Baffling Decision to Cease Ban on Knives on U.S. Flights Reversed
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עברית (Hebrew)
The surprising decision made earlier this year to reverse the ban on knives on U.S. flights had even the most junior Israeli security experts baffled.
According to Bloomberg, the Transportation Security Administration will need to consult with industry groups on decisions like ending the ban on knives aboard airplanes, under a bill the House advanced today.
The Chamber’s Homeland Security Committee, on a voice vote today, approved legislation to make the TSA’s Aviation Security Advisory Committee permanent. The agency would have to talk with the group as it develops policies, regulations and security directives.
Representative Richard Hudson, Chairman of the Transportation Security Subcommittee, said the legislation is a response to the TSA’s attempt earlier this year to relax the ban on carrying small knives onto commercial flights. The agency reversed itself in June after protests by flight attendants, airline executives and TSA employees. “One day Harvard Business School will teach a seminar on how not to roll out a new rule,” Hudson, a North Carolina Republican, said in an interview. “This will be the textbook example.”
iHLS – Israel Homeland Security
Ideas such as relaxing the knives ban should be discussed with industry groups like airlines, airports and unions before they’re announced, Hudson said. He said he supported the policy change while criticizing the way TSA Administrator John Pistole had gone about it.
He went on to say that both Republicans and Democrats on the committee agreed that the agency’s methods for acquiring equipment, such as screening machines, are inefficient and unnecessarily complex.
The agency has a warehouse full of equipment it has bought and never used, while other companies have put time and money into developing technology which TSA asked for, before deciding it was no longer interested.
