TSA Spent $160 Mil For Scanners With A 96% Failure Rate

TSA Spent $160 Mil For Scanners With A 96% Failure Rate

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08/17/2015 06:29 PM ETinre

Air Travel: When Congress decided to let the federal government take over airport security in the wake of 9/11, critics said it would only make matters worse. Fourteen years later, it looks like the critics had it exactly right.

On Monday, Politico broke the news that the federally run TSA has spent $160 million — or more than $150,000 per unit — on body scanners meant to prevent fliers from bringing contraband onto planes.

And what did taxpayers get for their money?

A recent security audit found that TSA scanners failed to stop explosives and weapons 96% of the time.

Sen. Ron Johnson said that the scanners "weren't even catching metal." That's worse than the TSA did in 2004-05, when it screening process missed "only" 70% of the time.

This is just the latest in a long string of alarming TSA failures in fielding technology, screening workers and keeping its workers from abusing passengers.

Fully $40 million of the $160 million, for example, went for "naked" X-ray scanners that the TSA later pulled from airports. Another recent audit found the TSA failed to identify 73 airport workers who were on terrorist watch lists. A congressional report in 2011 found that the TSA suffered 25,000 security breaches during the previous decade. And accounts of miscreant TSA agents abusing passengers are legion.

The TSA's most recent disaster is even sparking calls to privatize airport security.

The sad irony is that the TSA was brought in 14 years ago to fix the existing private system — where airlines contracted out the job to private firms.

After 9/11, there were countless stories about how leaving this job in private hands led to poorly trained, underpaid screeners, high turnover rates and failure to stop every weapon. Security, it was said, is "a function of government."

But those private screeners were far better than the TSA. A 1987 test by the FAA found them failing just 20% of the time. And conservatives, including those on this page, argued that a government takeover of airport screening would bring higher costs, rigid union rules, waste and inefficiency — and not better security.

These warnings were, of course, ignored.

And exactly one month after 9/11, the Senate cast a rare 100-0 vote to federalize airport security, which President Bush signed in November 2001. Don't say we didn't warn you what would happen next.