Because of Washington partisan politics, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) doesn’t expect to be able to field upgraded and new biometric airport screening technologies until well into the 2040s, if not longer.
This includes the first upgrade of passenger checkpoint x-ray technology to Computed Tomography (CT), and checkpoint Credential Authentication Technology (CAT).
Why will these crucial screening technologies take so long to deploy? Well, it’s not because TSA doesn’t have “the vendors and processes in place to complete them in this decade,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske told the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security during a May hearing on TSA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget request.
The reason for the bottleneck, Pekoske told the subcommittee for the third year in a row, is because a third of the 9/11 security fee revenue that TSA has collected every year since 2013 and deposited into the Aviation Security Capital Fund, which has historically been used to offset security expenses, has been diverted into the U.S. Treasury’s general fund, which has become a tool to offset partisan spending elsewhere to the detriment of aviation security.
Several former senior TSA officials now working in the private sector told Biometric Update on background that they fully support “getting rid” of the diversion, as one put it, bluntly adding that it’s been “a noose around the agency’s neck for far too long.”
Without naming names, one of the former officials said, “you’ve got these congressmen over here who want to cut this or that, or spend for this or that, and they see this two, three, four billion over here [in the Treasury every year], and they use it to bargain for what they want. It’s got to stop!”
The Passenger Security Fee was established by the post-9/11 Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) that created TSA. The fees originally were supposed to help pay for the costs of aviation security. These fees, though, have not kept pace with inflation, and, today, are insufficient to fund most of TSA’s activities, including the development, acquisition, and deployment of new and improved airport and passenger screening technologies.
Depending on whose calculations you use, over the last decade, roughly $12.1 billion of the $36.4 billion collected under the Passenger Security Fee to finance the continual upgrading of security technologies at airports has been siphoned into the Treasury’s general fund.
To make matters worse, there have been significant cuts in funding for these technologies – from $80 million to $35 million in the FY 2024 appropriations bill alone.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 mandated that approximately one-third of the Passenger Security Fee that’s added to the price of every airline ticket purchased in the U.S. that TSA collects each year is diverted to the general treasury to offset unrelated government spending. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 extended this diversion of funds through FY 2027. It’s estimated that perhaps as much as $10 billion could be diverted from aviation security through FY 2027 unless the law is changed.
The actual figure has been a moving target for years. In September 2021, when Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT.) for the second time introduced legislation that would eliminate diversion of the 9/11 security fees, they said at that time that “more than $19 billion in total will be diverted by FY 2027.”
“We must ensure that the money passengers pay for their own security is actually used to protect the flying public,” Markey said at the time, to which Blumenthal added: “Consumers rightly expect the September 11th Security Fee be used for its intended purpose: to prevent future threats and maintain safety in our skies.”
At the current rate of investment that’s called for in the FY 2025 budget request, $90 million, TSA’s capital investment plan shows that its upgrade of checkpoint x-ray technology to Computed Tomography will not be completed until 2042, 18 years from now.
Similarly, TSA’s upgrade of checkpoint Credential Authentication Technology – to include facial recognition – will not be completed until 2049 at the present rate of investment of the paltry $9 million that’s called for in the FY 2025 budget request.
Could TSA ask for more money? Of course, it could. The problem is that a larger request would most likely be cut, as it was in the FY 2023 and FY 2024 budgets.
Although the House Committee on Appropriations said in its U.S. Department of Homeland Security FY 2023 budget report that the committee “supports the development of biometric identity validation tools by both the private and public sector to improve security and facilitate the passenger journey from curb to gate,” it nevertheless slashed TSA’s Real ID program management office budget and provided only $22.3 million for credential authentication technology.
TSA’s FY 2025 budget request continues procurement and deployment of CT and CAT at $99 million, “along with a request of $18 million to drive innovation through ongoing research and development with TSA’s partners,” Pekoske said.
But that’s not enough to complete the planned upgrades to CT and CAT technologies any sooner than 24 years. Since 2022, TSA has been rolling out upgraded CAT devices that use facial biometrics to compare real-time photos of travelers against their government-issued IDs, but Pekoske said last month that it will likely take another 25 years before TSA can field facial recognition scanners at all 400 U.S. airports unless Congress acts to eliminate the diversion of passenger security fees.
Pekoske told the subcommittee that “TSA needs a total of 3,585 CAT and 2,263 CT machines to reach full operational capability (FOC). Currently, Checkpoint Property Screening System (CPSS) procurements are an estimated 40 percent of FOC, which puts deployments at approximately 35 percent for CPSS and 57 percent for CAT. Based on past, present, and current projected funding, TSA will meet FOC for CAT machines in FY 2049 and CPSS in FY 2042, respectively.”
“These timelines can improve, with your continued support,” Pekoske told the subcommittee, pointing out that “we have the opportunity to accelerate both projects with additional investment as TSA has the vendors and processes in place to complete them in this decade … not in the 2040’s.”
But without additional funding, the FY 2025 budget necessarily “balances growth and advancement with tough choices,” Pekoske said, explaining that the request includes only “moderate growth in technology acquisitions and research and development of new technologies,” and that to save additional monies, “proposes the elimination of the Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response program of $68 million, which removes a surge capacity to protect airports and surface transportation systems.”
“The Passenger Security Fee diversion is a total scam … that must come to an immediate end,” agreed Rep. Nick LaLota (D-NY), vice chair of the subcommittee who for the second time has introduced legislation to get rid of the diversion. “We have a duty to the American people to be truthful about where this revenue is going and ensure our airports remain safe and secure for decades.”
LaLota said last month when he introduced his bill to end the diversion that the “diversion … not only undermines the trust of air travelers, but it also exemplifies a stark case of governmental overreach by misappropriating crucial security funds.” He said, “a staggering one-third of these funds – totaling over $19 billion – has been diverted from their intended security purposes to the Treasury for unrelated expenditures,” and that “this misallocation [must end].”
LaLota’s bill has the support of the members of the subcommittee.
The legislation would also create the Aviation Security Checkpoint Technology Fund, which would be used specifically to modernize and maintain checkpoint security technology and would not raise any fees or taxes. It would allow TSA to acquire new and modernized technology like CAT machines and Computing Tomography sooner, rather than several decades from now.
Elimination of the diversion of the security fees has been supported for years by Airlines for America, Air Line Pilots Association, Airports Council International-North America, American Association of Airport Executives, American Federation of Government Employees, American Society of Travel Advisors, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Global Business Travel Association, and the U.S. Travel Association.
Article Topics
airports | biometrics | Credential Authentication Technology (CAT) | digital identity | facial recognition | legislation | TSA | U.S. Government
