WillCAD

Yes, I know they do. My point is, unless they have been vetted to the same level as a PreCheck applicant, they shouldn't.

My point exactly - does each and every member of the US military go through a periodic background check of the same or greater depth than the one a PreCheck applicant endures? If so, then sure, they should continue to get PreCheck-equivalent screening. If not, then they should be removed from the line along with all of the other regular people who haven't had the background check.

As I said in an earlier post, that's a separate issue, but I do agree with you - PreCheck equivalent screening should be the standard for all travelers. It should be WTMD and HHMD, ETD swabs and occasional PoochChecks, with WBI used only as an escalated methodology for those instances where the HHMD can't resolve a WTMD alert or as a voluntary option for those with medical metal. Pat-downs should never be conducted by TSOs - only by law enforcement officers as part of an actual criminal investigation, after probable cause or clearly articulable suspicion (i.e. an unresolvable alert from the metal detectors or WBI).

But for right now, we're discussing how PreCheck should be operated in the current setup.

You're misinterpreting what we're saying - we're not saying that "everyone should have a privilege", we're saying that that PreCheck level screening should be the standard, not a privilege requiring a background check and a fee, and that the invasive and abusive screening methodologies currently used as the standard should be used on a gradually escalating scale, only when the standard screening turns up an alert that can't be resolved by less invasive screening.

PreCheck equivalent screening is sufficient to keep us safe, when combined with reinforced cockpit doors, additional in-flight procedures, and a more cautious passenger mindset. Theoretically, the new paradigm also includes improved LEO and intelligence work that will stop bad actors long before they ever get near a plane.

The main point of all of this, and in fact the main point of most discussions on this board, is that the current screening methodology, as implemented by TSA, is not only useless, it's worse than useless - it actually makes us LESS safe, while violating our Constitutional rights, abusing and traumatizing millions of innocent people, and costing an insane amount of money on a yearly basis. Switching to PreCheck-equivalent screening as the standard, with the more invasive methodologies reserved for cases of actual alerts, coupled with the elimination of stupidity of the shoe carnival, the absurdity of the War on Water, and the irrelevancy of "all electronics out", would eliminate most if not all of those negatives about TSA while still keeping us safe from the most likely threats.

Boggie Dog

A point that tends to get lost in these discussions is that everyone that boards a flight has had a records check or they get S'd and get the TSA special. The records check is why Pre type screening is adequate for the vast majority of passengers.

KDS

This may be one of the publicly stated reasons. Heaven knows that what the TSA says usually is not what the TSA means.

But only an inept and devious federal government would roll out a program that charges innocent passengers a fee in order to save the government money -- and then won't promise that you will actually receive the "lower cost" screening after you pay the fee. Color me skeptical and disbelieving about this and all other things that the TSA does (or claims to do) to avoid actually doing cost- and security-effective screening.

ashill

Well, that's essentially the publicly-stated reason. If it's not true that they're charging passengers a fee to save the government money, why would they say it is? They certainly don't put the fact that it saves the government money front and center in their marketing materials, but it's always been part (a significant, perhaps dominant, part, with making Congresscritters flying out of DCA happy probably also playing a role -- and it's hard for me to see Congresscritters wanting faster screening for themselves as part of the reason for this bill) of the justification for the existence of PreCheck.

And I can't imagine how PreCheck wouldn't be cheaper for TSA than regular security. They need fewer staff to run PreCheck and fewer expensive body scanners. In fact, as noted upthread, they had massive delays a year or two ago because they let the TSA workforce reduce in size through attrition in anticipation of much higher uptake rates for PreCheck than actually happened.

(Mind you, I don't have any objection to microwave body scanners except that they're a bit slower than metal detectors. I can see obvious security benefits to them, and as they're now implemented I have no privacy or health concerns. I do have health concerns about X-ray body scanners, but they've been phased out as far as I know.)

ethernal

I am not at all a conspiracy theorist, and I am not even anti-government. What I support, however, is risk-based decision making when it comes to social policies.

The TSA literally kills hundreds to thousands of people per year while demonstrably creating no material safety benefit. The TSA kills people by:

• Encouraging people to drive on shorter trips resulting in an estimated 100-400 increased deaths per year from car accidents
• The opportunity cost of spending $7.7B a year (the TSA budget) on useless screening rather than on things that save people's lives. The statistical value of a life used for regulation setting and the like is anywhere between $5-10M per person. This means that TSA funds could be redirected to safety features that save lives (e.g., road safety improvements, emission controls, healthcare) and save anywhere from 750-1500 lives per year

The TSA's screening is demonstrably useless given that most of Europe and many other countries use more pre-check like screening approaches, face higher risk profiles (as evidenced by more low complexity events - e.g., running trucks through crowds), and do not have planes falling down from the sky left and right.

The above does not even consider the more immeasurable damage to the social psyche of having traditional rights degraded and abuses such as sexual assault normalized under the guise of safety.

This isn't about longing for pre-9/11 days, it is about risk-based decision making and not having ludicrous policies.

ethernal

Pre-check is not a revenue generator from fees - it probably does cost the TSA around $60-90 to pass someone through the application process given the fees for background checks, fingerprinting, and other administrative overhead.

The cost savings are from - as you pointed out - the fact that pre-check passengers require less than half the staffing and equipment to move through a checkpoint. Given that it costs about $4-5 per screening, this means that every time the passenger travels it saves the TSA a $2-3 in costs (this is an oversimplification, but you get the idea). If someone flies 10 originating segments a year (only 5 round trips a year), this is a savings of $125 over the 5 year life of the pre-check membership - which is far more than the application fee itself. For a road warrior traveling several times a week, this can be $1-2K over the life of the pre-check membership.

Mind you, the long term intent is not to save money but to allow the TSA to redirect money to more intensive screening of non-precheck passengers. As pre-check rolls increases, it allows for the things like "removing food and powders" and "removing all electronics larger than a cell phone" (or turning up the sensitivity of the millimeter wave scanners). Those things would be impossible (at the current per ticket tax) without pre-check. This is why I do not join the program - I do not want to allow this redirection of funds to further abuse and harass passengers.

FliesWay2Much

We can't lose sight of the fact that a big reason for ExtortionCheck is to silence those who would be the TSA's most vocal and influential critics under the threat of removing the ExtortionCheck privilege. Many of us have observed that this is identical to the Communist system of privileges.

petaluma1

Breakdown of TSA fee:

Of the $85 fee, $38 goes to the TSA, and the FBI gets $12.50 for handling the criminal check, $34.50 goes to Identogo/Morpho. You pay $12.50 for the "background check" and TSA makes the most money off the scam.

You forget the spring of 2016, when TSA lines became unbearable because TSA was expecting people to flock to PreCheck and they either laid off or didn't hire replacements for screeners who left the agency. TSA never intended to transfer screeners to focus on passengers who need more scrutiny; they intended to cut the work force.

ethernal

Like I said, it probably costs between $60-90 depending on precisely you define precheck costs (e.g., the direct admin overhead versus marketing material versus separate policies/procedure maintenance vs. separate screening stations vs... and so on). Regardless we're talking about half of a percent of the TSA's operating budget per year in precheck revenues. The real savings is from the lower cost per passenger to screen.

petaluma1

But if they can't layoff/replace screeners because people aren't signing up for PreCheck, then there is no lower cost.

Often1

FT could be consolidated into one thread in OMNI. Every one of these discussions degenerates into a political diatribe about a conspiracy de jour.

Worth noting that the House, last week passed proposed legislation which would preclude TSA from authorizing non Pre people from accessing Pre lines. Pre includes those who are in the program via Pre itself, GE, and DOD. The same proposed legislation also encourages TSA to consider a middle ground which is somehow less than standard screening, but more than Pre (whatever that might be).

Stuff like that makes it through the House or the Senate all the time, but rarely both. But somebody had the yank to make the point that too many people are diverted into a paid service who did not pay. It also makes the clear point that Pre is here to stay.

chollie

Shows how little Congress knows. TSA already has middle ground options: Pre Lite and dogs.

I don't care who gets Pre Lite, but Pre pax pay for a service and that service should be provided. Period.

ashill

Though I agree with most of what you say, a nitpick here: the opportunity cost isn't $7.7B a year. Whether screening were conducted by private contractors or better spent by a government agency -- perhaps even one still called the TSA -- the cost would be substantial. It could well be less than $7.7B, but not all that much less. And I'm very skeptical of any claim (not one you've made) that private contractors would do it for appreciably less given equivalent screening standards (whether those standards are current general TSA standards, current PreCheck standards, or something else).

+1

Thanks for these numbers. Though it's important to remember that it's a small fraction of the traveling public that travels five times or more a year. This academic paper (behind a paywall; I can access it through my university library) runs some numbers, albeit with a lot of clearly-spelled-out assumptions which are necessary because they're only using publicly available data. They estimate that the break-even point is around ten screenings per year: for passengers who travel at least that frequently, TSA would break even by offering PreCheck for free assuming that get at least 15 million or so people who travel that frequently into the program (and that that many people even exist, which isn't a certainty).

That's the point of the argument for reducing or waiving the application fee: if they get more people into PreCheck, then they can realize the lower cost by appreciably reducing the volume in the regular lanes.

WillCAD

There must have been some divisions at TSA about that issue, because if they really want to cut the workforce appreciably, there are lots of other options: automated tub returns, eliminating SPOT (or its replacement, Stalking Skies), and of course the most obvious one, changing the default screening to something that makes sense and requires a smaller workforce. But they haven't done any of those things, so my guess is that PreCheck had little or nothing to do with cutting the workforce and was actually intended to fit some other purpose(s).

Well, I think that's because the root causes of almost every TSA-related problem in are political and/or financial in nature. But also, that's the reason for the Checkpoints and Policies Debate sub-forum: to provide the most convenient place, in light of current technology, for debate and discussion to occur, to confine it in good faith to that purpose, and to allow those who do not wish to participate to avoid the debate by electing not to visit the forum.

Agreed - those who pay for PreCheck should get PreCheck, 100% of the time (in those airport which have dedicated PreCheck lanes), and those who get PreCheck without paying for it should be limited to other vetted (i.e. background Checked) persons such as LEOs and those holding federal security clearances.

petaluma1

Better yet, just screen all passengers to PreCheck standard or I should say the original PreCheck standard. From what I have been reading, many FSDs seem to be requiring many standard screening protocols in Pre lines of late.