TSA’s passenger-sniffing dogs are waste of money, audit finds
Washington DC May 3 2020 The dogs that Transportation Security Administration agents use at some airports to screen passengers are cute — and that’s sometimes all they are, an audit of the canine program found.
In a withering report, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said Thursday that the dogs’ training is so outdated that they may not be able to sniff out the latest types of explosives, leaving travelers at risk of a “catastrophic event.”
Beyond that, the TSA doesn’t even know how many dog teams it needs, nor does it deploy them based on risk. Some TSA employees reported that use of the dogs seems more about speeding passengers through lines than about searching for explosives.
Overall, the passenger screening canine program is not worth the $77 million annual cost, the inspector general said.
“TSA could have redirected nearly $77 million spent on PSC teams in fiscal year 2018 to other security programs and activities to better protect the aviation system,” the inspector general concluded.
The dogs’ inability to detect some explosives was a glaring hole.
TSA acknowledged that it hasn’t updated its training for the dogs “in many years” and may be missing new types of threats. The program is still using perceived threats and intelligence data “which is no longer relevant,” the audit said.
