Essay On Airport Security

Rafi Sela, a former head of security of an Israeli airport once said, "If you have a gap in security, you have no security" (qtd. in Gulli et al). There remain serious security gaps in the airports spread across the United States today. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency that was specifically created because of the 9/11 attacks and is responsible for regulating and operating the security of the airports in the United States. Its main aspect at present is the screening of passengers and their cargo, and it is in charge of the rules and regulations put into effect in the airports over them. Other agencies and individuals have noticed a wide breach in the TSA's supposedly effective measures of security, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) made a statement saying, "TSA screening procedures are no better at foiling terror threats than random chance" (Blakeley). The TSA is an ineffective and an incompetent department that is shown by the GAO to be, "notoriously terrible at catching dangerous threats" (qtd. in Blakeley). This gap of security by the TSA is preventing the United States from providing a safe and secure aviation system that will ultimately keep all passengers safe from harm. Unless serious measures are taken to reconstruct the airport security system, the threats of suicide missions and terrorism developing in airports may become a frequent reality in the future. The airline industry has a history involving numerous cases of disputes and complications (Goodwin). Though some of these issues have been resolved by the TSA, many other concerns involving recent occurrences such as attempted bombings still remains to be resolved. Currently, the airport's security operation is one of mass confu...

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...sed in his attempted attack" (qtd. in Sullum).
Another security program initiated by the TSA called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT), was designed to identify people who may pose a threat to airline passengers (Weinberger). 900 million dollars later, the program was still seen to be flawed in many aspects, and there is outrage over the TSA's unvalidated deployment of the system. The GAO continued in its report, “TSA deployed SPOT nationwide without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment" (Tuccille). Since its deployment, there is not validation for whether a machine can accurately identify individuals who pose a security risk in airports (Tuccille).
There is also debate over the new reliability on technology in terms of identifying suspicious individuals who could pose a threat.