Transportation Security Administration

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Categories: Transportation in the United States | United States Department of Homeland Security

Agency overview
Transportation Security Administration
Image:TSA.png
Agency Executive	Edmund "Kip" Hawley, Assistant Secretary/Administrator
Parent agency	Department of Homeland Security
Website
DHS Official site

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is a U.S. government agency that was created as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19 2001. The TSA was originally organized in the U.S. Department of Transportation but was moved to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 1 2003. The agency has been the subject of numerous controversies and heavy criticism.

1 Organization
- 1.1 Budget and funding
2 Circumstances of creation and purpose
3 Daily operations and area of responsibility
- 3.1 TSA luggage locks
  - 3.1.1 Luggage locks references
4 Criticisms and Scandals
- 4.1 Criticisms
- 4.2 Scandals
5 References
6 See also
7 External links

Organization

The TSA is a component of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems. With state, local and regional partners, the TSA oversees security for highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, ports, and 450 U.S. airports. Some airports, including San Francisco International Airport and Sioux Falls Regional Airport, utilizes private security under contract with TSA for screening of baggage and passengers. As of March 2007, the TSA employs around 43,000 transportation security officers (down from a high of nearly 60,000 in 2003), commonly referred to as "TSOs", formerly referred to as screeners.^[1]

A Transportation Security Officer (TSO) is a federal employee of the Transportation Security Administration tasked with performing security screening of persons and property at airport terminals and baggage areas. The primary function of a Transportation Security Officer is to prevent all prohibited/dangerous objects from being transported onto aircraft.^[2]

Budget and funding

For the United States Government's fiscal year of 2007 an amount of $4,751,580,000 (4.7 billion) dollars was appropriated for use (specifically for civil aviation security services) by the TSA during the fiscal year. This appropriation was proposed in House Resolution 5441^[3] and was signed into public law as Public Law 109-295.

The starting salary for a US-based transportation security officer (TSO, or, "screener") is $23,836 to 35,754 per year, not including locality pay^[4].

Circumstances of creation and purpose

Image:Screening in DTW Airport.jpg

Passenger being screened by TSA employee in Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport

Image:US-TransportationSecurityAdmin-DOTSeal.svg

Seal when under the Department of Transportation

While the Transportation Security Agency is responsible for security in all modes of transportation including aviation, rail, highways and pipelines, the vast majority of its resources are dedicated to aviation security.

The agency was created in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. Before its creation, security screening was operated by private companies which had contracts with either:

an airline (in cases where the terminal was owned by an airline)
a terminal company (in cases where the terminal was privately owned)
an airport operator (in cases where the terminal was operated by a government agency).

With the arrival of the TSA, private screening has not disappeared altogether. Under the TSA's Screening Partnership Program (SPP), privately operated checkpoints exist in the airports of San Francisco, CA; Kansas City, MO; Rochester, NY; Tupelo, MS; Sioux Falls, SD; Key West, FL; and Jackson Hole, WY; and at the East 34th St Heliport in New York, NY.^[5] ^[6] Private security firms have been approved by the TSA to provide security, but under the authority of the TSA.^[7]

The organization was charged with developing policies to ensure the security of U.S. air traffic and other forms of transportation. The TSA says airport security and the prevention of aircraft hijacking are two of its main goals, though it is widely disputed whether the TSA aids in accomplishing these goals and whether the TSA is necessary for their accomplishment.

The TSA oversaw the Federal Air Marshal Service until December 1 2003 when the program was officially transferred to the authority of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the U.S. government's 2006 fiscal year, the Federal Air Marshal Program was transferred back to the TSA. The TSA also currently oversees the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, also known as the "armed pilots".

Daily operations and area of responsibility

The TSA is responsible for carrying out screenings of luggages and passengers items in airports around the country. Uniformed TSA personnel now operate all baggage inspection points in U.S. commercial airports.

Confiscated items are available for sale to the public, if not claimed by their owner. ^[8] TSA is also working to combat baggage theft in many airports. It is working with local and other federal law enforcement agencies. In Las Vegas, a recent sting operation caught two airport employees stealing weapons. ^[9]

TSA luggage locks

The TSA requires access to air passengers' luggage for security screening in the USA, sometimes without the passenger being present. To allow luggage to be locked for protection against theft, the TSA has approved certain locks, identified by a logo on the locks. TSA personnel can open and relock these locks with tools and information supplied by the lock manufacturers. Luggage locked with other types of lock may be forced open. Various forms of padlock, lockable straps, and luggage with built-in locks are available. Some locks indicate that they have been opened by the TSA.

A number of manufacturers produce TSA-compliant locks. Several have joined together to use the special Travel Sentry Approved mark on baggage that meets the requirements of the TSA[1]. Safe Skies manufacture their own approved locks. The technology behind the TSA lock is protected by U.S. Patent 7,021,537 . As of 2007 a patent infringement lawsuit has been filed against Travel Sentry by the patent holder.

Luggage locks references

Criticisms and Scandals

Criticisms

There have been numerous criticisms leveled at the TSA, usually concerning its airport security operations. The criticisms include:

Failure of TSA screeners to detect fake bombs brought through security by undercover TSA agents, with detection levels much lower than San Francisco's private security agents from the same tests. In the most recent tests, conducted in 2006, security screeners at LAX failed to identify 75% of fake bombs, while Chicago O'Hare screeners missed 60% of the bomb components. Private screeners in San Francisco missed only 20% of the prospective bomb parts.^[10]

Complaints of invasion of privacy and mistreatment of passengers^[11]^[12]^[13]

Engaging in security theater^[14]^[15]

Frequent theft of airline passenger possessions by TSA employees^[16]^[17]^[18]^[19]^[20]^[21]^[22]

Lavish spending by TSA officials on events unrelated to airport security^[23]

Sales of items collected from passengers^[24]

TSA employees skipping security checks^[25]^[26]

Wasteful spending in its hiring practices^[1]

Numerous employees found sleeping on the job^[27]^[28]^[29]^[30]

Failure to use good judgment and common sense^[31]^[32]^[33]

Scandals

Covert security test failures

Undercover operations to test the effectiveness of the airport screening processes are routinely carried out by the TSA's internal affairs unit and the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's office.

A report by the Inspector General found that TSA officials had collaborated with Covenant Aviation Security at San Francisco International Airport to alert screeners of undercover tests. From August 2003 until May 2004, precise descriptions of the undercover personnel were provided to the screeners. The handing out of descriptions was then stopped, but until January 2005 screeners were still alerted whenever undercover operations were going on.^[34]

A report on undercover operations conducted in October 2006 at Newark Liberty International Airport was leaked to the press. The screeners had failed 20 of 22 undercover security tests, missing numerous guns and bombs. The Government Accountability Office had previously pointed to repeated covert test failures by TSA personnel.^[35]^[36] Revealing the results of covert tests is against TSA policy, and the agency responded by initiating an internal probe to discover the source of the leak.^[37]

In July 2007, The Times Union of Albany, New York reported that TSA screeners at Albany International Airport failed multiple covert security tests conducted by the TSA, including the failure to detect a fake bomb.^[38]

Hard drive with employee records lost

On May 4, 2007, the Associated Press reported that a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data, and payroll information for about 100,000 employees had been lost from TSA headquarters. Kip Hawley sent a letter to TSA employees alerting them to news of the missing hard drive and apologizing for the loss. The agency stated that it did not know whether the drive was lost or stolen but said that it has asked the FBI to investigate.^[39]

Ryan Bird incident

In late September 2006, airline passenger Ryan Bird was detained by TSA employees for writing "Kip Hawley is an idiot" on a plastic bag containing his toiletries. Bird wrote the comment to protest the rule the TSA had recently enacted requiring all airline passengers to store any liquid and gel items in their carry-on luggage in clear, plastic baggies. Bird was detained by the TSA for nearly half an hour before being released. His account of the incident on FlyerTalk.com produced 83,000 hits within a couple of days, and the incident made national news. ^[40]

Insecure website flaws

In February 2007, Christopher Soghoian, a security researcher and blogger announced ^[41] that a TSA website was collecting private passenger information in a highly insecure manner. The website was intended to provide a way for passengers to file disputes in the event that they were incorrectly included on the No fly list. Passengers who submitted their information through the website were at risk of identity theft. TSA pulled, fixed and then relaunched the website within days, after the press picked up the story. ^[42]

In January 2008, The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report on the incident, the result of a one year investigation.^[43]

The report stated that the flawed website had operated insecurely for over four months during which over 247 people had submitted personal information using the insecure web-forms. ^[44] According to the report, the TSA manager responsible for assigning the contract was a high-school friend and former employee of the the owner of the firm that created the website.^[45]

The report also noted that "neither Desyne nor the technical lead on the traveler redress Web site have been sanctioned by TSA for their roles in the deployment of an insecure Web site. TSA continues to pay Desyne to host and maintain two major Web-based information systems. TSA has taken no steps to discipline the technical lead, who still holds a senior program management position at TSA."^[46]