by Becky Akers
Becky Akers is a freelance writer and historian in New York City.
As with most bureaucracies, what the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) claims to accomplish and what it actually does accomplish are entirely different things. The excuse it offers for patting us down and rifling our belongings at airport checkpoints is that these shenanigans protect us — from terrorists, if not from sexual predators and thieves. In reality, the TSA exists to control us. Theory tells us that, and so do the facts when we connect several recent but isolated events.
First, the TSA’s screeners have once again failed to stop undercover agents from smuggling fake weapons through their checkpoints. This is becoming so habitual that we should add it to death and taxes as life’s only certainties. The TSA routinely flunks tests of its ability to intercept weapons. Flamingly. We’re talking failure of 90 percent on those rare occasions when it isn’t a full 100 percent.
The latest example comes from Denver International Airport. In February, federal investigators packed simulated explosives in their carry-on bags and taped fake improvised explosive devices (IED) to their bodies. Then they sashayed past the checkpoints: “In one test, sources told [Denver’s TV] 9NEWS an agent taped an IED to her leg and told the screener it was a bandage from surgery. Even though alarms sounded on the walk-through metal detector, the agent was able to bluff her way past the screener.” Overall, Denver International’s warrantless searching failed to discover the counterfeit contraband an astounding 90 percent of the time.
Results at Newark International Airport were similar. Last October the team that stumped Denver’s screeners pulled the same stunt in New Jersey. Newark especially resonates with Homeland Security types because one of the doomed flights departed from there on 9/11. Nevertheless, its screeners failed 20 of 22 tests, about the same rate as their cohorts further west.
But both Denver and Newark can preen in comparison to the 21 unnamed airports tested in March 2006. When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) tried smuggling IEDs past their checkpoints, no screener anywhere detected even one.
Since 2002, when the TSA began operations, the GAO, the Department of Homeland Security, and even the TSA itself have tested airport screening hundreds of times. And the TSA has flopped hundreds of times. Its abysmal inability to do what it claims — “We look for bombs at checkpoints in airports… [Yep, and that’s all they do: they certainly don’t find them]” — is consistent. The TSA cannot and does not protect us.
What It's Really Up To
So why isn’t it disbanded? Because the agency controls us far more effectively than it finds bombs. To wit:
On March 29 Shane James Deighan “fled” the Lanai Airport in Hawaii when baggage screeners found 43 Hawaiian driver’s licenses sporting “35 different names, addresses, and Social Security numbers” in his bag. Cops “tracked” him down the next morning. They “seized 19 credit cards, of which 11 matched one of the Hawaii driver's licenses, three other Hawaii driver's licenses, two Texas driver's licenses, three Social Security cards, two blank checks, one military identification and a Canadian birth certificate.” He was arraigned on charges of forgery April 10.
Deighan isn’t the only TSA victim facing imprisonment because of a warrantless search. Some will probably
say, “Great! Looks like screeners caught an identity thief who’s guilty as heck!” But should we also eviscerate the Fourth Amendment when passengers are carrying drugs the government doesn’t like? Screeners groping Michael James Cade at San Jose International Airport claimed to find three pounds of methamphetamine on him. (Since the search took place in a “private screening area,” away from witnesses, we — and the judge hearing his case — are taking the TSA’s word on this.) Never mind the extremely thorny constitutional problem of rummaging for evidence without provocation or a warrant: Cade was charged in U.S. District Court.
Police must rejoice at airport screening. Hanging around checkpoints, waiting for “criminals” to come to them rather than chasing down alleys and streets, searching citizens without the bother and paperwork that warrants require certainly makes policing easier. And far less dangerous, too. But it’s lethal to liberty. The list of items the state doesn’t want us to have extends well beyond phony IDs and drugs to such innocuous things as bookmarks and money. That list will keep growing as the government does.
But the TSA has even more chilling uses.
On March 1 Walter F. Murphy, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence emeritus at Princeton University and a Marine veteran, “tried to use the curb-side check in” when boarding a flight to Newark. He “was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. …I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to … American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked … offered a frightening comment: lsquo;Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.’ I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. lsquo;That'll do it,’ the man said.”
When confronted with these allegations, the TSA pooh-poohed the idea that it targets dissenters. Spokeswoman Ann Davis dismissed Murphy’s trials as a case of mistaken identity due to his common last name. She added, “There has been a lot of speculation as to how individuals are placed on the No Fly list, but the only criteria [sic] is posing a risk to civil aviation or national security. Having certain political views is not going to result in placement on the No Fly list.”
Really? Tell that to the other political dissidents the TSA has harassed. Indeed, intimidating troublemakers may be its most valuable service to the state, one that guarantees the TSA will be oppressing us for a long time to come.
The TSA’s dotty rules reassure some Americans. But connecting those dots reveals the outline of tyranny.