Why federalising U.S. airport security is a bad idea
The U.S. Senate has passed legislation that would give America a government-run passenger-screening process at airports nationwide. The House of Representatives has the measure under consideration.
Critics see a number of flaws in the proposal:
It concentrates on passengers and ignores the thousands of caterers, cleaners, fuel suppliers and others with access to airports and jets who lack mandatory background checks or ID cards.
It is essential to be able to discipline or fire incompetent or untrustworthy security personnel but that would be nearly impossible to do in a federal civil-service bureaucracy.
Passenger airports vary enormously in size and design so a "one size fits all" solution mandated from the top down is likely to be a poor fit at many airports.
Policymakers should admit that no one yet has "the answer" for implementing more effective and affordable airport security and although all sorts of solutions are being proposed, no one knows how costly or effective they will be.
Critics argue that a regime of tough federal outcome standards makes better sense than federalising the entire system.
Many European airports tried the central government approach and later abandoned it for a privatised approach. Either corporations were created to manage security or private firms were hired to undertake the task. This approach has demonstrated success.
Source: Robert W. Poole Jr. (Reason Public Policy Institute), Safest Course to Airport Security, Washington Times, October 24, 2001.
For text http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011024-13967501.htm
For more on Terrorism http://www.ncpa.org/iss/ter/
FMF Policy Bulletins\6 November 2001
Publish date: 13 November 2001
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