Economist Debate: Is TSA worth the cost?

[Clothahump]

@Procrustus

Because waiting around the airport is a waste of time no matter what you’re doing. It’s part of the flying experience now and it was before the TSA. I’m not wasting any more time per flight now than I was pre 9/11. get rid of TSA entirely, and you won’t find that $10billion.

Well, you probably would, because instead of having to arrive 2-3 hours earlier, you would only have to arrive 1-2 hours earlier. The extra hour adds up.

Bottom line is that the TSA doesn’t do jack shit other than annoy the paying passengers. They don’t make us safer, that’s for sure.

[Chessic_Sense]

@erislover

Buddy, it was your suggestion that $5 be the number, which amounts to $15 an hour. It was your “less than 1 billion” which is imprecise. It was your number. Do you wish to retract your claims that it is “less than one billion” and that $5 for 20 minutes is a good figure?

It’s $5 per hour, or $1.66 for a 20-minute wait. I said I’d take $5 for $20 minutes, true. I’d also take $4 or $3 or $2…

I said the cost was less than $1 billion, and of course that’s imprecise, but it’s close enough. You then used this stipulation to prove that the cost was $3 billion. I don’t understand what you don’t get about how that’s wrong. It contradicts the given information. Therefore it must be wrong.

632million passengers * 19.5/60 hours/passenger * $5/hour = $1,027,000,000 a.k.a. “about a billion”, not $3.33 billion like you said.
Although seeing as how you thought I meant $5 for the wait,not per hour, I do retract my acerbic attitude toward your math.

[Voyager]

@hdc_bst

As a member of the opposition, I’d characterize my ‘anti-TSA’ position as ‘TSA is overboard and a misallocation of resources.’ I don’t doubt the efficacy of all searches, but I think that TSA has traveled well past the point of diminishing returns.

I agree, and this is guaranteed to be the case. Given that we don’t know what the optimum amount of security is, TSA will tend to provide more. Doing so pisses off some people on message boards, doing less and letting someone through is career limiting for those in charge.

Yes. In general there are two types of terrorist threat. The ‘lone-wolf’ and ‘professional’ organizations. Lone wolf operations are difficult to detect, but are limited in scope to what they accomplish (although there are horrifying examples of their success, e.g. McVeigh and Breivik). Professional organizations involve more moving parts and are vulnerable to detection and disruption prior to an attack.

Assuming we have a Clinton in charge, not a Bush. I’d like a second level of protection, thanks.

I’m not as sanguine that an effective cost-benefit analysis has been done. How in the world are mm scanners cost effective? How in the world are random enhanced patdowns cost effective?

Scanners are expensive, so I’m sure it was done for them. Pat downs maybe not, but they are cheap, and in any case the scanners replace them.

The TSA has given the impression of being reactionary, driven by publicized hysteria, and constantly playing a game of catch up. Two very difficult to conduct (and bungled) attacks: the shoe-bomber and the underwear bomber have resulted in new screening practices with high costs - mm scan and the ridiculous take off your shoes routine. This is the age old problem of gearing up to fight the last war.

If the TSA just cared about making our lives miserable, they might have done this screening before anyone tried it. Not fighting the last war means you must not stop with the defensive measures, not that you should abandon them. The Maginot line didn’t prevent the Germans from sweeping around past it - but if it hadn’t been built, they could have invaded directly.
No terrorist has stuck plastic explosives up his ass yet. With the scanners, perhaps no one will.

I agree with you that effective policy decisions include placing a cost on human life. The prime danger of passenger aircraft attacks was the low yield cruise missile concept. It was terribly exploited once (or thrice depending on how you count). Two low cost solutions: locked cockpit and a wary passenger population have taken this option off the table.

So long as the attackers are limited to ineffective weapons, sure. Let someone in with better weapons and plastic explosives that can open that door, maybe not.

The only remaining viable attack is destruction of the aircraft - threatening 300 or fewer people. So, passenger screening is now protecting against the same smaller threat is has been aimed at since the 70s. Not only that, passenger introduction of an explosive is a much less vulnerable avenue than placing an explosive in the cargo area (Lockerbie).

Based on the success of pre-2001 security at preventing aircraft bombings, why have we invested so much more money on passenger screening? The potential lives saved in the comparison of TSA vs. previous security is paltry - dwarfed by other actions we could take such as reducing the freeway speed limit by 5 mph. I don’t think its worth it to reduce the speed limit (for free), and I don’t think its worth it to employ TSA style passenger screening.

Lockerbie style threats got taken care of even before 9/11. The big difference between now and then was that there was an assumption that the hijacker was not suicidal. The Lockerbie bomber was not on board, and the hijackers from the Cuba era wanted to get there, not blow themselves up.

My least favorite part of the security procedure is taking off my shoes, but doing so adds nothing at all to the length of the line, since everyone does it in line, and only a bit after where it doesn’t delay anyone else. Do away with it and they might recruit someone who isn’t a moron to be the bomber.

As for speed limits, I trust you were not around in 1973 when they lowered all the limits to 55. Whether or not the benefit of that was worth the cost, the outcry was intense. Far more than this one.

I think one cost of post 9/11 screening no one has brought up is that government employees, not low-paid rent-a-cops, now do it, which costs more. But having some competent screeners in Maine might have been worth the cost.

[Voyager]

@Clothahump

Well, you probably would, because instead of having to arrive 2-3 hours earlier, you would only have to arrive 1-2 hours earlier. The extra hour adds up.

Bottom line is that the TSA doesn’t do jack shit other than annoy the paying passengers. They don’t make us safer, that’s for sure.

Who arrives 2 - 3 hours early except for foreign flights or maybe during high volume times like Thanksgiving or Christmas? Now that things have settled down, and almost everyone knows the procedure, I don’t leave for the airport any sooner than I used to. The real killer was when they started the screening in the '70s.

[hdc_bst]

@Voyager

I agree, and this is guaranteed to be the case. Given that we don’t know what the optimum amount of security is, TSA will tend to provide more. Doing so pisses off some people on message boards, doing less and letting someone through is career limiting for those in charge.

Spending less on security can be tough to push through - following a spending reduction the opponents can always argue that any successful attacks would have been prevented if only.

My hope is that in the current climate of budget reductions it will be politically possible to cut back TSA’s budget. The organization is certainly unpopular with some people on message boards, and I believe with the general public as well. For an immeasurably small decrease in passenger security we can: 1) enjoy reduced screening time in airports, 2) make some small gains in civil liberties, and 3) slightly reduce the federal deficit (or transfer the money to a work program with actual positive benefits).

Scanners are expensive, so I’m sure it was done for them. Pat downs maybe not, but they are cheap, and in any case the scanners replace them.

I think scanners were analyzed with a cost analysis that focused on 1) can they fit into the budget and 2) are they cost effective vs. other means of actively detecting underwear bombs. I do not think that the null hypothesis (business as usual) was evaluated seriously or that the adversarial condition was considered.

The adversarial question to me is out of the population of terrorists set on bringing down a passenger airline how many are:

1. Able to bypass current security measures (metal detectors)
2. Able to be detected by millimeter scan (explosives concealed by clothing)
3. Unable to adapt and thwart millimeter scan (concealing explosives with EHF opaque material such as flesh)

I don’t believe that your next proposed attack, the keister bomb would be detected my millimeter scan. Thanks to a prudishness outcry, neither would the alternative ‘dong bomb,’ C4 shaped as a prosthetic…

My least favorite part of the security procedure is taking off my shoes, but doing so adds nothing at all to the length of the line, since everyone does it in line, and only a bit after where it doesn’t delay anyone else. Do away with it and they might recruit someone who isn’t a moron to be the bomber.

I think that the flow of a screening line involves interplay between multiple factors, any of which can be the limiting factors. Typically this is not the shoe phase, occasionally it is, and removing it would in aggregate decrease screening time.

Based on historical examples, I am not convinced the ability to use shoe bombs allows masterminds to recruit more capable bombers.

As for speed limits, I trust you were not around in 1973 when they lowered all the limits to 55. Whether or not the benefit of that was worth the cost, the outcry was intense. Far more than this one.

Not around for it, but aware of it. My point was that historically we have been quite willing to sacrifice lives for travel time. TSA is being treated differently. I’m pinning that on GWoT fervor and growing risk aversion. The Pro-TSA argument has been that it is due to the low value of airport time. Y’all are just a lot more patient in security queues than I am.

I think one cost of post 9/11 screening no one has brought up is that government employees, not low-paid rent-a-cops, now do it, which costs more. But having some competent screeners in Maine might have been worth the cost.

I’ll admit this could be my anti-TSA prejudice, but TSA employees have not struck me as being particularly more skilled or sophisticated than rent-a-cops. Hopefully better motivated with a better pay rate.

[erislover]

@Chessic_Sense

Although seeing as how you thought I meant $5 for the wait,not per hour, I do retract my acerbic attitude toward your math.

Appreciate it. Can you now explain why they have to spend this 20 minutes at the airport, rather than just arriving 20 minutes later and spending it… anywhere else they’d rather be but the airport?