep them from view.
- U.S. airport security uses flawed targeting lists that amount to pre-crime profiling, restrict the basic right to travel, and are ridden with errors and used for extortion. They check ID against lists of banned passengers and those they want to give extra screening to, but people wind up on the list in error and as retribution for refusing to become an informant. They get on the list not just without a conviction, but without due process for getting off when it’s a mistake (in fact the government usually won’t even acknowledge that someone is on such a list). And this has kept people from traveling, including traveling back to their home country which they’re entitled to do.
- TSA has poor disciplinary procedures, deploying problem employees in sensitive roles. Tens of thousands of TSA employees have been accused of misconduct multiple times.
- TSA is its own regulator, which is dangerous. TSA doesn’t set the rules for airport security, they also perform the screenings themselves. They watch over themselves, which means there’s no accountability.
Meanwhile, in much of the world screening is performed by either contractors or a separate agency, so that the screening rulemaker and regulator is different than the one carrying out the security task – the group in charge of security isn’t just regulating themselves.
The TSA’s “Screening Partnership Program” was at least a good idea, but once TSA employees were allowed by the Obama administration to unionize they’ve pushed back against its expansion.
In Australia there’s no ID or liquids check for domestic flights. In Hong Kong they don’t do the liquids dance either. The U.K. has begun allowing up to two liters of liquid through security, and for passengers not to have to remove laptops or liquids from their bags, with a plan to extend this nationwide.
There hasn’t been another 9/11, but that’s because there are fewer threats to aviation than we’d often admit (though TSA itself admitted it in court filings that were unredacted in error). In any case, even if TSA were effective, screenings at airports just makes other things relatively more attractive targets.
TSA Agents in Charlotte Watch News of the TSA’s Failure to Detect Weapons and Bombs, Instead of Searching for Weapons and Bombs (HT: Tocqueville)
Is U.S. airport security really the best in the world? I’m not convinced that Global Entry, CLEAR and PreCheck make it so.
They are over selling PreTSA where the general boarding has 10 pp in line and PreTSA had 7099. Yesterday. Need more PreTSA stations.
Smoke, mirrors, money and show. People are afraid and want something, the airlines and their insurance companies demand something, and there are occasional threats. So we get a system that sort of, kind of, works. Given the scale and number of people involved maybe that’s all we can expect. Of course the morality and effectiveness of all this is not discussed as any bureaucrat who did so would soon leave or be pushed out.
Then too there is big money in having an ever-expanding national security state. (It has to expand because there is always something else that could be a threat without end, amen.) To take an obvious nightmare in a country where people still sing about being “brave” and “free”, airport body scanners suddenly appeared after Obama took a trip with the president of the company that makes them. He was from India, the manufacturer was in Malaysia and stimulus money was used to pay for their construction. Today some very big corporations, with very rich people on their boards, are behind these chambers of horror. It doesn’t take much to see how a post-Citizens United Congress gets paid off to keep them going.
Gary Leff provides an insightful perspective on the state of U.S. airport security and immigration. It’s refreshing to see a discussion that acknowledges both the strengths and weaknesses in the system. While services like Global Entry, PreCheck, and CLEAR offer convenience, they also highlight the need for improvements in the overall process.
As a tour guide, it’s important to stay informed about the state of travel and security, and Gary’s blog post offers a balanced view. This information can help both guides and travelers navigate the complexities of airport procedures more effectively. We appreciate the critical analysis and look forward to more discussions on how travel experiences can be enhanced in the future. Thanks for sharing this valuable insight!
The fact is that really good security is too expensive to achieve. If good security takes 10 minutes per passenger, a 150 passenger flight would require 30 agents to process that flight in 50 minutes. If an airport had 100 flights per hour, 3000 agents per airport would be needed.
Interesting points concerning the TSA’s poor disciplinary procedures and setting its own regulations. Glad that that doesn’t apply to SFO, which doesn’t use TSA for its screenings. Instead it is part of the Screening Partnership Program and uses a private contractor. Do any other major airports do this and have there been any studies as to advantages/disadvantages?
Everyone should bookmark this post for the inevitable next time that Gary gets wrongfully pegged as some sort of leftist, big government shill or apologist.
Best in the world??? How about slowest in the world with longest lines, most invasive processes, and rudest staff?
I dread flights in the US because of the TSA, security screening in most other developed countries is far less painful, and at least as effective.
You are right – the focus appears to be on selling, rather than either security or justice. There’s at least an argument with Global Entry that people are pre-vetted (although when you look at the details, that argument collapses, especially when you consider that foreigners with a Visa or an ESTA (who are pre-vetted) aren’t automatically included in Global Entry), but there’s no argument on TSA Pre. Either you need security, or you don’t. If you need security, there are only two ways of doing it effectively – aggressive profiling, which won’t wash in the USA, or universal. It’s a farce suggesting that someone who pays $99 doesn’t need to be checked. And then, why check them at all? Either you have satisfied yourself that people won’t bring bad things on board, in which case don’t check them at all, or you haven’t, in which case they need as much checking as the next person.
I’m afraid that the only conclusion is that the US Government is running a scam to extract money out of people by making the “free” service unnecessarily unpleasant, thus making them pay for an “improved” service which still checks for what is needed.
In HKG they have the liquid restriction still until end of year
I laugh when politicans talk about the debt or lack of money for social programs like SS and Medicare. Do intellectually challenged Americans realize we spend not only 850 billion per year on military but well over 2 trillion combined on “Intelliegence” and “policing”? Fear sells and our military/police/intelligence industrial complex is a black hole that sucks all of our wealth into it.
Came thru Atl OreCheck a bit over a week ago. Have those new fancy machines which slowed everything to a crawl.
Don’t know if the operator didn’t know WTF he was doing but masses of us were waiting a lot longer than when the old machines were in use.
Pre check and GE certainly make immigration and security more efficient than they otherwise would be by allowing fewer resources to be devoted to low threats, but the best? I don’t think so. Some non PC countries do a much better job because they can actually do profiling that makes sense without worrying about offending someone.
We need to make airport security smarter. Look, I’ve flown a couple thousand flights without incident and there’s nothing in my background that would suggest I’m a risk to anyone. And there are tens of millions of other Americans who could easily be identified as similar “no risk” passengers. So why should I be regularly hassled at the airport for silly things like liquids or food? I am certain there is asmarter way to do security that would also reduce security costs.
People don’t realize this is how our economy is designed. TSA is marketed as a security tool, but what they are really selling is saving time.
Security is just a by product. If it happens, good, but it’s not the main reason for their existence.
This is America. Everything is based on maximum profit but always marketed under an honorable cause.
It’s also why America loves monopolies. We pretend to monitor and present them, but we really don’t.
That is America, where the the public is fooled just about 100% of the time.
I’ve flown a couple of dozens flights between Denmark and Sweden this year with no ID checks whatsoever. How scary, right? No, as they scan passenger bodies and cabin baggage anyway.
Passenger ID checks consume resources which could be used to more reliably interdict prohibited weapons, explosives and incendiaries. The passenger ID checks not only draw down resources from being used for real flight security, they also are a point of compromise on privacy for no significant gain in flight security.
You think the US healthcare costs are ridiculously expensive? The same argument and more could be made about the US approach to security: more pay more to get diminishing or negative returns for a lot of the extra “security” expenditures by the country as a whole.