To DougJ’s pointL: no Blackwater is not the best example of private airport security. The best example is the private airport security which existed for decades prior to 9/11. We don’t need an analogy. The airlines were in charge of security – not the government. Blackwater, on the other hand, is a private military contractor hired by the government.
Also, airport security is not a police function. Airport security could not arrest you or charge you with a crime, they could only detain you until law enforcement arrived. Airport security traditionally worked with law enforcement but not as law enforcement. Blackwater and other mercenary groups too often cross the line into actual combat roles that ought to be handled by government troops. Big difference. And no, again, police forces should not be privatized. Police forces enforce the law, they are an integral part of the justice system. The TSA, like the private firms before them, does not enforce the law. They screen passengers. If there’s a problem, they call in law enforcement to make an arrest. A police force is part of our legal system and, like prisons, our legal system cannot be privatized because it undermines the point of the legal system in the first place. Airport security guards and baggage screeners are not part of the legal system. This is a strawman.
Also, no, there is no need for a TSA-like organization. None. Get rid of it completely. The government can write security regulations without it and they can be enforced without it.
To John’s point: again no. This is a false comparison. The airlines would be in charge of picking their own security firms, not the government. If the government isn’t awarding the contract, then there is no way – no way in a million bloody years – that it can be called a state-sanctioned monopoly. If I pick someone to provide security for my home, I am not creating a state-sanctioned monopoly. If US Airways picks the Super Best Friends to conduct security for them, this is also not a state-sanctioned monopoly. The airlines choosing who provides security for their passengers is not in any remote way the same thing as the government deciding who provides trash collection services.
Again – private security firms handled airports prior to 9/11. All this hullabaloo over ‘libertarian fantasies’ and ‘privatization schemes’ is nonsense. We have decades of actual history to point to. This is not an abstract Hayekian idea. It is a matter of historical record. Whether in practice private firms would be any less intrusive than the TSA in a post-9/11 world is another question: they might not be. They might have no choice depending on the legal framework they had to deal with. But the TSA is already far too intrusive and will only become more and more politically entrenched. I’m willing to take chances.
P.S. Mark Thompson makes some good points about the ‘quasi-government’ nature of airports which I think is true and important – I envision airlines themselves having some say in the security process, but perhaps this would all boil down to airports instead and the sweetheart deals that mistermix mentioned, in which case, yeah this could turn into a state-sanctioned or semi-state-sanctioned monopoly pretty quickly with all its inherent flaws. Not good, of course, but I do think there are ways to improve this process.
However, I still think the worst abuses we’ve seen have occurred under the overtly government agency of the TSA, not under the privatized regime in the pre-9/11 world. Privatization is not a magic bullet here, as I’ve mentioned before, but I think the TSA has to go, magic bullets be damned. The post-9/11 privatized security might have many of the same problems the TSA has. I would like to just go back to all the old rules, whether that the guys in the uniforms are working for the TSA or private firms. Maybe it’s naive to think we can ever do that, TSA or no. But the TSA is only going to be a problem. If you disagree, well, tell that to the future President Dick Cheney. (And yes, someday the Republicans will be in charge of the TSA again.)
Thompson also objects to the Israeli model of profiling because he thinks it isn’t scalable. I disagree. Basically all you need is to have security trained to spot behavioral indicators. You put up quick check-points at the entrances to the airports and parking lots where guards briefly chat with travelers. Anyone that seems suspicious based on purely behavioral indicators is flagged by security before they ever reach the baggage checkers – maybe before they even reach the airport itself. This is based not on random or arbitrary screening, but on profiling how people act. Not on their skin color, religion, etc. but on any nervous ticks or signs of stress beyond what is normal. It can be done. It’s done all the time anyways, just not in an organized, efficient, or official way.
P.P.S. I would like to modify my position to: “We’re all screwed.” Probably the most compelling argument against private security and against abolishing the TSA is that due to the post-9/11 American fear mindset, we will always be willing to let people trample all over our liberties and privacy in order to remain safe, whether it is a government agency or a private one. So we might as well grin and bear it, safe in the knowledge that our children, at least, will have no awareness of anything else. To them, severe pat downs and naked scanners will be just another normal inconvenience – probably a lot less intrusive than whatever other security measures are dreamed up in the next ten or twenty years.
cleek
and then what happened?
Joseph Nobles
The civil rights violations will be worse in a privatized security force, since airlines would be assuming all liabilities in case of a terrorist attack. No, this is an inherently governmental function for that reason alone.
Chyron HR
@cleek:
“We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term,” that’s what happened.
Mike Kay (Team America)
I have no idea why some people are whinning about the TSA.
Pat-downs? Big fucking deal.
Michael
@cleek:
Rainbows, puppies and fairies.
Remember, in the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you never change your socks, and little streams of alcohol come a’trickling down the rocks. The brake men have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind…
mistermix
Your lack of reading the comments is getting annoying.
Airports not Airlines picked security firms, which I mentioned in the comments to your last post.
And this is important because at, e.g., O’Hare or Logan, it’s a big fucking contract that will be offered to political cronies by the airport authority, who are machine appointees.
DougJ
As much as it pains me to say this, 9/11 changed everything. They would not have been able to keep the same security measures in place after 9/11.
Paris
So its an airline-sanctioned monopoly. Whatever. What is with the rapid fire posting on this subject? Doesn’t ED have a real job to attend to?
sven
I oppose privatizing airport security because the incentives are all wrong. Many people seem to assume that the security ‘industry’ will increase their profits only my improving efficiency. If we look at the example of private prisons we find that these gains are limited and firms quickly seek other ways to pad their bottom line.
In many states the private prison industry has become very active in public policy debates and always in defense of larger prison populations. This industry played a major role in writing Arizona SB1070 which would house detained aliens (wait for it) private prisons. Private prisons were also a major opponent of Prop. 19 in California which would have decriminalized marijuana use. These firms have every incentive to argue for more prisoners and no reason to argue for nuanced public policy.
Privatizing airport security presents a similar set of incentives. These firms would have every incentive to expand the ‘services’ they provide and very little reason to reform their practices. It is already difficult to advocate for rational security policy; adding the profit motive only makes the situation much worse.
Michael
I’ll add that the “free hand of the market” ignored all the risk management recommendations that cockpit doors remain locked and inviolable, and that controls not be handed to hijackers.
Guess that might have cost a few extra bucks.
Corner Stone
Allah protect me.
Lolis
So if your main issue is with the TSA’s regulations, why not just focus on fixing that? It doesn’t matter who is paying the worker when they would all have to follow the same rules.
Davebo
So Delta will hire firm A, Southwest will hire firm B, etc.
What about foreign carriers? Yet another firm for KLM?
Sounds like we’ll have twice as many security firm employees as passengers in the terminal.
But hey, that’s the efficiency of magical free markets at work.
David Fud
ED, I value what you have to say, but it seems to me that this would have been better as a comment than a post. The arguments about the best way to deal with the TSA (since we know the government isn’t going to change a damn thing) are all simply wanking. Getting so upset as to post and counter-post this way is just annoying – and you aren’t the only one doing it.
I’m sure JC will tell me to go to hell, but this series of posts is not why I have tuned so intently in to BJ in the past.
ricky
Who the heck is screening these exchanges? How much longer can we be forced to endure this intellectual pat down. Touching junk jive is getting tedious.
fasteddie9318
@cleek:
Ayn and John and Alan and Eric and Clarence and Randy all lived happily ever after.
John Cole
The airlines could not possibly pick their own security. Have you not noticed how all the airports are set up? There is one central sight where everyone is screened, and you can’t pass unless you have been screened. The logistics are radically different from pre 9/11.
Ross Hershberger
I just saw some home movies from 1976 at Thanksgiving. One showed a family friend going through Customs at the airport to go to England. It was pretty funny. Two bored dudes at a folding table, with ’70s mustaches and tight short-sleeved uniform shirts. One guy reading the paper. One opens the woman’s purse, shuffles through it for 10 seconds, hands it back and waves her through. That’s what airport security used to be, and I’d be fine outsourcing that.
But not now.
Culture of Truth
Well then it seems the real question is “not who does it” but “what are they required to do”
Airlines have a some, small incentive to prevent a terror attack on their place, but it could become a very big incentive if they were held liable for deaths and destruction ocurring on their watch. Or they might have on choice in the matter if a certain level of screening were required by law.
Whatever accepted standards we agree are sufficient / necessary, they can’t be open to bidding.
Mike Kay (Team America)
If only Frank Drebin were alive
Brachiator
So, what, then, is the point of privatizing the TSA?
It’s strange, but typical, that the gummint vs privatization argument by conservatives and reformed libertarians, quickly becomes detached from anything other than philosophical considerations. Civil liberty questions? Competence? Security? Protection? Who cares?
Sly
@Mike Kay (Team America): Filthy statist. Don’t you know that being patted-down in an airport is just one more step on the slippery slope to a Fascist Big Brother Police State?
They made some woman drink her own breast milk! Sure, they changed that policy once public outrage reached sufficient levels, but in no way does that demonstrate accountability to the public. BECAUSE SHUT UP.
ChrisZ
I really don’t think the problem is who runs it, it’s whether it’s run well. The government runs lots of things well. Private firms run lots of things well. Inversely, the government and private firms often run things badly. I don’t really care which one does airport security, just make someone do it well.
I don’t think throwing the job to one party or the other magically makes them do it well. For that, you have to be doing it for the right reasons, have laws loose enough that the agency can make decisions for itself, and have it run by competent people who care.
Cycloptichorn
Whether in practice private firms would be any less intrusive than the TSA in a post-9/11 world is another question: they might not be.
Snort. Why would they be? Since when do employees of private corporations display any sort of respect for civil rights – at all?
I think that these free-market fantasies that some of you youths rely upon are a complete joke. The solution to this problem is not to privatize and massively fracture our security forces, letting the profit motive become the most powerful force behind decisions regarding safety and security.
Loneoak
ED, presumably the government would require all airlines/airport (however its set up) to provide security as a cost of a license to operate. How is that not state-sanctioned?
I just don’t get it, and I’m not being snarky. I simply do not understand how you can possibly believe that a private corporation would give the end-user (i.e. the flying public) an even remotely better experience with more accountability. The only way you can claim that is with hand-waving. I simply cannot imagine that the people with the resources and insider-connections doing the contracting will a) be accountable to anyone at all, b) treat me well when I must absolutely use them to get where I need to go to make a living (think of how the airlines treat us now), c) pay their employees any better or hire more qualified employees (are they going to get an MA in junk-touching?), etc. etc.
Seriously, at what point in the process does accountability come in? If I get harassed at my local airport how do I get that accountability? Call a customer service line? What choice do I have but to use that airport next time because I fucking live there? Do I call up the chief manager of the airport and who the hell is that? The whole idea is frankly preposterous.
Alwhite
@David Fud:
ED, I do not value your opinion as you have never demonstrated any value in your opinion.
JC can tell me to go to hell also but I am going back to never reading an ED post. I’m sorry I ever gave in after my original decision to ignore him.
Mike Kay (Team America)
If I were a republican/wingnut/libtard, right ’bout now, I’d be smearing ED for his “pre 9/11 mindset”.
dude, doncha know, “9/11 changed everything”.
J.W. Hamner
Yes, we know how well private security works in this situation… when there were an average of 18 hijackings per year from from 1988-97.
DecidedFenceSitter
@John Cole: Hey John, you are going to need to make a post if you want him to read/respond to you.
Otherwise, at some point we’d hear something back from the comments of previous posts.
LGRooney
Fuck it! I’m driving (or going through current security just once, on my way out of this looney bin).
Citizen Alan
@David Fud:
Why? Particularly after a series of posts that strongly suggest that he’s a god-damned moron.
mantis
If the government isn’t awarding the contract, then there is no way – no way in a million bloody years – that it can be called a state-sanctioned monopoly.
Except it would be, and you know it.
The government would have to have some sort of mechanism to approve potential security firms (or create enforceable guidelines for airports/airlines to follow when contracting), and as such the list of approved firms would be seen as a state sanction. Chances are very good that only a small number of American security contractors would have the manpower and expertise to qualify, and that number would likely become smaller as those firms consolidate contracts. It would be quite similar to the arguments for Halliburton and Blackwater: “No other company can handle the job.” Of course, libertarians who had no problem with the no-bid contracts awarded to those corporations will be livid about airport security firms being “chosen” by the federal government and its Kenyan overlord.
And that’s just from those who pay attention to the details. There will be plenty of libertarians and teatards screaming about “state-sanctioned monopolies” without even caring about how firms would be awarded contracts, and some of them will be sitting members of Congress.
Again – private security firms handled airports prior to 9/11. All this hullabaloo over ‘libertarian fantasies’ and ‘privatization schemes’ is nonsense. We have decades of actual history to point to. This is not an abstract Hayekian idea. It is a matter of historical record.
You do realize the TSA was created in response to some rather big failures on the part of those private security firms, right? Are you sure you want to keep pointing to the historical record in support of your position advocating private security at airports?
Ol'Froth
While prior to 9/11 each airport contracted with its own private security company, the screening standards the companies followed were set by the FAA. The FAA regulations at the time allowed small knives and box cutters (the weapons used by the hijackers) aboard aircraft so long as the blade was less than 3 inches long.
Davebo
John
My point exactly and it’s already been explained to ED repeatedly.
eemom
oh good heavens…..is this another one of those multi-thread intrablogwars? What kind of example are you people setting here? Will no one think of the children?
fasteddie9318
@Culture of Truth:
I can’t believe I’m reading this. You want to either expose these private companies to potentially billions in frivolous lawsuits just because a few peasants die in a terrorist attack, or to cripple them with heavy-handed government regulation? Hasn’t our in-house critic taught you anything?
chopper
well, the airports, not the airlines. and as to the latter, as Martin pointed out numerous times in the other thread, this is already true.
airports are in charge of picking who does their security, private contractors or the TSA. and every one picks the TSA.
you’re arguing for a system that’s already in place, dummy.
suzanne
@sven:
Bingo. And in 3 posts, E.D. has yet to articulate a reasonable (as in something that could actually ever happen) way to get around this issue.
Midnight Marauder
This is what happens when you bring on a Front Pager who doesn’t have the ability, time, or care to read the comments of the blog he writes for. Also, on the subject of this:
Does this clown still not know what an actual monopoly is in the real world? Are you fucking serious?!
elm
@John Cole:
Please lets not get into actual details, empiricism, or being well-informed about the topic at hand. This is about freedom, efficiency, innovation, transparency, accountability, and other good stuff that we assume (against evidence) the free market will deliver.
norbizness
Any way to read the page without the garbage-time, contrarian, repetitive, oblivious posts from this particular author?
Ross Hershberger
@Cycloptichorn:
Exactly. Letting the free market provide airline safety makes no more sense than free market solutions to prescription drug certification or vehicle standards.
Any way you configure it, business’ motivations are all in the opposite direction from the public’s well being.
Mike Kay (Team America)
Attica! Attica! Attica!
Loneoak
@fasteddie9318:
rb
like prisons, our legal system cannot be privatized
Oh my. This is too precious.
iLarynx
The best example is the private airport security which existed for decades prior to 9/11.
HA!
Again, I say, HA!
Although cleek’s response @#1 was best, I’ll repeat my comment from a previous post:
It was private companies that failed on 9/11. First, the airlines themselves failed in that after being warned of possible hijackings, they did virtually nothing to prevent the hijackings that morning. They made the logical calculation that it would be in their financial interest to do as little as possible to disrupt the flow of paying passengers that day. This is what private companies do because their prime objective is to maximize profits, not protect public safety. Maximizing profits is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t compromise public safety. Obviously, in this case, it did compromise safety.
Secondly, private “security” firms failed at screening for these folks boarding the planes…
On an occasion prior to 9/11, I was going to pick up my wife and daughter at Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport and instead of putting my keys in the bowl to go through the scanner, I just put them on top of my Palm Pilot. Unfortunately, they fell off and got wedged in the rollers just before exiting the scanner box. I voiced an apology to the security person as I reached way into the box to retrieve my keys, only to discover that he wasn’t paying any attention to me, or the scanner. It was a slow period with no one else in line and he was facing opposite of me, opposite of the scanner and display, and was sitting with his feet propped up on another chair. I thought “that’s pretty lax security” but didn’t think anything of it since it was, literally, September 10th, 2001.
Again, the guy was paid by a private firm whose top priority was to maximize profits, not to protect public safety. Obviously, in this case, it did compromise safety.
Obviously, in any case where a for-profit company is involved with “security,” security will take a back seat to profits. Every. Single. Time.
chopper
as to this, how exactly does the government write and enforce airport security regulations without a ‘TSA-like organization’? who else is going to do it, the social security office?
Catsy
@mistermix:
Thank you, I was going to call this out as well.
This post and his last, as a pair, are a perfect example of why EDK is so infuriating as a front-pager here. The pattern is something like this:
1. EDK posts some glibertarian horseshit that is full of holes, inapt analogies, internal contradictions, and bad arguments.
2. Commenters tear said horseshit to shreds, pointing out the numerous fallacies and errors of fact.
3. Another front-pager posts a rebuttal.
4. EDK posts a petulant rebuttal to the rebuttal that is full of most of the same flaws, reiterates the same arguments with the words changed slightly, and generally demonstrates that he hasn’t bothered to really pay attention to the comments on his own posts or adjust to new information.
Seriously. This has gotten to the point of parody. I’m all for a variety of interesting viewpoints on the front page of BJ, but this isn’t an issue of viewpoint–it’s an issue of quality of work. EDK is a D-list blogger and there’s obviously a reason for that.
me
Haven’t you read “The Moon is Harsh Mistress”? And you call yourself a libertarian…
Morbo
I hereby award this debate to ED. He used the most words, so he wins. If you people had only read through all of John Galt’s speech you would know this is how to convince people.
jimBOB
I must say this is the first time I’ve seen anyone explicitly advocating going back to the pre-9/11 security paradigm. I’m not saying it’s necessarily wrong, just marveling that someone would actually come out and say it.
Also, if ED were an elected Dem official saying this, he’d be the new star of Fox News, where they’d put him on 24-7 as the exemplar of liberal security fecklessness.
PeakVT
My opinion is that private businesses just suck at providing public goods unless they are highly constrained in time and scope. Paving road X from A to B is highly constrained. Providing security for a nation’s air travel system isn’t.
Violet
@John Cole:
THIS. And even pre-9/11, you could go through security and go to any gate you wanted. So if you’re on Delta, but go through Southwest’s security, now you can’t fly on Delta? How does that work? Where’s the security apparatus? Right as you go down the jetway? What if Delta and Southwest have flights next to each other? Would two adjacent gates have individual complete security setups? What a clusterfuck that would be.
It might be a nice idea in theory, but it’s not practical.
Michael
@Culture of Truth:
The suits would be deemed frivolous by the tort reformers (“who could have known that a maniac would attack a plane?”), assets would be shifted out to a new corporate shell (leaving the empty one with the liability), and the shareholders’ and directors would escape any personal liability due to misuse of the corporate form – free to go on siphoning stock increases in the new enterprise.
American Bidness is #1, bitchez! Suck it!
Midnight Marauder
@John Cole:
Serious question. What in the world would leave you to believe that he actually noticed something like this? It certainly isn’t because his initial post on the subject was well-researched and thought out, as it contained numerous statements involving policies that are currently available and in effect today. It certainly couldn’t be this rebuttal, in which E.D. once again demonstrates his obtuseness and inability to respond to the chief elements of a counter-argument with empirically documented examples that happened in the real world.
Why do you keep affording this guy more credibility than his work on your front page demonstrates he deserves?
slag
I’m curious as to ED Kain’s understanding about why the TSA was invented.
I mean, I’m no expert in this field by any stretch, but if I were going to go about recommending the abolition of an agency, I would probably know something about why that agency was created in the first place. Was it all roses and candy before the big bad mean ol’ government got their big bad mean ol’ hands on our blessed airport security? Tell us, ED. You seem to know so much about this issue. Explain it to us in real historical terms. Not airy-fairy free market idealism.
You make a strong claim here. You may consider backing it up with something akin to actual evidence.
And in general: Stop forming your arguments as if we all agree with your premises! Just stop it. Put some thought into what you’re arguing for. Assume that people are going to disagree and pre-empt their disagreement with a methodical, point-by-point argument. Seriously. I don’t know why this is so damn hard. Didn’t they teach you these things in school?
Otherwise, stop pretending you know everything about issues you seem to know absolutely nothing about. Earn some goddamned credibility, for chrissakes!
fasteddie9318
Three men went off on a sailboat together–a physicist, a chemist, and
an economista libertarian. Unfortunately they ran into a storm and the boat was wrecked on an uninhabited island. The only food they were able to rescue from the wreckage was a case of baked beans. As they got hungry, they began to wrestle with the problem of how to open the bean cans. The physicist said “I’ll climb a tree and throw a can onto a rock and it’ll split open.” The others didn’t much like this idea because they thought the beans would just splatter everywhere. The chemist said “We can soak the cans in salt water and they’ll rust through.” The others didn’t much like this idea because it would take too long. Then theeconomistlibertarian said “Hey–no problem, we’ll just assumea can openeran electronic device that can automatically detect whether the contents of the can have gone rancid, then gently open the can–maybe even rationing the beans out for us, based on a calculation of the average length of time before a rescue party can reasonably be expected to find us.”Catsy
@rb:
Holy crap, I missed that gem on my first pass through EDK’s bullshit.
That is some weapons-grade ignorance there.
John W.
Even if it were possible to put the genie back in the bottle (like most libertarian arguments, this is wholly hypothetical with no actual chance of success in the real world) does anyone in their right mind think that the same low key appraoch could be taken in this day and age?
No, this would be a giant business. This would not be local businesses doing business but rather a giant corporation (or two if we are lucky) monopolizing the business and then charging exorbitant prices once they have sufficient market share.
Meanwhile, without actually being the ones enforcing the laws (or regulations) Congress would go buck wild writing new laws, since there would be no backlash on them since they wouldn’t be enforcing the laws.
We’d then have private companies charging us more to enforce the same laws. But hey, since they theoretically could be fired ED would feel better about himself. Good luck with that.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
I am pretty sure if we gave an eighth grade class an assignment to write an essay on airport security, we could get better material than this idiotic post.
Complete bullshit. It’s so full of shit that it’s not even worth the time to refute its manifold individual elements of bullshit.
This post is an embarrassment to the blog. Which is saying something, because I wouldn’t have thought this blog could be embarrassed.
Mike E
@DougJ: That’s right, and we completely lost this security war when somebody seriously thot the solution to cockpit security was issuing handguns to the flight crew.
The Free Market means never having to say you’re sorry, or, competent. Howz yer portfolio?
FlipYrWhig
@Catsy:
And if I wanted that, I’d go read Matt Yglesias.
Citizen Alan
@Michael:
In other words, Libertardian philosophy would protect corporations from being held accountable for the mistakes in handling the airport security that they were only in charge of as a result of Libertardian philosophy. Funny how that works out.
Ross Hershberger
@PeakVT:
And they still manage to cheap out and screw us on that. I have a suspension repair bill from 11/24 to prove it.
Cat
Seriously, OP knows little about the subject of airport security and its obvious didn’t even bother to perform a cursory look into the ‘past’.
Maybe airlines had a say in the security pre 9/11, but it was only indirectly. The airlines pay ‘fees’ to an airport and the airport then hires the people who handled the screening.
Airlines would never agree to contracting directly for their own security screeners as each airline has a different presence at every airport its in.
It would be like trying to split the lunch check between 20 people where each and every person is trying to pay the least amount possible.
john b
@Catsy:
hear hear
Michael
Which is, of course, why so very many consumer finance contracts now provide for mandatory binding arbitration in places far, far away, all conducted by captive private arbitrators.
ricky
I haz peak TSA, pleaz!
chopper
@iLarynx:
this. private airport security failed on 9/11 not because they followed FAA rules allowing boxcutters on airplanes. private airport security failed on 9/11 because they couldn’t be bothered to check people vs the watchlist the gummint gave them. because that would have been too fuckin’ hard.
Culture of Truth
I’m open to the idea of private air security, in theory, anyway, but don’t kid yourself — the reason security was less intrusive before 9/11 was not because it was privatized, it’s because it was before 9/11.
Michael
@Citizen Alan:
I simply view libertarianism as a political movement based on the theories and emotional sense of entitlement of a particularly spoiled 14 year old girl.
The only real difference is that the 14 year old whines less and doesn’t feel as entitled.
taylormattd
@Lolis: Because, Lolis, “libertarians” don’t actually give two shits about cumbersome or invasive regulations. The important part is making sure private industry runs everything.
chopper
@Violet:
what if you have a two-leg flight on two different airlines?
Cat
@Michael:
Or they’d do what they did this last time. Goto congress and get a handout and have tax payers cover almost all of their costs.
Didn’t they also get Indemnity from claims from congress too?
cleek
@norbizness:
my pie filter now works on the front page.
Howlin Wolfe
@Mike Kay (Team America): If only Frank Drebin were alive
The Swamp Fox would have known what to do, too!
slag
@Michael:
On behalf of 14 year-old girls everywhere…Go fuck yourself.
Joshua Norton
Exactly how secure would you feel knowing that coverage was being provided by the lowest bidder? All they see are dollar signs and how cheap they can go – which is what led to the original 9/11.
You’re not going to get top people when they’re being paid minimun wage because the security company is skimming the biggest percentage of the money off the top for themselves. You’re going to get warm bodies like “Gramps” who is currently signing people in after-hours in some downtown highrise and needs to augment his social security.
Try again.
cleek
@Cat:
easy way to fix that: privatize the airports. airlines own their own airports and are responsible for everything that they do: baggage handling, parking, security, food, runway maintenance, etc..
superking
It is odd to me that someone would think a private security force would have more oversight than a public one. The TSA is, by virtue of being an arm of the government, subject to constitutional and statutory limitations on their searches. Private security firms are not necessarily limited by the Fourth Amendment. They may be, under some circumstances, if they contracted with the government, but they wouldn’t be if, as ED suggests, they are contracting with the airlines. In that case, there would be literally no guarantee of privacy or any other limitation on what they could do to you. So, I don’t know how this creates a situation where is there actually greater oversight and protection of individual liberty. I would love an explanation of how that is supposed to work.
But let’s be clear and recognize that they wouldn’t simply be contracting with individual airlines, but with individual airports. Anyway . . .
licensed to kill time
Wow, I just got here. Imagine my surprise to see a Lucha Libre free-for-all on the front page with E.D. right in the middle of it.
Comrade Dread
iThere are problems with this.
Let’s start with the political ones. Obama ends the TSA. Republicans and the Village spend the next two years screaming about how he’s weak on terror. Doesn’t matter that they’ve spent the last few weeks screaming, “Don’t tread on me” at the security line. They’d switch on a dime and wouldn’t be held accountable.
Next, we’d be dumping thousands of folks onto the unemployment line. Can’t imagine that would make Obama all that popular.
The implementation phase would be a nightmare. The entire private airport security market would need to be repopulated with suppliers, and you’d have to have some regulatory body in place to ensure they meet minimum standards. Which means creating a regulatory or congressional committee to define those standards and changing the TSA’s mandate to a regulatory body. (Expect screams of soshalism here. Yet another political problem.)
Next, we’d be dealing with corruption at the private level, with security firms wining and dining airline execs, and private security lobbyists doing their best to influence the regulations being drafted to favor their companies. Chances are, this latter event would results in a oligopoly at the least, with larger, more powerful companies putting expensive requirements into regulation to drive their smaller competitors out of the business.
Eventually, we’d have to worry about TSA corruption, with the same lobbyists trying their best to cozy up to the regulators, or the Republican congress not giving the TSA a sufficient budget, and the TSA, as a result, letting the security companies self-inspect and self-regulate. Etc.
rb
@ricky: I nominate “peak TSA” for new tag status.
ET
Pre 9-11 security was a joke.
Even with enhanced procedures I have ZERO confidence that a private systems could perform as good as or better than TSA so if you think you are going to get something better forget it.
And frankly who is to say that you get better quality with contractors for whatever jobs you hire them for. What you get is a constant churn. Hire, train, work, leave. Hire, train, work, leave. rinse and repeat. I can’t say for sure, but weren’t the airlines thankful to get out of this this business?
Business is always looking to maximize profits. If they are public they are looking to make sure investors are happy. What this means is not paying a good salary for people but the lowest salary possible for people to apply and little if any benefits. Now in this area that is likely to be more than barely above minimum wage and considering they would want higher quality personnel hopefully they would offer benefits. This job would not be considered a job for highly skilled and motivated people that would be paid a commensurate salary. This would be a glorified rent-a-cop with all the cons that go with it.
Do I think TSA is great? No. Do I think some of their policies are good? No. Do I have a easy looks good on paper solution? No. Do I have any solution? No. But I don’t think we would necessarily get better just because this service would be performed by outside contractors. The private sector can be just as bad as the government at providing services. If you believe otherwise you haven’t been paying attention.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
@DougJ:
Airport security changed when people started hijacking airplanes. That’s when the primary criteria changed from “Are you dangerously drunk? Do you have a valid ticket?” to “Are you carrying a gun?” That’s when modern-day security started to replace the old polite model. 911 was just a motivation to tighten and ramp up existing security models, mostly as a theatric way to dissuade terrorists from bothering to try another 911, not as a way that would actually prevent another 911 via its own merits. The theatrics are also aimed at convincing an ill-informed public that the measures are keeping them safe, so that they will continue to fly.
This was probably the event that really changed everything, not 911:
“Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 was a Pacific Air Lines Fairchild F-27A airliner that crashed at 6:49 a.m. on May 7, 1964 near San Ramon, California, USA. The crash was likely the first instance in the United States of an airliner’s pilots being shot by a passenger as part of a mass murder/suicide; Francisco Paula Gonzales, 27, shot both the pilot and co-pilot before turning the gun on himself, causing the plane to crash and killing all 44 aboard.”
–wiki
Cat
@cleek:
Man I hope you are being sarcastic…
LikeableInMyOwnWay
repost …
Airport security changed when people started hijacking airplanes. That’s when the primary criteria changed from “Are you dangerously drunk? Do you have a valid ticket?” to “Are you carrying a gun?” That’s when modern-day security started to replace the old polite model. 911 was just a motivation to tighten and ramp up existing security models, mostly as a theatric way to dissuade terrorists from bothering to try another 911, not as a way that would actually prevent another 911 via their own merits. The theatrics are also aimed at convincing an ill-informed public that the measures are keeping them safe, so that they will continue to fly.
This was probably the event that really changed everything, not 911:
“Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 was a Pacific Air Lines Fairchild F-27A airliner that crashed at 6:49 a.m. on May 7, 1964 near San Ramon, California, USA. The crash was likely the first instance in the United States of an airliner’s pilots being shot by a passenger as part of a mass murder/suicide; Francisco Paula Gonzales, 27, shot both the pilot and co-pilot before turning the gun on himself, causing the plane to crash and killing all 44 aboard.”
—wiki
Ol'Froth
@J.W. Hamner:
None of those hijackings occured in the US or Canada. Nearly all were in SE Asia, Africa or the USSR.
cleek
@Cat:
well, i suppose it can be hard to tell libertarianism from sarcasm. but, yes.
slag
@superking:
This may be. But if you didn’t like the idea of an airport violating your constitutional rights, you could just go down the street to the nearest competing airport who would love to have your business. Or you could just drive yourself on your nearest privately-owned highway system to your destination. Easy peasy.
Ol'Froth
private airport security failed on 9/11 because they couldn’t be bothered to check people vs the watchlist the gummint gave them.
Those lists were given to the airlines, who were responsible for flagging passengers and alerting law enforcement, the private firms manning the checkpoints had nothing to do with them.
fasteddie9318
@slag:
Or, heck, hop on your nearest high-speed rail network, which the market will be providing for us any minute now.
James Hanley
For all those bashing pre 9/11 security as responsible for 9/11, you might want to remember that all the terrorists got on board with was box cutters. A policy of “sit quiet and wait to be rescued” was what really allowed 9/11 to happen, because there’s no other way three guys with box cutters can control 30 or more people.
The other failure, as someone noted above, was the failure to have secure cockpit doors (and maybe a failure to arm pilots with machetes).
Just ventured over here following the trackback from League of Ordinary Gentlemen. I’ll go back there now and leave you all alone.
Jane2
@Midnight Marauder:
I quit reading every time he calls a contract a “state-sanctioned monopoly”. That’s nonsense…it’s a CONTRACT. Usually TENDERED and AWARDED and for a SPECIFIED TIME PERIOD. Procurement….ED, put down Hayek and read up on it.
John W.
@Jane2:
This sort of is besides the point. Contracts and monopolies are not mutually exclusive. You can have one, have the other, have both, or have neither.
Andrew
How do free market principles work in Airport Security?
The only feedback you get if your security is lax is that people die. Otherwise, the only metrics you can evaluate on are the cost of providing the security and the speed of the processing. Neither metric has a relationship to the security provided. Without a good feedback mechanism, free market principles (lower costs, increase productivity) could just end up weakening security – as happened progressive prior to 9/11.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to be the one to volunteer to die in order to prove free market Airport Security system works.
At least with government oversight, there’s ongoing accountability and the profit motive is not at odds with the security motive. The public can focus entirely on the security motive.
There’s also the effective air-travel monopoly airports have, making them fairly immune to public pressure, and the fact that they have outsize bargaining power with security contractors that aren’t the government…
mantis
Thompson also objects to the Israeli model of profiling because he thinks it isn’t scalable. I disagree. Basically all you need is to have security trained to spot behavioral indicators. You put up quick check-points at the entrances to the airports and parking lots where guards briefly chat with travelers. Anyone that seems suspicious based on purely behavioral indicators is flagged by security before they ever reach the baggage checkers – maybe before they even reach the airport itself. This is based not on random or arbitrary screening, but on profiling how people act. Not on their skin color, religion, etc. but on any nervous ticks or signs of stress beyond what is normal. It can be done. It’s done all the time anyways, just not in an organized, efficient, or official way.
You don’t actually address the scalability issue here. How do you propose we pay for all of these highly-trained behavioral screeners (it takes a lot more to do this job than press a button or grab a crotch; you actually need skills, intelligence, and a lot of training), which under your proposal would not only intercept passengers for interviews, but also people picking up and dropping off passengers? How do we pay for all of these people, who would constitute an extra layer of security on top of (at the very least) the metal detectors we had before the TSA? As has been repeatedly pointed out, including by Thompson, Israel has one major airport, that sees about 11 million passengers pass through in a year (10.9 million in 2009). That’s half the traffic of Phoenix or McCarran, a third of the traffic at O’Hare or Dallas/Ft. Worth, and merely one fifth of the traffic that goes through the three New York airports.
Added to the size issue is another problem of comparability between Israel and the US. Most air travelers at Israeli airports are traveling internationally. Most air travelers at US airports are traveling domestically. At Israeli airports, Israeli nationals and Jews are basically able to pass through screening much more easily than others, enabling the security forces to narrow the portion of travelers they need to screen. Could this work in the US? I doubt we would give US citizen travelers a pass in light of recent terrorist attempts by citizens, and we couldn’t only focus on international travel for the same reason. So we would have to screen a far greater portion of travelers than Israel does, compounding our massive scale issues for such implementation.
Just spitballing here, but I think implementing an Israeli security system in our airports would increase the costs of security at least tenfold. Would private “efficiency” balance the scales, or do you just want to spend a whole lot more money?
slag
@fasteddie9318:
This is true. First come the Late Night Cheeseburger Doritos. Next comes the high-speed rail.
Priorities.
ino shinola
One reason ED is infuriating is that he still holds to the view that a private entity is inherently better at most functions than a public one. There may have been a time when this was true, but it’s not something that can just be taken for granted anymore. See any cable system, telephone company, garbage collector….., American health care system. I forgot about private prisons and charter schools. For a lot of functions, free market magic is just that, a fairy tale. In theory, a private entity will be forced to provide service that is innovative and of high quality. But in areas where opportunities for innovation are limited (I think security theater is one of those areas), a company that is competent and provides decent shareholder return will be bought by a larger company (in the name of efficiency and synergies that never materialize) which will look for ways to increase shareholder return without alienating customers too much (and as their choices dwindle they’ll just have to take what they can get). Competition disappears. Meanwhile, we need to adequately compensate the geniuses who keep the whole thing going. The resulting downward spiral is evident everywhere we look.
When it comes to the choice of a huge public entity and huge private entity, I can personally think of few, correction, I can think of no cases where the private entity wins.
I have cheap electricity because Nebraska’s power system is 100% publicly owned. I have lousy phone service (no DSL) because I have Qwest. If I lived a mile away where the local Co-Operative phone company has service I’d have fiber to my house.
I’d like to see him answer DougJ’s challenge: real world examples of a mature, innovation-limited economic sector where privatization consistently improved results. Till then, he’s just blowing through the wrong set of cheeks.
JR
I’m still at a loss to see how my liberty is more threatened by the TSA checking me for hernias than Allied Barton.
Legalize
This argument for privatization is so wrong-headed for so many reasons. Airports have long since crossed into the quasi-public sphere. They are like court-houses in that regard. The wrongs that security is meant to prevent at airports are of an undeniably criminal nature. The crimes that security seeks to prevent are undeniably interstate in nature. Indeed they are international in nature. They take inherently law-enforcement-centric tactics to prevent, i.e. investigation, surveillance, infiltration, etc.
A crime perpetrated in Boston might actually originate in Newark. This is what federal law enforcement are supposedly good at cracking – complex schemes perpetrated by criminal networks that are increasingly broad. This requires communication and coordination with many agents working many jurisdictions. How can private security at one airport coordinate and communicate with private security at another airport if they are different companies? Hell, how can they do it if they are the SAME company? This is inherently a federal law enforcement issue.
El Tiburon
Hereby nominated for
ever written by ED, and that is saying a lot.
Let’s take another stab at this proposition, shall we?
However, I still think the worst abuses in Iraq we’ve seen have occurred under the private contractors of Blackwater, etc., not under the government-run military regime in the pre 9-11…
So much time and energy wasted here. Can we please have a Sarah Palin post?
Alex S.
Let’s make a centrist compromise: Let each airline hire multiple private security firms and let them compete for passengers.
Or, even more centrist: Let’s create mulitple government agencies for the same purpose and let them compete for airports.
Catsy
@El Tiburon:
I suppose we couldn’t do much worse; EDK’s posts already border on word salad, and Palin would at least be entertaining to mock.
…oh wait, you meant a post about Sarah Palin.
Judas Escargot
@sven:
I oppose privatizing airport security because the incentives are all wrong. Many people seem to assume that the security ‘industry’ will increase their profits only by improving efficiency. If we look at the example of private prisons we find that these gains are limited and firms quickly seek other ways to pad their bottom line.
This, exactly.
Arguments for ‘free market’ solutions are essentially optimization arguments (in the mathematical sense)– the hidden assumption is that the posited ‘free market’ will always come to more optimal solutions than the public sector in every single case. E.D. has been repeating this common canard over, and over, and over again (albeit in a vague, verbal manner).
Problem is, any non-trivial, non-linear system (like, say, any market economy) will have any number of possible optimization metrics. And it’s disingenuous to assume that the ‘efficiency’ metric will always be the optimization metric chosen.
Example: Private sector agents, in general, want to maximize their profits and minimize their costs (think of that as the main optimization function that drives their behavior). They will first optimize their output (i.e. figure out how to meet the requirements of their contract with the minimum effort/cost needed to do so). Once the organization succeeds at this, there’s nowhere else to go for gains, so they’ll then try to optimize their inputs (i.e. do whatever it takes to drive their labor, overhead and resource costs downwards). This is basically what you’ve pointed out.
This works great if you don’t mind the resultant end state: Barely-trained security employees being paid $9/hr. In many cases, this isn’t a problem (if every greeter at Walmart held a PhD and made $60/hr, this would be an undesirable outcome in most cases). So we leave most activities to market mechanisms.
However, some domains have other optimization concerns: In this example, what you really want to optimize for is the highest probability of success in finding bombs or other security threats. Does a front-line staff making $9/hr with little training meet this general requirement? Probably not.
I guess my point is this: Whenever someone makes one of these ‘private always better!’ arguments, they’re glossing over a whole host of implicit assumptions. Assumptions which don’t necessarily hold true in the particular domain being discussed.
p.a.
Well we now have a pretty good timeframe, approaching 10 years, so a comparison of terrorist-caused deaths per mile flown pre-and-post 9/11 on flights originating in America should be available. I know this data won’t answer philosophical arguments over decreasing freedom and the fear-authoritarianism-liberty quotient of the American flying public, but it will be hard data. I don’t know how old E.D. is, so I wonder if he remembers the hijacking ‘fad’ of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and the wondrous deterrent effect of the airlines’
airport security organizations back then.
And Another Thing...
@Catsy: Kain’s aspiring to a job where he get’s paid by the word.
It’s not possible to take him seriously until he demonstrates some ability to learn, for example, learning the meaning of the word “monopoly” and then using it correctly in a sentence.
Or is “monopoly” some libertarian fetish word?
DPirate
Excellent post (OP).
@p.a.: This fad was in the 60s and 70s? So, it didn’t exist in the 80s and 90s. Is that then an indication of how great airport security was?
Amanda in the South Bay
Well, as our man Bruce Schneier is fond of pointing out, only two things have emerged post 9/11 that have positively impacted security-passengers now know to fight back, and cockpit doors have been reinforced. I don’t really see what that has to do with security screening per se, other than simply mandating that box cutters are contraband that can’t be carried on board.
p.a.
@DPirate: or it became less newsworthy? but a 2-decade time frame for successful reaction is hardly cause for a bunch of ‘attaboys’.
eyelessgame
After all, when I’m shopping online for the cheapest tickets to take my family on a vacation, I always stop and ask myself “But does this airline go with the lowest bidder for security, or do they spend enough to make certain that their product is safe?” That information is always right there, easily accessible, on the third-party website that’s finding me the cheapest ticket. I can then freely choose between the cheaper airline that provides minimum-required security, and the slightly more expensive, but safer, airline that provides greater security. I’ll of course make the rational choice to pay more for a safer ticket, like everyone else does, so that the market will force all the airlines to pay for good security.
Just like every other product that I buy – I always carefully investigate the packager and supplier for every can of beans before purchasing, because I like every citizen in this well-functioning market, I know very well that I need to be part of the driving market force to pay higher costs for beans to ensure they don’t contain E. coli. I’d be irresponsible not to make this extra effort, and market forces never push in the direction of irresponsibility. Not ever.
That’s why private industry works perfectly for ensuring product safety, and why the government doesn’t need to be involved. You’ve convinced me, totally.
Lysana
And that Israeli-style profiling also fails to account for people who get nervous around uniforms because of PTSD. Way to traumatize people all over again.
Gods, ED. I’ve tried to at least respect you, but you keep making it hard for me to do so.
Arclite
@ John, ED, MrMix, & Doug. Enjoying this robust argument. Thanks!
Frank
The private security firm that had the contract for Philadelphia International Airport (one of the major American-based security vendors) had a reputation as a good place for convicted felons to get screener jobs. I can’t find a link, but I lived in that area when the facts came out and followed the story in the local press.
They were also uniformly rude, lazy, and incompetent.
Whatever qualms I have about TSA, I can attest that flying out of Philly was much more pleasant once they came on the scene.
There are some functions that are inherently functions of the state; the fiction that private industry is always better has, among its other effects, given us Enron, the derivatives scam, and lead in our children’s toys.
Rightwingnuttery has become a faith-based rationale for allowing the plutocracy to rape the polity.
Zach
Why is this in the past tense? The TSA is still not law enforcement. With an increasing incidence of the TSA uncovering non-terrorist-related-but-still-illegal items (drugs, large sums of cash, weapons), there have been an increasing number of questions about the relationship between the TSA and law enforcement; particularly, can information obtained or derived from a TSA scan be used as evidence?
Belvoir
@Lysana: I know, that’s what we need, right? Multiple chats with behavioral profilers before the gate. Multiple people asking us where we are coming from, where we are going to, how we feel about our mothers, our dog’s name, and then asking us again later to be sure our story is straight. That sounds incredibly efficient, doesn’t it?
You mentioned PTSD, I have anxiety, flying is also stressful enough. Let’s have Kafkaesque psych exams too. Look nervous? Break out the Xanax, and expect the Extra Special interviewing. Christ.
Ailuridae
@mistermix:
It is a feature and not a bug for your fellow front pager, sadly. I will never understand why it is OK for Kain to always be wrong about the facts. His analysis on this issue is nothing more than libertarian hand-waving that ignores the actual realities on nearly every issue. He’s McCardle with a penis.
Most airport authorities aren’t just quasi government entities they are actual real government entities. Those entities may use a private firm to run day to day operations or may use civil employees. As such airport security run at the local level would indeed be the exact same type of “state-sanctioned monopoly” that Kain decried in the trash hauling business and many here rightly pointed out wasn’t a monopoly at all. It was bad enough when he didn’t understand what a monopoly was. Now we have to sit through more of his bull shit where he can’t even consistently apply the same definitions to similar cases.
The reason that there was a need for the federal government to step in and take over air travel security was obvious. First, having many different municipalities applying their own standards for security creates an issue of consistency. Second, as airports are dependent about airlines to exist enforcing properly restrictive security measures at the local level proved difficult. Airlines rightly realized that airport capital and personnel dedicated to security was a cost center for their operations at any given airport. They pushed back hard against local airport authorities and even the FAA when they tried to impose plainly obvious and relatively small security measures. Mayry Shiavo was on this both as the IG of the FAA and then as a concerned citizen for nearly half a decade before 9/11. her concerns were routinely characterized by the airlines as “alarmist” until she was proven right.
Here is an article on her.
This blog is sullying itself and insulting its readership so long as it keeps putting Kain on the front page while not correcting his many, easily demonstrated factual inaccuracies. This is really all no different that the Kaplan Daily publishing George Will pieces on climate change and then refusing to correct that factual errors in his piece when pointed out by readers. It isn’t a difference of opinion; it is a difference of actual discernible reality.
scarshapedstar
Comedy gold.
Shit, Zeppelins were perfectly safe until the Hindenburg blew up!
dmbeaster
Privatization does not, as a basic matter, work very well when there is no existing private market for the service in question. What you end up with is a profit driven entity performing the quasi government function under a regime of rules that dictate what they have to do. The market does not define any of those characteristics because there is no market.
That is why talking about a privatization of TSA function is somewhat nonsensical from the start. Even if it is a private firm hired by airlines, what it must do is ultimately defined by government regulation. That is, unless you are also going to privatize the basic function of deciding what level of security should be provided. Good luck with claiming that is going to optimize security based on “competition.”
brantl
B-game with footnoting. What an innovation!
Brighton
On a 4th amendment level, the scanners are not illegal. Jeffrey Rosen is wrong. Legal analysis here.