Have you ever looked up at the sky and wondered about the planes you see overhead? Since a very young age, planes were my biggest interest. On the many flights I was on, I would memorize the plane's information card in the seatback pocket and stay wide awake to pay attention to the stewardess's every move.  Since this interest continued as I got older, I knew I had to write my research paper on 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 have seen others being facing this issue.  For example, when coming back from Europe with school friends, they stopped my Armenian friend for more inspection.  That was an issue because we had already cleared security in London with no problem.  If there wasn't a problem a few hours earlier, what reasons other reasons are there for them to be suspicious besides how he looks? I realized it was very unfair to the person; that sparked my curiousity why the TSA behaves like it did.   

When I started this project, I did not know what section of the TSA to focus on therefore I looked at a very broad article to begin. "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. Internal flaws, like how workers are not properly screened and lose identification cards, create risks of people interpreting an officers.  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 which is why I knew I was still unfamiliar with which side I wanted to take on the topic. The background knowledge of internal flaws led me to my main topic, making it a beneficial starter article. This was written by The Chicago Tribune, 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 which is where I believe he got his bias against the TSA from. It is easy to become aware of flaws the more familiar you become with them.  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 body scanners and the program SPOT, which stands for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique. SPOT is how the 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 and there is variation because no two people see the same thing. The article argues this program is necessary because terrorists have different mannerisms, SPOT will help detect what the scanners miss. Mannerisms that terrorists display are often the result of nerves, which people traveling for the first time or have other reasons to be anxious commonly show.  It is not okay to use visual cues of anxiety as excuses to subject citizens to more invasive searches. Most travelers have to go through full body scanners now which are very detailed causing privacy issues.  The scanners might not be worth the invasion because they have flaws, like not picking 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 for SPOT has continued to increase. This article is bias against the governments choices because it is clear they don't agree with the governments choices.  It was written by Forbes Magazine, which specializes in financial advice, 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.

The article I found most helpful to my topic was from the Journal of Airport Management, a published professional journal.  The major claim of this article is that airports are "socially-based economic organizations," therefore, the employees should be able to profile. A survey found 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. This is why they are suggesting to start training and putting in place methods to help officers do this ethically.  The article points out that most situations are handled by group decisions.  This is dangerous cause can lead to one person being a catalyst, predisposing others to unethical behavior. The major point the article 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 in varying fields, all with PHD's.  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.  Since the entire journal focuses on airport management, they are defending the programs in place more then other authors would because if they criticized it, they would be scrutinized for not supporting their field members.  I am okay using this source anyways because they prove what they are saying by using statics.

After looking at these three articles, I realize that my topic is very debatable 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, I now need the evidence to support my claim. I feel this paper will turn out well because I have a good start on it and many directions I can take it.
