The Unintended Consequences of Greater Security
What is the cost of safety?
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created to “strengthen the security of the nation’s transportation systems and ensure the freedom of movement for people and commerce.”Charged with developing and implementing policies to protect U.S. transportation and ensure the security of the traveling public, one of TSA’s primary missions is airport and aircraft security. In response to 9/11 and the gaps it revealed in our airport security efforts, TSA introduced more stringent security standards in an effort to make air travel safer. As the terrorist threat changed, TSA adopted new security tactics to adapt to these new threats.
In response to the 9/11 hijackers’ use of box cutters, TSA began their efforts with more rigorous passenger screening processes, using metal detectors, X-ray machines, explosive trace detection machines, identification checks and physical searches to identify potential threat objects.On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid attempted to ignite an explosive device hidden in the heel of his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami. Shortly, TSA began requiring all passengers to remove their shoes as part of pre-flight screening.In August, 2006, British officials thwarted a plot to blow up aircraft with liquid explosives hidden in carry-on luggage. The TSA response was to confiscate all liquids and gels during passenger screening. Within a month, this was adjusted to allow passengers to carry 3 ounce containers of liquids.In December, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate an explosive device concealed in his underwear. TSA’s rejoinder was enhanced pat-downs of passengers in the groin and inner thigh, and the introduction of a full body image scanner to detect non-metallic items.
The intent of each of these adjustments was to make air travel safer, and each in its own way did so. However, in their efforts to make aircraft more secure, TSA also generated several unintended consequences. Every search of a bag, removal of shoes, and new pat down required more time. Each confiscation of nail clippers and liquids used time as well. The body scanners, too, took longer than a regular x-ray machine.In fact, the extra time for each new layer of security adds an extra 19.5 minutes to the average time spent standing in line at airport security,which drives the new norm of arriving at the airport two hours in advance of a flight.This time is not without economic cost; estimating the worth of time at $50/hour for a business traveler and $15/hour for a leisure passenger, the cost of this time is $8 billion annually.
The ripple effect of this inconvenience and cost is another unintended consequence. While intuition would dictate that safer air travel led more people to fly, the fact is that the cost and inconvenience of airport security induced less people to fly.This reduction (about 6%) in customers in turn cost airlines $1.1 billion in lost revenue.Losses were not simply economic — the fact that more people eschewed flying in favor of driving (a much more dangerous method of travel) resulted in 500 deaths per year.[1]
How did it come to pass that efforts to save lives and increase air safety indirectly led to losses of billions of dollars and thousands of deaths? The answer lies in the reactive nature of TSA. The birth of TSA was a reaction to 9/11; each major change to prescreening policy has similarly been a reaction to a new threat, without consideration of risk. After the shoe-bomber, shoes were checked; after the liquid explosives plot was uncovered, liquids were confiscated.Each new time-consuming check was designed to thwart a threat recently employed. The problem with this logic is that it presumes terrorists devise a strategy and TSA responds with strategy, and one strategy prevails. In practice, terrorists examine our existing defenses, and utilize a tactic to exploit weaknesses and gaps within those defenses. There are hundreds of vulnerabilities; it is impractical to develop a defense for each one. Body scanners deployed by TSA, at a cost of 1.2 billion dollars per year, reduce the risk to aircraft by only 1.2%.[2] The risk reduced by successfully forcing potential liquid explosive wielding terrorists to carry their deadly load in four 3-ounce containers instead of one 12-ounce container is also likely quite small. While the case may be made that such “security theater” (efforts at security that make us feel good without actually making us much safer) reassures the population, the fact that such measures are driving people away from air transportation belie that argument.
What is needed is not simply an answer to whatever threat was posed last, but a strategy that is risk-based and protects against multiple threats. An example of this is the hardened cockpit doors being installed on aircraft. With an installation cost of $30,000 — $50,000, the cost may seem high.However, the doors will likely stop any attempt to use a domestic aircraft as a suicide missile in the future — whether perpetrated by small arms, fragmentation devices or box cutters, the doors will the likelihood reduce another 9/11 by 16.7%.[4] Considering that this measure will not impact passenger time or discomfort and will therefore not deter air travel, hardened cockpit doors are tremendously more cost effective than body scanners.
Treating every passenger as if they pose an equal threat is also not cost effective and increases the hours spent in airport security lines. Very few passengers pose an actual threat to security; identifying these passengers ahead of time and placing them on the no-fly list is another example of a risk-based solution. Protecting each plane from a potential shoe bomber by having each passenger on every flight take off footwear is time consuming — identifying likely shoe bombers and preventing them from flying protects every flight they are not allowed to board, and again does not inconvenience passengers who are not a threat. Funding for this strategy could be culled from funds currently dedicated to full-body scanners.
The opposite is also true; most air travel domestically is concentrated among relatively few people. A recent study found that frequent fliers those who take four or more round trips per year account for 57% of air travel and 18% of all passengers. TSA’s Pre✓(PreCheck) program is designed to complete background checks on frequent travellers prior to arrival at the airport, thus enabling their security check to be expedited (allowing travelers to leave on their shoes and belts and keep their laptops in their cases). Expansion of Pre✓ to include as many airports and passengers as possible would not only expedite passengers in the program, but other travellers as well due to the Pre✓passengers’ absence from standard security lines.
The unintended consequences of TSA’s more stringent security methods in some ways had a greater impact than the 9/11 attack itself; a four-plane disaster on the scale of 9/11 would have to occur every month in order to make driving as dangerous as flying. By adopting risk-based strategies and pre-screening passengers as much as possible, TSA could minimize the negative unintended consequences of airport security while still living up to its mission.
