Dumb luck apparently is more effective than the TSA

The Transportation Security Administration has had some problems lately.

In recent months, the agency charged with protecting our nation’s flights and airports has been dinged for the following:

*More than 1,500 badges used by TSA employees to access secure airport areas were revealed to be lost, missing or stolen.

*Department of Homeland Security agents were able to get banned items past TSA workers on 67 of 70 attempts, a whopping 95 percent success rate — or failure rate.

*The agency failed to identify 73 airport workers with potential links to terrorism because of TSA’s inability to access all names on a government terrorist watch list.

That’s a lot of trouble for an agency tasked with so much responsibility, and it led Homeland Security’s inspector general to say he is “deeply concerned” about the TSA’s ability to do its job. While the acting head of TSA lost his job, a simple, urgent question remains: Do travelers need to worry for their safety?

Not really, a pair of experts say, though for different reasons.

“This proves there is no threat,” said Bruce Schneier, who blogs about security issues at http://www.schneier.com. “If 19 out of 20 times a terrorist was able to bring a gun on an airplane, but it never happened, what would you conclude?”

A frequent critic of TSA, Schneier recently raised this question in a CNN op-ed piece: Is the TSA worth an annual $7 billion?

“We don’t need perfect airport security,” he wrote. We just need security that’s good enough to dissuade someone from building a plot around evading it. If you’re caught with a gun or a bomb, the TSA will detain you and call the FBI. Under those circumstances, even a medium chance of getting caught is enough to dissuade a sane terrorist. A 95 percent failure rate is too high, but a 20 percent one isn’t.”

In a follow-up interview, Schneier said the threat against our aviation network isn’t anywhere near as severe as we’ve come to believe since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“If there were terrorists out there trying to take over airplanes, they would have succeeded,” he said. “We don’t need anything more than pre-9/11 levels of security.”

There are two kinds of terrorists, Schneier said: “professionals who will get through anything and the amateurs who will always get stopped.”

“What keeps us safe is intelligence, investigation and emergency response,” he said. “Those are the three things that have value.”

In other words, don’t sweat the headlines about these TSA lapses. Plus, in its favor, the TSA does have its moments. As it points out on its blog, the agency caught 2,212 guns in 2014 — among 653 millions passengers screened — the greatest number of which were found at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Those figures would seem to back one of Schneier’s essential points: Very few people are trying to get weapons on airplanes.

Jack Riley, vice president of the RAND Corp.’s National Security Research Division, agreed that air travelers are no less safe in light of TSA’s recent failures. He cautioned against drawing too many conclusions about the headlines without context, such as how skilled Homeland Security’s testers were at concealing contraband.

“I don’t see any reason for panic,” Riley said. “We’ve known since the earliest days of TSA that looking for contraband is an exceptionally difficult process.”

Though TSA is the most visible security measure to most travelers, there are other safeguards in place, he noted, such as reinforced cockpit doors, air marshals and intelligence work that flags travelers as potential risks long before they ever set foot on a plane. But TSA’s failures also show the need for frequent auditing of their work, Riley said.

“I wouldn’t characterize any of (the recent revelations) as exceptionally concerning, but I wouldn’t say they’re not a big deal, either,” he said. “They’re evidence of the large number of moving pieces in the air transportation system and the need to continuously be sure it is doing the best job it can.”

But isn’t all this news evidence that TSA is far from doing the best job it can?

“That’s a very good question,” Riley said. “I don’t think any of us want to be judged on our worst day, and the last couple weeks have been the worst day for TSA in quite a while. I’ll leave it at that for now.”

jbnoel@tribune.com

Twitter @joshbnoel