Private Security Could Replace TSA Agents

The Senate has passed legislation that includes a provision allowing airports to replace TSA screeners with private security, opening the door for the widely loathed federal agency to be marginalized from aviation security altogether.

The bill was primarily concerned with how the Federal Aviation Authority would be funded for the next four years, but also included measures that would force the TSA to reconsider applications from airports to replace TSA workers with their own privately hired screeners.

“Security companies would have an easier time winning contracts to operate airport checkpoints,” reports Businessweek.

Following a massive nationwide backlash against the TSA’s invasive groping policies and its use of radiation-firing naked body scanners, linked by many prestigious health bodies to cancer, an increasing number of airports attempted to take responsibility for their own screening procedures by replacing TSA workers with privately hired personnel.

However, in January 2011, when the number of airports attempting to opt-out of the TSA had risen to 16, TSA head John Pistole put a freeze on the process, refusing to consider new applications from airports.

The newly approved legislation “would require the TSA to reconsider applications for private screeners that it had rejected.”

Should airports choose to replace TSA screeners with their own private security, it would not only mean the screeners were better trained and more responsible for their actions, alleviating the problems of thefts and abuse by TSA workers, but it would also create tens of thousands of much needed jobs for the private sector.

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