Another Year Like the Other Year

Jan. 11, 2012
"He who seeks to protect everything, protects nothing" - Gen. Sun Tzu

For those of you concerned that TSA is not spending enough money to protect you, Congress is on the case. Although overall DHS appropriations are down slightly from FY 2011 (about $111M), the recently signed TSA FY 2012 budget is up $153 million from last year, to about $7.85 billion.  With a “B”.  That includes several hundred million for 250 additional AITs, despite a Congressional effort to cut funding while they upgrade existing devices, which at times remain unmanned due to a lack of staff. 

At the same time, TSA has issued a request for information about devices that could measure the amount of radiation emitted by its scanners, to determine whether agents are "exposed to ionizing radiation above minimum detectable levels." While I do not pretend to know the answer to that one, the 10+ year disconnect for review of potential cause and effect is fascinating.


TSA’s new money includes funding for 140 new behavior detection officers, 12 multi-modal VIPR response teams, 20 new explosives detection canine teams, and 53 air cargo security staffers. While not earmarking specific funds, Congress also told TSA to improve its training to meet the needs of travelers that face unique screening challenges.  Such as training agents to recognize:

  • The difference between a cupcake and a block of military grade C-4 explosive.  Guess which one was confiscated as a security risk.  Right, after considerable discussion and examination.  Guess which one wasn’t confiscated.  Right again.
    • The difference between an “oddly placed iPod and bag of candy” and a 14-inch sword hidden inside carry-on luggage and disguised as a cane.  Yup.
    • Vibrators and loaded guns. Hey, you’re getting pretty good at this.

Unfortunately, some agents are not.  To be fair to the great majority of agents, the AITs are not, as the media likes to call them,  “explosives detection systems” ; they are anomaly detectors – the machine cannot  tell the agent what that strange lump on your body is made of, only that most people don’t have one there. (Another opportunity for me to remind readers of last year’s favorite traveler, Tammy Banovac, denied boarding due to the apparently unresolved mystery of the “unusual shape of my buttocks.”).  Thus, there are somewhere on the order of 850 million U.S. travelers each year with perhaps similar odd shapes and sizes, and 1.2 billion bags with an almost infinite range of manufactured or organic materials inside – from Christmas pudding to venomous snakes. Clearly, agents cannot be trained to recognize every oddball thing that could (and probably already has) passed through a checkpoint.  But there is an urgent need for a training curriculum titled Common Sense 101.  And a “sarcasm” type font.

"He who seeks to protect everything, protects nothing" - Gen. Sun Tzu, “The Art of War” 600 B.C.