TSA: Should it Be Removed?

¶ … deadly disadvantages involved when contemplating dismantling all TSA employees and technologies -- scanners and other personally meddlesome tools -- and going exclusively with air marshals. This paper points to the several obvious disadvantages involved with simply cutting TSA out of the picture entirely and allowing passengers to board planes without carefully screening them -- in the belief that since terrorists will know there are air marshals aboard every plane they won't try to hijack commercial airliners.

The First Disadvantage to Removing TSA from Airports

Millimeter Wave ScansIn the first place removing TSA entirely as a bold move to protect privacy -- and going entirely with air marshals -- is not a solution, it's a knee-jerk reaction. Removing TSA from responsibility for airport security would be politically, socially, and ethically risky. Meantime, as of July 2013, the TSA has already removed the "virtual strip search" technologies "backscatters" from most airports (Ahlers, 2013). TSA has been pressured by Congress and by privacy organizations to make changes, and TSA has acknowledged that "backscatter" machines not only embarrass passengers (by allowing TSA staff to view the naked body of the traveler) but they also use X-rays, which are dangerous and can cause cancer. Instead, as of 2014, TSA is using advanced imaging technologies (AIT), which use "millimeter waves" (privacy "protocols") to screen passengers for "metallic and nonmetallic threats, including weapons and explosives" (TSA). As of 2014, there are 740 AIT units at 160 airports, the TSA explains.

The Second Disadvantage to Removing TSA from Airports

Just 6% of terror attacks are against transportation facilitiesGiven that the TSA has responded to citizen complaints and to Congress -- and has removed most if not all "backscatter" machines, and upgraded its image in the process -- there would be an enormous public outcry if the government shut down TSA and announced that there would be air marshals on all planes as an alternative to the existing security measures at airports. Notwithstanding that groups have raged at TSA for its occasional incidences of incompetence and its intrusive scanning capabilities, taking the TSA out of airports would result in a huge political / social backlash. Terrorists don't strike transportation as often as other places (Hilkevitch, 2012) (see chart above).

Third Disadvantage to Removing TSA from Airports

At this moment in contemporary history, the national and international media is focused on the horrific new scenes of sectarian violence in Iraq, as the ISIS terrorist group (a splinter group from al Qaeda, among the bloodiest groups witnessed in years) marches towards Baghdad, slaughtering Iraqi security forces (if the photos are to be believed) as it goes (Tawfeeq, et al., 2014)). The threat to the United States is real, and given the photographs of ISIS, and the fear those images create, no thinking American (with 9/11 in mind) would be willing at this time to simply dump the TSA and hope that air marshals could prevent terrorist from doing serious economic, social, and environmental damage).