We all know the complete mess this is — millions of names long, many people (including little kids) on it who can’t find a way off of the list, and a government agency who can put your name on it, but has no real way of getting your name off of it. Two pieces of news:
- Analysis of the costs of creating and maintaining this list has been done and:
As will be analyzed below, it is estimated that the costs of the no-fly list, since 2002, range from approximately $300 million (a conservative estimate) to $966 million (an estimate on the high end). Using those figures as low and high potentials, a reasonable estimate is that the U.S. government has spent over $500 million on the project since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Using annual data, this article suggests that the list costs taxpayers somewhere between $50 million and $161 million a year, with a reasonable compromise of those figures at approximately $100 million.
- The House passed HR 559:
The bill would require the Homeland Security secretary to establish a “timely and fair” process of appeal and redress for people wrongly delayed or prevented from boarding a flight, among other things, because of an erroneous match with a terrorist watch list.
The study doesn’t look to consider enough of the costs to passengers who are mistakenly on the list, but we are clearly spending alot of money for a much too large list. $100 million dollars per year that could be spent in really clearing these names or even getting the real terrorists behind bars, rather than just defaulting to the TSA to keep you off of a plane. If these people really were terrorists, they could certainly be working on some non-plane plan, you know? The legislation to get the TSA to give passengers a real process by which to get off of the list passed with 3 (?) no votes. It is pretty incredible that this would actually take an act of Congress, but there you are.