Out of Control

The government is now searching and confiscating laptop computers and cell phones as they come through customs - and it might take a year for you to get your property back. The Washington Post reports some companies are now telling employees to erase their data before going on international trips because they don't want private data and trade secrets in the government's hands.

In a new column, Reason Foundation's Steve Titch Titch writes, "seizures of laptops and other electronic devices continue the troubling pattern on the part of the federal government to erode civil liberties in the name of security. Rather than make us safer, they likely put Americans and American interests at greater risk because they expose private and secure information."

Full Column

A growing number of laptop seizures by U.S. Customs from U.S. citizens entering the U.S., predominantly at airports, has concerned enough companies that they are now requiring employees to wipe their hard drives before traveling abroad. At least two multinationals, one American, one Dutch, have told employees not to carry confidential information on laptops when they travel overseas, according to the Washington Post.

The fact that corporations are instituting policies to protect themselves should signal how abusive this practice has become.

It what could amount to a case of illegal search and seizure, Customs agents are ordering employees of U.S. companies, be they U.S. citizens or foreign nationals, predominantly of Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds, to surrender cell phones, BlackBerry devices, iPods and laptop computers when re-entering the country.

Customs agents will then copy phonebooks and calling information from phones, and browser and email data from the laptops. The Post reports that border agents have demanded users provide passwords to open hard drives – the information of which is often confidential. (What the Post does not report is that, should the laptop contain confidential financial information about the company, the password disclosure itself could be a felony under Sarbanes-Oxley Act, so the hapless employee is stuck between being arrested for not cooperating with Customs agents or opening himself and his entire company’s executive management to jail time).

It is bad enough to be treated like a criminal every time I enter a US airport. It wold be some consolation if it were making us safer. But it is not. And the frosting on this bitter cake is we are not making us safer a great cost and inefficiency. Reason's Bob Poole has written extensively on how to redesign aviation security to acutally make us safer. Here is his comment on the latest news of TSA incompetence and the much overlooked fact that the one private security airport tested did MUCH better.

The story had just appeared in USA Today (Oct. 18th) when the first media call reached my desk. How could it possibly be, the editorial writer for another major paper asked, that checkpoint screeners missed 60% of hidden bomb materials at Chicago O’Hare and 75% at Los Angeles International—but only 20% at San Francisco International, where the screening is done by a TSA-certified private security firm?

We don’t know the details, I told her, but it’s probably not some inherent superiority of private enterprise over government agency. After all, checkpoint screening is a mind-numbingly boring job, and the screeners have to meet the same hiring, training, and testing criteria in either case. Instead, we have to ask whether the two different institutional arrangements lead to a difference in incentives and accountability that could account for such a large difference in outcomes.

And that, I suggest, is the lesson we should draw from this new information. As I told the editorial writer, the security company had to compete to get selected in the first place. And if they screw up, they can be fired—and they know it. The penalty for getting fired is not just the loss of that particular contract, but the damage to their reputation and thus to their prospects of getting more such contracts. If the TSA screws up, they just get admonished to try harder, and they stay in place. I don’t begin to know all the subtle ways in which that difference in incentives and accountability translates into different styles of supervision, different motivations, and other factors that may lead to three times better performance at detecting bomb parts in carry-on luggage. But the differences seem to be real.

There is also the slightly different matter of the tendency of any large organization to be defensive about its own poor performance. When Congress created the TSA, it gave the organization two conflicting roles. On one hand, it is the transportation security policy-maker/regulator. On the other hand, it is also the provider of one of the key security functions at over 400 airports: passenger and baggage screening. It’s only human nature for a regulatory agency to be harder on those it regulates at arm’s length than those who are part of its own family.

Since Congress created this conflict of interest in the 2001 legislation that created the TSA, only Congress can fix the problem. I’m not the only one who has been making this point for the past five years. But so far, no one in Congress has taken it seriously.

Bob Poole recently wrote this for his newsletter on aviation secturity. . .

Last year when I testified on airport screening before a subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee, one of my key points was that TSA has a built-in conflict of interest. In the legislation that created the agency, Congress made it both the transportation security regulator and the provider of a major airport security service, passenger and bag screening. I’ve made this point also in policy papers, conference presentations, and in this newsletter. Alas, it seems to have fallen on deaf ears, perhaps in part because while people could appreciate that a conflict exists in theory, it did not look as if there was much of a problem, in practice.

But three recent events illustrate that the conflict is very real. One was the widely reported Red Team testing of screening at Newark, in which the team beat the screeners 20 out of 22 times. A second, reported last week by Annie Jacobsen at National Review Online (Nov. 28th), concerned a four-foot sword (!) that a passenger managed to carry on board an American plane at Dallas-Fort Worth. And the third, also reported by Jacobsen, was an incident at Kona, Hawaii, in which a baggage screener accidentally dropped a binder of information designated SSI (Sensitive Security Information) into a passenger’s luggage while it was being screened. The passenger, Navy veteran Joe Langer, only discovered the binder when he unpacked the bag the next day.

What is most interesting about all three incidents is the TSA’s response. TSA spokesman Nico Melendez had “no comment” for Jacobsen regarding the sword, and called the SSI binder incident a “fumble.” My assessment is that they hoped both would get as little attention as possible, to avoid further embarrassment of the agency. As for Newark, TSA dispatched an investigation team to try to figure out . . . not why the screening performance was so miserable but who leaked the report to the media.

This is “cover your ass” writ large—and it’s exactly the kind of thing that happens when one and the same agency writes the rules and then operates under them. Imagine instead what would have happened if these screening failures had been the responsibility of airport employees or a private screening contractor. TSA would have no institutional self-interest to protect; its focus would clearly be on figuring out what caused these performance failures and disciplining the responsible parties (and I don’t mean the whistleblowers!).

Rep. William Pascrell (D., NJ), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, defended the unknown Newark whistleblower. But if he wants to fix the underlying problem, he should look into legislation that would devolve the screening function to the airports, resolving the conflict of interest problem once and for all.

Security at airports sucks. As a frequent traveler I could live with the security process and delays if it actually made us safer, but it does not. The system keeps getting Fs.

One of the fragile reeds that keeps the system from being worse is that the federalized airport security workforce is not allowed to unionize and bargain for hundreds of policies to benefit the workers and make things worse for the traveling public. No the least continuing the process of diverting more security dollars into screeners pockets rather than into real security measures. But under the Democrat leadership in Congress, that may well change.

Screeners Central gives a fascinating look into the minds and world of airport security screeners--their T-shirt selection tells you what they really care about!

We need to overhaul aviation security to a system that focuses on real risks and actually provides security. Won't happen until people get fed up with do-nothing security measures that just make us "feel safer." This speech from FAA Jane F. Garvey just after 9/11 is a nice window--few of the real security measures she lists remain, but her closer emphasis on making flyers "feel safer" remains the touchstone of policy.

In today's New York Post Reason's Robert Poole writes:

The latest bin Laden tape was a grim reminder that terrorists are still probing for our weaknesses. So last month's 9/11 Commission report giving airline passenger-screening an "F" is a kick to the gut.

Why do our airports remain vulnerable? It's not lack of resources: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) earned that "F" despite spending nearly its entire $5.5 billion budget last year on passenger and baggage screening.

Nor is screening the only problem area. Access to planes and the tarmac, either through the airport fence or by thousands of on-airport workers, remains a weak point. We still don't check most carry-on luggage for explosives. And the security measures we've added — baggage-inspection machines, more checkpoints — make for more crowds, a likely suicide-bombing target.

Reason Foundation's year-long assessment of airport security concluded that these holes, and others, are due to three fundamental problems with TSA.

Full Column Here

Poole, who has advised the White House Domestic Policy Council and several members of Congress on aviation security, has a new study calling for a risk-based security system and for the TSA to give passenger and baggage sceening duties to airports, with the TSA acting as the "rule-setter and enforcer."

Full Study "Airport Security: Time for a New Model" Here
Reason's Airport Security Research and Commentary Here

In today's New York Post Reason's Robert Poole writes:

The latest bin Laden tape was a grim reminder that terrorists are still probing for our weaknesses. So last month's 9/11 Commission report giving airline passenger-screening an "F" is a kick to the gut.

Why do our airports remain vulnerable? It's not lack of resources: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) earned that "F" despite spending nearly its entire $5.5 billion budget last year on passenger and baggage screening.

Nor is screening the only problem area. Access to planes and the tarmac, either through the airport fence or by thousands of on-airport workers, remains a weak point. We still don't check most carry-on luggage for explosives. And the security measures we've added — baggage-inspection machines, more checkpoints — make for more crowds, a likely suicide-bombing target.

Reason Foundation's year-long assessment of airport security concluded that these holes, and others, are due to three fundamental problems with TSA.

Full Column Here

Poole, who has advised the White House Domestic Policy Council and several members of Congress on aviation security, has a new study calling for a risk-based security system and for the TSA to give passenger and baggage sceening duties to airports, with the TSA acting as the "rule-setter and enforcer."

Full Study "Airport Security: Time for a New Model" Here
Reason's Airport Security Research and Commentary Here