Almost everyone has some complaint about having to travel through airports but what happens when you realize the people who were supposed to protect you might have a vendetta. There is an issue of unfair treatment that needs to be called to attention because goverment security should make you feel protected and not discriminated against. By looking at the inadequate training, privacy issues, and racial discrimination of Transportation Security Administration, it becomes evident that the TSA is operating an organization with poor ethics.  

Like every job, training is essential to having effective employees, that inquire little to no issues. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is in charge of protecting 1.8 million passengers on a daily (Burns). It is crucial that each employees be prepared to handle any situation but the inadequate training puts the passengers and organization at risk. Many would expect government security personal to be some of the best and brightest, however, that is not the case, many of the employees are below average. To reconigize this, we need to start at the hiring procedures. A majority of employees have minimal education because all that is required to become an agent is a high school diploma, no felonies on your record, and be of the age of 18. Of these qualifications, it seems that the background check seems to be overlooked. According to Brian Bennett, when they searched the names of employees against the National Counterterrorism Center, 73 employees had previous terrorist links. On top of that, background checks are done within thirty to sixty days of hiring, leaving to much time between for issues to arise (Stark and Hovell). Untrustworthy employees are equally a big risk because they have access places that could be very detrimental if a bomb was placed.  These issues only seem to get worse when we look at how the TSA officers are trained.

In order for the TSA to be effective, more intense training programs should be required because currently sufficient training isn't achieved currently. The TSA website says it takes about a week to do the initial classroom hours and 24 hours of on the job training.  The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General released a report in October 2011 about the TSA's screening workforce training program saying that was not enough. The report found that the "TSA does not ensure that transportation security officers are provided the time they need to effectively complete training requirements," and that, "TSOs described rushing through course material without devoting the attention needed to retain the lessons." (CAIR). It is an issue of national security and their lack of reform is unethical because they are putting our lives at risk. One-way reform is beginning to occur is through an amendment to the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (Public Law 107-71).  It is being asked that the number of hours for training, hands on work, they be aware of all policies and enforce civil rights.  This would be monitored by "annual proficiency reviews of security personnel a demonstration of the knowledge and skills necessary to perform screening in compliance with passenger civil rights (CAIR.)"  This would be very useful for providing piece of mind and to discourage racial discrimination. We should also look at examples from foreign governments, like Israel's, to further improve ours.

No other airport in the world faces more such threats than Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport in Israel (Wagner). They have responded by constantly implementing new security measures, making them a great role model to follow.  They prevent the issue of inadequate training by taking their security officers from their military, all have above average intelligence (Kleiner). They are then trained again in detection and interrogation skills which they use every day since every single passenger goes through an interview that happens before the ticket counter (Wagner).  It has proven to be true over the years, that humans give away distress signs that the officers pick up on which is why they only use basic medal detectors (Wagner). If the United States could duplicate a system like this, we would have a more secure and ethical program.

Would you be comfortable with strangers seeing details of your naked body? Body scanners have been a privacy issue for years now. In 2015, it was passed that full body scanners are mandatory for some passengers (Brownlee).  This cause many passengers to feel uncomfortable because these scanners send out electromagnetic radiation which creates detailed images of your body. PICKLER argued that it is "virtual strip searches without probable cause" which goes against the fourth amendment which prohibits unreasonable searches without a probable cause. For this reason, "Twenty-five civil liberties, human rights, and non-profit organizations, have joined TSA body scan fight instigator Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in a coalition spearheaded by EPIC to defeat the TSA's new procedures" (Brownlee).  It is clearly a violation of human rights supporting the other evidence showing that the TSA is participating in unethical practices.

In addition to the privacy issues, the ethics of the machines can be questioned when we look at the price of them.  Scholtes found that it cost $120 million for these body scanners.  The average price tag for 1 scanner is about $150,000, plus the software updates and maintenance these machines need. The high price could be justified by a high success rate, but they fail to provide that. A recent security audit found that TSA had failed to find fake explosives and weapons in 96 percent of covert tests (Scholtes). It seems unethical to waste that much money on ineffective equipment when they cannot detect materials like C4 which is used to make most explosives (Leef). It should be noted that Israel only uses medal detectors and has had never considered the scanners.  According to Julian, who is an Israeli security, full-body scanners are useless. "I can overcome them with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747."  This is why they should focus on other alternatives that are responsible financially responsible so their ethics cannot be called into question over being frivolous. An observation program partnered with the body scanners is just as much at fault for being unethical.

The current observation program is SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) which focuses on behavioral ques to alert officers of suspicious activity . Although it is based on other successful identification programs, SPOT has flaws due to discrimination and lack of training.  In order to become a SPOT officer, an individual has to go through an additional four days of behavioral classroom instruction and analysis, and 24 hours of on-the-job training (CAIR).  There are 644 Behavior Detection Officers deployed in 42 airports (Love). It is important to remember that Israel's Observation officers are taken from the military which is months of profiling techniques then trained again on behavior recognition. The additional training the U.S. observation officers get is just not enough for it to be equivalent to the successful recognition programs or make a substantial difference in our safety.  The real difference this program makes is the increased potential circumstances for racism.  

The reason the Israel's detection program is successful is because they have interaction with the people before they jump to conclusions. Sadly, security officers for SPOT just take behavior clues to tell if something is suspicious then investigate.  It is a lot easier to attribute certain actions to termism if you are discriminating against someone already. According to CIAR, an American Islam Relational Group, the "TSA hired an individual who appeared Middle Eastern/South Asian in descent to test screeners at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by carrying a shaving kit made to look like a bomb" (CAIR). The drill ended up backfiring on them when inappropriate profiling was concluded due to the race of the man.  

Recent studys have shown that "Humans do barely better than 50% in trying to guess whether someone is being deceptive. There are no great variations in individuals' ability to detect deception.  Supposed experts such as cops and customs agents are no better than anyone else. There are few if any reliable cues to deception.  People frequently misread signs of stress, nervousness, and discomfort as indicating lies" (Stanley).  This easily happens in airports since officers are not aware of previous travel history or anxiety disorders that could lead to excess nervousness.  Most terrorists are put through internal training to not make distress signs visible.  There is not a textbook policy that can be successful so the TSA should adapt innocent until proven guilty into their policies.  

When looking at "The Influence of Race/Ethnicity on the Perceived Prevalence and Support for Racial Profiling at Airports" by Gabbidon, it is proven that race affects people's belief that airport security racially profiles and discriminates unfairly. Around sixty percent of the public thought that racially profiling was a common thing.  The study focuses on the different views of people from different economic statuses or races.  It found that Blacks were more likely to say racially profiling at airports was a prevalent issue.  Whites and Mexicans are tied on their beliefs regarding how common it was.  When asked if it was justified, white people and males were much more likely to say it is. This is important because a large amount of TSA workers are Caucasian, so it is likely employees are discriminating less against their own race.  Pre existing bias and high sense of job security promote the unethical behavior of SPOT officers. 

Airports are "socially-based economic organizations" therefore it will be impossible to stop all observation programs since that is human nature.  Instead, the TSA needs to work on education programs that will prevent racial discrimination. An example of their ignorance to other religions was shown through their behavior to a fellow employee. The TSA employee engaged in a lawsuit because he was prohibited from wearing a Kara, a religious bracelet to remind him of God.   They denied his situational request because they were not respectful of his religion.  The lawsuit found that telling him he could not wear the bracelet was discrimination. This is a sad reminder that they are not enforcing security, they are enforcing intolerance.  

There are twelve main world religions.  Generally, people without college degrees are more intolerant of other religions.  Forty-three percent of all people who make less than $30,000 a year are (Winseman). TSA agents fall into both of those categories.  This is another reason their training is inadequate, they are not taught religious tolerance.  This makes them more susceptible to discriminate against others, since they aren't aware of all their religious symbols.  Examples of religious discrimination against others is "at Miami International Airport (MIA) Terminal D passenger checkpoint on April 8th, 2015, Transportation Security Officer (TSO) Celestin asked me to take my hat off. I said my hat is on for religious reasons. He then said: "no it's not!"" (Civilrightsfederal) Most foreign airports have religious sanctuary rooms that are advertised over loud speakers.  However, in the United States an individual has to seek them out.  If addition to having rooms, if officers were forced to monitor them as well they might learn respect for other religions because hundreds of harmless people go in there every day. 

Malaika Singleton and Novella Coleman complained that TSA agents singled them out because they wore their hair in locs (Starr). While we want our safety to protected to the best way possible, unless they had probable cause it was inappropriate. Kirshenbaum found in a survey that many employees will disobey protocol if they were having a suspicion about a security threat so having an all technology based system will create unethical behavior.  There needs to be a change in protocol if we are going to allow this. 

In conclusion, the ethics behind the TSA are struggling because of lack of training which leads to discrimination religiously and racially.  The officers are not selected from the most qualified pools of people.  By increasing the quality of the officers, employees would not be faced with the issues of ignorance to religions and races. Training programs are something that needs to be fixed at a government level and hold the training officers to a higher standard. Looking at other governments would help us improve our systems and make this a more ethical program.  

