Transportation Security Administration in Airports: Use and Abuse of Power towards Airline Passengers
Abstract
Security checkpoints are necessary to ensure the safety of passengers flying from one location to another. The ethics of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees come into question when their use of authority to profile, humiliate, degrade, and cause harm to passengers becomes the purpose of their job. This paper examines personal experiences to situations discussed in the media bringing rise to questions about the purpose of TSA. TSA continues to face criticism regarding how the power they hold trumps the ethical boundaries and rights of the passengers
Transportation Security Administration in Airports: Use and Abuse of Power towards Airline Passengers
Airport security has become an issue recently due to terrorist attacks, hijacking of planes, and attempts to harm others by the use of hand held weapons or miscellaneous bomb making materials. From January to August of 2012 approximately 1.8 million passengers were screened each day (Burns, 2012) in airports around the country. With this many passengers and the influx of technology, processes have been developed and launched in an attempt to eliminate these threats. In addition, security personnel have been trained to identify banned objects that passengers cannot bring on a plane. These improvements bring increases in personnel behaviors causing controversy and force me to question if TSA employees are being held accountable for their actions and whether or not safety is still the priority.
Major Milestones
Aviation security was founded with the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. This created what airport security has become today through process and policies (Price &Forrest, 2012). This law was written to establish regulations and a process to develop safety of airspace in civil aviation (The Federal Aviation Act of 1958, 102, 1958).
During the 1960’s and 1970’s there was...