Have you ever watched airplanes and wondered how they fly or what kind they were? Since a very young age, planes have always fascinated me so instead of normal kid-friendly entertainment during long flights, I would memorize the plane's information card in the seatback pocket.  This interest grew stronger as I got older so when presented with the opportunity to do a research paper on anything we wanted, I knew I had to do something in the aviation field.  I chose to focus on the TSA since they are an essential part of making air travel possible.  I have never been discriminated against by them but I have seen others being pulled aside just because they don't look like everyone else.  At first that always seemed normal, but the more I witnessed it I realized it was very unfair to the person so I wanted to know why the TSA did that.   

When I started this project, I did not know what section of the TSA to focus on so the first article I looked at was very broad. "Dumb Luck Apparently Is More Effective than the TSA" by Josh Noel states that the effectiveness of TSA is not high.  It talks about the gap between government systems which prevents them from having the ability to identify risky passengers.  There are also flaws internally, like how workers are not properly screened or the missing identification which could be used to interpret an officer.  The article says the fail rate is 95% and the program costs 7 billion dollars to maintain each year.  Much has been said on this topic and you can really argue both sides of this issue so I knew it was not what I wanted to do but the background knowledge of internal flaws led me to my main topic making it a beneficial starter article. This was written by a newspaper that would not have had any special interest in making this article bias.  The author has a travel column so he has followed airport issues for years now. I believe he is credible because he sites his sources and I was able to view many other articles Noel has written.

The next source I looked at sparked the idea behind racial profiling. "TSA Boondoggles: High Costs, Low Effectiveness, But It's Only Your Money" talks about the program SPOT and the body scanners. SPOT is how TSA tries to stop potential terrorist's threats by observing people to determine their risk.  This visual analysis is a problem because employees end up discriminating against certain groups. The article argues this program is necessary because terrorists have different mannerisms so SPOT will help detect what the scanners miss. The scanners have flaws like they don't pick up small amounts of C4 or strategically placed weapons. The cost of these programs are very high without much evidence to back up its effectiveness yet the budget increased for SPOT. This article is bias against the governments choices because it is clear they don't agree with the governments choices.  It was written by a newspaper so I do not think there was special interests behind this piece.  The author, George Leef, is creditable to write about this topic because he specializes in the government budget. This article had to do with that since it talks about the amount of money spent on TSA compared to the effectiveness.

In the article I found most helpful to my topic was in the Journal of Airport Management.  The major claim of this article has is that airports are "socially-based economic organizations" therefore the employees to profile. It found in a survey that many employees will disobey protocol if they were having a suspicion about a security threat. Going by the book is not applicable to real life situations in some cases. The article points out that most situations are handled by group decisions that can lead to one person being a catalyst predisposing others to unethical behavior. The major point it is trying to get across is that unfortunately the TSA has some employees that do not obey the rules given to them but it is not fair to judge the whole program off this issue since most are doing what they feel will keep the publics safe.  This article is written by 6 scientists with a PHD.  They are knowledgeable about the subject and are qualified to conduct research studies.  It was published in the "Journal of airport management" which means it is a good source but there is bias since it was published in this journal.  They would most likely not publish an article criticizing what they do so it is not surprising that the program is defended in it.  I am okay using this source anyways because there are lots of statics proving what they are saying.

After looking at these three articles, I realize that my question is arguable since some people believe that racially profiling is a good method of keeping us safe and others believe it is discriminating. For example, the program SPOT came under fire in the second article but in the third it is said to be essential due to the nature of airports.  The different perspectives make me more aware of the argument and changed my thoughts on how it is completely wrong.  I think I have revised my question many times so at this point it does not need changes, it needs the evidence to make my claim now. I feel as I am off to a good start and think this paper will turn out well.
