Editorial: Checking the checked bags

Monday, Aug. 7, 2006 | 6:59 a.m.

A s most passengers and tourists know, the Transportation Security Administration routinely sends checked baggage through explosive detection machines, which have been deemed the most effective way to screen luggage.

But not all bags trundle through the machines. In certain cases - for instance, equipment failures, or when high volumes of baggage move through a busy airport - the TSA uses what it calls "alternative screening procedures."

The alternatives include bomb-sniffing dogs, physical bag searches, and one mysterious technique the TSA won't disclose because it is "sensitive security information."

If alternative screening must be used, a few improvements could be made, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. The TSA would improve its operations - and make passengers even safer - if it heeds the congressional auditor's findings.

Perhaps the most interesting GAO recommendation is that the TSA should employ "covert" tests of the alternative methods. The agency's undercover inspectors routinely try to slip potentially threatening materials through standard screening machines. But the TSA doesn't put alternative methods to the same test, which means the agency lacks hard data on the effectiveness of the methods.

TSA officials noted that it's more difficult to schedule covert tests for alternative screening methods because it's hard to know exactly when airports will use them. Perhaps the agency is also a bit nervous about what the tests would reveal. But the agency should find a way to use them. Knowing just exactly how well - or how poorly - alternative methods work would be highly valuable information that ultimately could affect how the agency does its job.

The GAO also reported that the TSA does not know how much luggage passes through alternative-method screening. The agency records the number of occasions an airport used alternative methods, and the number of hours the methods were used, but not the exact number of bags. The GAO recommended better monitoring of alternative screening use, so that the agency knows if it is truly making progress toward minimizing it.

Finally, it would benefit the TSA to establish a minimum goal for alternative screening use. The agency should set that target as a benchmark indicator of just how much risk the agency is willing to accept in using less effective screening methods.