"Airport Insecurity"

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Airport Insecurity 
By PAUL B. BROWN
The New York (NY) Times


HERE’S something depressing to think about the next time you stand in an
endless security line at the airport during a business trip: the job
application to become a Transportation Security Administration screener
stresses how arduous the job is; for instance, being able to lift a 70-pound
bag is a requirement. But the application takes just two minutes to fill
out, and one part of the physical fitness test for a screener who was hired
was conducted over the phone.

These details come from Barbara S. Peterson, Condé Nast Traveler’s aviation
expert, who worked for two months undercover as a screener.

That the T.S.A. never knew that Ms. Peterson was a journalist, which she did
not go out of her way to hide, may be the most troubling part of the
article. 

While she is sympathetic to her co-workers, who, if they work part time as
she did, make $13.91 an hour, her conclusions are frightening.

“Five years after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, we are still
relying on the same rudimentary tools that have been used for decades to
detect who is a true threat,” she wrote.

The federal government has spent $20 billion in the last five years
revamping the systems, yet as Ms. Peterson reports, there are still major
staffing shortages, an inability to get better detection to the places where
it is needed, and “no-fly and watch lists remain scandalously out of date.”

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