This morning the House Homeland Security Committee announced
that their Transportation Security Subcommittee would be holding a
markup
hearing on Thursday. Three bills would be included in the markup:
∙ H.R. 3102, the “Airport Access Control Security Improvement Act
of 2015”.
∙ H.R. ____, the ‘‘Partners for Aviation Security Act”.
∙ Committee
Print of H.R. ___, the “Transportation Security Administration Reform and
Improvement Act of 2015”.
The first two bills are airport security bills pure and
simple, so I intend to ignore them. The third bill contains two titles; the
second being “Surface Transportation Security”. That means that it is fair game
in this blog.
Surface
Transportation Security Changes
This Title contains three sections:
Sec. 201. Surface Transportation
Inspectors.
Sec. 202. Repeal of biennial
reporting requirement for the GAO relating to the Transportation Security
Information Sharing Plan.
Sec. 203. Repeal of frontline
employee training requirements.
Section 201 outlines a new reporting requirement for the
Comptroller Generals Office concerning “the efficiency and effectiveness of the
Administration’s 4 Surface Transportation Security Inspectors Program” {§201(b)}. From the tenor
of the items to be addressed in the report, the author (almost certainly the
Committee Staff) don’t think much of the current crop of Surface Transportation
Inspectors. It looks like they want the responsibility for this program to
revert to the DOT modal agencies.
Section 202 removes a reporting requirement for the
Comptroller Generals Office established in
49
USC 114(u)(7). This is a biennial reporting requirement on a user
satisfaction survey concerning “the quality, speed, regularity, and
classification of the transportation security information products disseminated
by the Department of Homeland Security to public and private stakeholders”.
Section 203 removes the requirement for TSA to establish
employee security training programs that were originally required under the 9/11
Commission Act of 6 2007 (
Public
Law 110–53). Those programs are:
∙ Public transportation security training program {
6
USC 1137};
∙ Over-the-road bus security training program {
6
USC 1184}
There are two other programs included in the elimination
program set out in this section that have nothing to do with employee training;
they both deal with employee threat assessment programs:
∙ Threat assessments (public transportation) {
6
USC 1140};
∙ Threat assessments (railroad) (§1520 of the 9/11 Commission Act of 6 2007}
Both of those threat assessment requirements use virtually
the same wording:
“Not later than 1 year after the
date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall complete a name-based
security background check against the consolidated terrorist watchlist and an
immigration status check for all railroad frontline employees, similar to the
threat assessment screening program required for facility employees and
longshoremen by the Commandant of the Coast Guard under Coast Guard Notice
USCG-2006-24189 (71 Fed. Reg. 25066 (April 8, 2006)).”
Commentary
TSA has never actually gotten around to establishing any of
the programs mentioned in §203,
so as a practical matter eliminating them does not make much difference. And
since everyone knows (pardon the sarcasm) that terrorists never attack public
transportation, there really is no need for security training of front line
employees in that sector.
Likewise, there is no chance (again sarcasm alert) that
terrorists would want to become railroad employees to effect an attack. And we
know that terrorists have made no attempt to radicalize Americans as a part of
an effort to encourage lone wolf attacks in this country. With both of those
facts established, there is obviously no need to vet first line surface transportation
employees against the TSDB.
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