As airline flight attendants oft suggest, it could be time for Americans to “buckle-up,” because the bloated, invasive federal leviathan known as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) might finally be facing the ax it has long deserved.
The Post Millennial’s Thomas Stevenson reports that Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) have dropped a legislative bombshell: the “Abolish the TSA Act.” Introduced on March 27, this bill aims to dissolve the TSA within three years, handing airport security to private firms under a proposed “Office of Aviation Security Oversight” within the FAA.
But, to hint or insinuate that such a new “Aviation Security” regime would be any more constitutional than the TSA would be reckless, dismissing a century-old line of federal overreaches that imposed on us the corrupt FAA system in the first place.
The FAA problem goes back to 1925 when the feds began federalizing air routes by leveraging, of all things, the postal system, setting up “air mail routes” like “postal roads” (the latter of which are permitted by the Constitution), then, with the 1926 “Air Commerce Act,” the feds banned private carriers from traveling on their precious “postal air routes” and began setting up the politicized, pork-filled system we have today – the system that arose not to facilitate commerce and consumer interest, but which arose due to political favoritism and unconstitutional graft.
Forget the Fourth Amendment, that long-buried constitutional gem requiring a judge to issue a public warrant before any level of government goon can search anyone. The TSA’s been stomping all over that portion of the Bill of Rights since its post-9/11 inception in 2001, turning airports into warrantless grope-fests. You likely have experienced it: the gloved hands of some federal agent pawing through your bags or patting you down like a suspect—all without a real warrant from a judge.
That’s not security; that’s a power trip, and unredacted court documents from a 2017 lawsuit against the TSA, unearthed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), lay it bare. Those papers reveal that the TSA’s “screening” is less about catching threats and more about performative nonsense -- security theater at its most absurd level. The docs show the agency’s own data admitting that body scanners and pat-downs catch next to nothing of real danger, yet they keep the charade going, trampling your rights, taking your money, and eliminating your ability to show in the free market what you, the airlines, and their insurers, might want for “security.”
And how effective is this theater?
Related: Deadly Air Crashes Inspire Americans To Question FAA Paradigm
The TSA repeatedly has shown that its “checkpoint” system allows nearly two-thirds of mock “dangerous” items through, and the word “improvement” has not entered the bureaucratic lexicon. In fact, even back in 2015, their undercover tests—working with the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General—exposed the TSA’s Keystone Cops routine in glorious fashion. They slipped mock explosives and banned weapons through checkpoints at a jaw-dropping 95% failure rate. Mock bombs, mock guns -- TSA agents waved them through like they were handing out boarding passes.
A follow-up in 2017 at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport told a similar story—95% failure. National tests that year hovered around 80% failure, per the senators’ own press release. This isn’t security; it’s a taxpayer-funded clown show. If a private company botched this badly, it would be bankrupt by breakfast. But the TSA? It just gets fatter—60,000 employees strong and raking in billions.
Senators Lee and Tuberville aren’t mincing words.
As Ryan Ewing writes for AirlineGeeks:
“The senators assert that the TSA, initially established post-9/11, has evolved into an overbearing and inefficient bureaucracy. ‘The TSA has not only intruded into the privacy and personal space of most Americans, it has also repeatedly failed tests to find weapons and explosives,’ commented Lee.”
And Ewing adds:
“Under the proposed bill, the Department of Homeland Security would be tasked with delivering a restructuring plan to Congress within 90 days of the bill’s enactment. This strategy would involve launching a new oversight office, delegating security roles to private companies, and redirecting TSA’s non-aviation roles to other departments.
In a one-pager on the bill, the senators highlight the success of European airports — where over 80% have privatized security screening — and the performance of U.S. airports like San Francisco International.”
Their plan is for a three-year wind-down, with that 90-day deadline for the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Transportation to cook up a privatization paradigm that would mimic what many fliers experience in Europe, where over 80% of their commercial airports run privatized security.
Lee observes:
“American families can travel safely without feeling the hands of an army of federal employees.”
The problem, of course, is that this bill will not eliminate the federal mandates for what the private companies must do. In other words, the feds will privatize the breaches of rights, and will hire private companies to scan and grope us. It is not a true separation of politics and privacy.
It might make the “security” system more efficient and less expensive, but it will not stop the attacks on Natural Rights.
This bill is a long shot. Securing 60 votes in the Senate will not be easy.
But, even if the proposal fails, it’s a clarion call to end the TSA’s reign of terror and error. It allows Americans to learn about how the federal leviathan has encroached into airports, the fallacies underlying the paradigm, and the breaches of the Constitution it represents – all the way to the origins of the FAA.
Even if the current system is not changed, the opportunity to learn the truth is valuable.