Former TSA Head Kip Hawley On The TSA's Misconduct Problems: Fix The Disease, Not The Symptoms

from the would-be-nice-if-someone-NOT-in-a-'former'-position-would-have-some-good dept

Former TSA head Kip Hawley seems to have tons of ideas on how to make the TSA better now that he can no longer make these changes. But it's the thought that counts, I suppose.

Hawley's latest op-ed on improving the TSA takes on the latest GAO report that found 1 in 16 TSA employees was investigated for misconduct last year. What Hawley takes issue with is the report's recommendations, which he feels only touch the surface, rather than attack the root.

[W]hen the Government Accountability Office found increased Transportation Security Administration officer misconduct, it just ratcheted up their unpopularity. The report was jarring and disturbing -- rising numbers of absenteeism, theft and intentional security lapses. Obviously, these are red flags that can't be ignored.

Unfortunately, instead of taking on the issue of stopping the misconduct, GAO's focus was on how TSA "could strengthen oversight of allegations of employee misconduct," the safe issues of process oversight, management of the accusations and data gathering versus digging into the controversial root causes of the actual misconduct.

Hawley's right, in a way. Adding more paperwork to the process doesn't do much more than fill up personnel files and provide job security for those fighting the War on Terror from behind a desk. Still, some improvements should be made in this area as well. Many officials talk a good game about "oversight," but rarely follow through with any sort of effectiveness.

But, the problems at the TSA runs deeper than an additional layer of oversight would have any hope of reaching. The problem is the culture, for lack of a better word.

In today's TSA, too many officers switch off their minds in favor of just finishing out the shift without rocking the boat. This may be the root cause of the GAO-identified misdeeds. TSA needs to have its officers switched-on and motivated.

This isn't just a TSA problem. It can be found in many workplaces, both public and private. The issue here is that TSA agents are entrusted with airport security, something that requires active participation and focus. Motivation comes in many forms, but many entities are content to let "not getting fired" be the primary motivator.

What Hawley is proposing goes against the grain of agency thinking, and that itself is an almost insurmountable hurdle.

Security officers are in the best position to use their experience and training and detect a threat not covered in the Standard Operating Procedure. Al Qaeda knows the rules and designs its attacks to comply with it. To stop attacks, officers thinking on their own needs to be encouraged, not disciplined.

Once officers are allowed to think for themselves, it opens the door for mistakes and criticism. But people can be taught the fundamentals of risk management, which provides a framework for making informed judgments.

This is a good idea, albeit one extremely difficult to implement at this point, hence the agency's preference to focus on surface layer issues. What would ease this transition to a reliance on critical thinking, rather than a reliance on multitudinous, ever-shifting policies, would be to strip back the agency back to the pre-9/11 version of airport security.

Obviously, not everything could be rolled back, but much of it could be streamlined in a way that makes the process less of a chore for both passengers and TSA agents. With much of the mission creep bulldozed, agents would be forced to rely more on critical thinking than on the simplistic yes/no binary of policies. Hawley suggests as much, suggesting improvements like removal of the intrusive pat-down process and drastically cutting the prohibited items list.

Trusting your employees to make the right decisions is extremely hard for most companies, much less government agencies. The TSA may never reach the point that it does, considering it's already hampered by a mindset that views most Americans with suspicion. But if it were able to make this change, the end result would be an optimized security force. Those who can't work without the safety net of "policy" would depart, either voluntarily or otherwise. Those that remained would be active participants in their own job, rather than having to be nothing more than the embodiment of inflexible policies, most of which were written as a reaction to a previous incident, rather than crafted with the future in mind.

But, again, it must be pointed out (as it has been here and other places), if Hawley has so many great ideas on overhauling the TSA, why wasn't any of this implemented during his stint at the controls? Hindsight may offer astounding clarity, but it's of little use to the public on the receiving end of a more than a decade's worth of bad policies.

Filed Under: kip hawley, tsa

How The TSA's Security Theater Harms Us All

from the there-are-victims dept

Security expert Bruce Schneier has been debating the former TSA boss, Kip Hawley, over at The Economist, concerning aviation security. The argument has gone on pretty much as expected, but Schneier's closing argument, in which he details the very real cost of the TSA's security theater, is fantastic. First, he does a brilliant job dismantling Hawley's "you just have to trust us that we know what we're doing" line:

Kip Hawley doesn’t argue with the specifics of my criticisms, but instead provides anecdotes and asks us to trust that airport security—and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in particular—knows what it’s doing.

He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).

At this point, we don’t trust America’s TSA, Britain’s Department for Transport, or airport security in general. We don’t believe they’re acting in the best interests of passengers. We suspect their actions are the result of politicians and government appointees making decisions based on their concerns about the security of their own careers if they don’t act tough on terror, and capitulating to public demands that “something must be done”.

From there, he notes that the TSA's ridiculous security theater, for which no evidence has been provided to show it actually keeps us safer, has very real "costs" to the public:

In 2004, the average extra waiting time due to TSA procedures was 19.5 minutes per person. That’s a total economic loss—in –America—of $10 billion per year, more than the TSA’s entire budget. The increased automobile deaths due to people deciding to drive instead of fly is 500 per year. Both of these numbers are for America only, and by themselves demonstrate that post-9/11 airport security has done more harm than good.

The current TSA measures create an even greater harm: loss of liberty. Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger. You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty. These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed—individually and collectively—by their existence.

It's an excellent point, and one that is frequently overlooked. He notes that the increased fear created by such measures is exactly what terrorists wanted. He also points out that if we took the money being wasted on security theater today and actually applied it to "investigation, intelligence and emergency response," it would be a lot more effective. But that requires coming to terms with a politically inconvenient fact: that 100% safety is an impossible goal, and striving for it has tremendous costs, many of which simply aren't worth it.

Filed Under: bruce schneier, harm, kip hawley, security theater, tsa