TSA Privatization Returns Airport Security to a Dangerous Past

This is going to be end up being like the reflecting pool, but on a grander scale. Tax payers are going to end up paying Trump's incompetent friends a ton of money to just make flying an even worse experience.

SFO has had private airport security (Covenant) instead of TSA since 9/11. It’s been great.

From the article:

>Covenant Aviation Security was another early winner, getting $19 million for unspecified airport security services in 2005. Since then, it’s gotten an ever-increasing amount, including $773 million in 2021 to support security screening at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) until the end of this year; taxpayers have spent about $1.5 billion on that company, mainly for security at SFO. That airport is held out as the exemplar of how well private companies manage security, which labor leaders say is the case because Covenant workers at SFO are unionized; as a result, they are better paid than security contractors elsewhere and can more strongly influence practices. But even so, the FBI found that some of Covenant’s security personnel helped smugglers traffic cocaine between 2013 and 2014 by allowing them “to pass through the x-ray machine at a security checkpoint line without adequately screening the luggage for explosives, incendiaries, weapons, or other threats to security,” as the Department of Justice wrote.

Just hard to get anything useful out of this article. Privatization returns us to a dangerous past, but we already privatize, and it's really good, but it's only because of unions, but despite that it's still bad, but I guess it must not be too bad because we haven't had any terrorist attacks since 9/11, which is the reason why it's bad to privatize.

I believe they are referring to the millimeter wave x-ray machines.

In Europe you have often private companies like G4S as a security with police doing only supervision and passport control.