Questions about TSA's approach to security technology
all its problems,” Huey said. “They’ve spent and wasted money looking for that one box, and there is no such solution…. They respond to congressional mandates and the latest headlines of attempted terrorist attacks without any thought to risk management or separating out the threats in a logical way.”
TSA officials disagree. They say there are responsible processes in place to research, develop and fund new technologies for airport security. They point out that some gee-whiz equipment that vendors have pitched has taken too long to develop or has been too expensive to produce.
“We have to be predictive and acquire the best technology today to address the known threats by being informed of the latest intelligence and be proactive in working on what could be the next threats,” said TSA Administrator John Pistole. “It is a tall order.”
He said that technology is not the only security effort underway. The TSA uses a combination of tactics, including terrorist watch lists, intelligence gathering, and training security officers, to look for suspicious behavior.
Trial and error
The billions of dollars the TSA has spent on technology has been “a good investment,” Pistole said, but he said that developing devices is full of risk. “It is a lot of art with the science. We’re always competing for the best technology at the best price. It is just a constantly changing dynamic environment.”
After 9/11, there was talk of cargo containers that could withstand explosions, for example, but airport security experts said they never came to fruition, in part because they were too heavy and airlines did not want to pay for the extra fuel to carry them.
Another much talked-about device, a shoe scanner that would allow passengers to keep their shoes on while going through a checkpoint, has not been fully deployed to airports. Twelve companies are vying to provide shoe scanners to U.S. airports, but the TSA has not chosen one.
Contractors told the Post they were responding to the requests the agency puts out for new ways to prevent terrorists in a world that has an ever-changing threat. Executives at airport security companies say they find that the TSA often buys its screening equipment and technologies to face the most recent threat rather than anticipating what might come next.
“We don’t always see a well-defined roadmap of what they want,” said Tom Ripp, president of the Security and Detection Systems division of L-3 Communications, a major
