Billions spent on airport security, but major security gaps remain

so the TSA increased the number of pat-downs of passengers, a move that angered some travelers. TSA officials also rushed to purchase scores of explosive trace portal machines, known as “puffers” because they blast air on passengers and then analyze particles dislodged from passengers’ clothes or skin for hints or traces of a bomb. The agency bought 200 of the machines from General Electric and Smiths Detection, a unit of Smiths Group of Britain, and planned to install them at scores of airports. By mid-2006, however, TSA officials had found that that the machines could not be deployed in main security lines because they took too long to screen passengers, and they often broke or were unreliable because they could not withstand the dust, grime, and jet-fuel fumes in airports (we are told there was another reason: The powerful puffs of air used to dislodge particles off pssengers’ clothes created cloud of particles which would often contaminate other passengers, thus increasing the list of suspects requiring additional examination). Annual maintenance costs soared to as much as $48,000 for each device. The TSA has relegated 109 of the devices to a Texas warehouse, where they are to remain until officials and vendors come up with ways to make them operate more efficiently.

* Agency taken to task. The puffer problems, in part, led the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conclude that the TSA has not been particularly effective in getting new technology to checkpoints. The report, issued in February 2007, “found that limited progress has been made in developing and deploying technologies due to planning and funding challenges.” The GAO partly blamed the delay on the government’s troubles in “coordinating research and development efforts.” It also noted that “TSA does not yet have a strategic plan in place to assist in guiding its efforts to acquire and deploy screening technologies.” The GAO reiterated much of that criticism in follow-up documents. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley countered that the TSA and DHS have come up with a strategic plan and work well with their counterparts to develop new technology. Hawley said the lack of new technology at checkpoints has more to do with private industry than anything else. Companies do not invest a lot of cash in devices that only have a limited pool of demand: several hundred U.S. airports. “The real story here is that the capital markets do not value the