Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Since 1938 Britannica’s annual Book of the Year has offered in-depth coverage of the events of the previous year. While the 75th anniversary edition of the book won’t appear in print for several months, some of its outstanding content is already available online. This week, which marks the 12th anniversary of the founding of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Britannica Blog features this article by Bloomberg News reporter Jeff Plungis on the evolving nature of air travel security.
Reassessing Airport and Airline Security
On March 5, 2013, U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief John Pistole announced a plan at a security conference in Brooklyn, N.Y., to pare back the list of items that the agency would ban at airport screening lines. On the basis of recent intelligence gathering, he said, the TSA no longer deemed such items as pocket knives (with unfixed blades of up to 6 cm [2.36 in] in length), toy baseball bats, hockey sticks, or golf clubs a threat to airplane safety.
Though applauded by security experts at the conference, Pistole’s plan turned controversial within hours. Airline flight attendants were the first to object, saying that unruly passengers in cramped airplane cabins should not have access to weapons and that the TSA was ignoring its responsibility to ensure passenger safety. They also reminded the public about their colleagues who were murdered at knifepoint during the hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001. Over the weeks that followed, members of Congress, checkpoint screeners, pilots, airline CEOs, and air marshals objected to the TSA’s proposed policy. Pistole withdrew the plan in June.
The incident underscored the degree to which aviation security—more than a decade after the 9-11 terrorist attacks—remained fraught with emotion and conflicting goals. The proposal also demonstrated that U.S. policy makers were trying to move away from a model hastily thrown together as the country continued to recover from the shock of the nearly 3,000 lives lost in New York City and Washington, D.C., 12 years earlier.
The Government Takes Over
In the months following 9-11, Congress and the administration of Pres. George W. Bush focused on the manner in which hijackers were able to take control of four planes and turn them into missiles pointed at the two towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (The fourth plane, heading toward a target presumed to be the Capitol or the White House, crashed outside Shanksville, Pa.)
Immediate concerns included the reliability of poorly paid and haphazardly trained private security guards, who manned security checkpoints in U.S. airports. Regulations had been written by the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency far more focused on the mechanical elements of aircraft. Airlines or contractors employed the guards, who were paid on a scale just above the minimum wage; annual turnover sometimes exceeded 100%. Carry-on bags went through X-rays, and passengers walked through a magnetometer. The focus was on guns and metallic bombs—weapons that had been used in previous incidents.
The 9-11 hijackers took over the airliners with the use of small knives or box cutters. By killing the pilots, taking control of the planes, and directing the aircraft toward landmark buildings, they invented a new form of terrorism. Lawmakers hastened to prevent this kind of catastrophic loss of life from ever happening again.
The TSA Scales Up
Congress created the TSA as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which was signed into law on Nov. 19, 2001. The legislation gave the agency one year to hire nearly 50,000 screeners and mandated that the agency establish a list of prohibited items and purchase equipment for the security lines at 450 U.S. airports. Though the TSA was initially placed under the U.S. Department of Transportation, the agency was moved in 2003 under the umbrella of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
The TSA began scanning checked baggage for explosives with large computed tomography (CT) machines in airport ticketing lobbies in 2002. Government researchers tested alternative technologies and determined that only MRI-like technologies (costing about $1 million per machine) would be suitable to scan for all known threats, including liquids (such as hydrogen peroxide) that could be used to make explosives. TSA administrator (2005–09) Kip Hawley advocated for the use of less-costly (about $150,000 per machine) X-ray technology that would scan luggage from more than one angle, but he left the agency before the research to test the technology had been completed. The so-called AT systems, which he proposed, remained in use in many European airports.
Besides changes at the airport, airplanes themselves were equipped with reinforced cockpit doors. In addition, the Federal Air Marshal Service was expanded, and all checked luggage was screened—initially near the airport ticket counters and later in nonpublic areas.
As other incidents occurred, additional steps were added to the screening process. In December 2001 so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid was stopped by other passengers from igniting an explosive device in his shoe. The TSA responded by requiring that every passenger remove his or her shoes and place them on the checkpoint conveyor belt for screening. In September 2004 the agency started requiring that jackets also be removed. Hawley amended the prohibited list in 2005 to remove the ban on scissors and knitting needles.
In September 2006, after a plot the previous month involving liquid bombs was broken up in London, the TSA implemented what became known as the 3-1-1 rule, requiring U.S. passengers to carry liquids (e.g., shampoo, mouthwash, and cosmetics) in containers of 100 ml (3.4 oz) or less and fit them all into one clear sealable plastic bag per traveler. The agency believed that it would be difficult for terrorists to assemble a bomb by using liquids in these amounts.
New Screening, New Controversies
In May 2010 Pres. Barack Obama selected Pistole, the former deputy director of the FBI, to be the fifth administrator of the TSA. Pistole had led the FBI’s investigation of an attempted car bombing in New York City’s Times Square earlier that month and had previously investigated plots involving liquid explosives in the United Kingdom in 2006 and the bombings in May 2003 of three housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed 35 people. Pistole had also been involved in the investigations into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who had attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009 by igniting plastic explosives hidden in his underwear.
In late 2010 the TSA began rolling out new screening machines, which used advanced imaging technology (AIT) that was capable of scanning for much smaller and nonmetallic objects. The agency was faced with a public backlash, however, over the nearly naked bodily images that the machines revealed. Though some machines were reprogrammed with privacy filters that replaced the images with a stick figure, for other machines (for which the software did not work) the images were viewed by screeners in a room away from the passenger lines. A TSA worker would radio a screener at the checkpoint if a problem was detected.
Passengers who objected to submitting to the new AIT machines were given the option of a pat down. However, because the TSA was concerned about explosives that could be lethal in very small amounts, the pat downs were invasive, involving touching all parts of the body, including genitalia. The TSA suffered public-relations disasters when airport screeners singled out the elderly, children, celebrities, and lawmakers for intrusive pat downs.
Risk-Based Security
In 2011 Pistole announced that he would accelerate the TSA’s attempt to move away from “one-size-fits-all” screening of airport passengers to “risk-based security.” For passengers willing to share personal information ahead of a flight, it meant a much easier screening.
As a result, the TSA launched PreCheck, a program that allowed fliers to undergo a background check in exchange for less-intrusive airport screening. Passengers enrolled in PreCheck underwent a much-less-intensive screening than the one conducted at U.S. airports since 9-11. The travelers kept on their shoes and light jackets, were allowed to leave laptops in their luggage, and walked through metal detectors rather than AIT scanners. By 2013 the program could be found in 40 airports; 60 additional airports were slated to implement PreCheck. In response to criticism that the program was focused on frequent fliers who were nominated by airlines, the TSA announced that it would begin its own enrollment and charge travelers $85 to cover the cost of conducting a background check. Though about 2% of passengers used PreCheck in 2013, the agency’s goal was to enroll half of all U.S. passengers into the program by the end of 2014.
Future Technology
Various TSA contractors maintained that they had screening machines capable of showing the chemistry or molecular structure of liquids to distinguish between harmless liquids (such as water and mouthwash) and potential threats (such as explosives or hydrogen peroxide). Other companies claimed that they had scanners that could examine shoes without their removal.
Other security experts were focusing on ways to make screening less cumbersome. The International Air Transport Association had a model known as “Checkpoint of the Future,” which used technology to scan passengers’ clothing, luggage, and shoes as they walked through a long cylindrical corridor.