The Aviation And Transportation Security Act - 1367 Words

November of 2001 the Aviation and Transportation Security Act was signed into law. The TSA now employs over 50,000 officers. These officers screen approximately two million airline passengers per day. One report states that these TSA officers have â€Å"detected 50 million prohibited items, including 5,000 firearms on passengers attempting to board planes.†(Johanson, 2011) TSA officers are tasked with a huge responsibility. They run body scanners, baggage scanners, physically wand people, and sometimes have to perform hands on searches of baggage and people. Another job that TSA officers are tasked with is screening passenger’s identification and passports. They have been trained extensively on how to identify a forged document. There†¦show more content†¦TSA officers have to perform their jobs to the best of their abilities while also trying to not infringe on passengers rights to privacy. The Department of Homeland Security plays a large role in ai rport security as well. They are responsible for maintain a database of persons of interest. The Department of Homeland Security uses the database to target and identify flagged individuals and unknown people who may be a threat to the United States. Another job they have been tasked with is processing visas for travel to the United States. After September 11th the Visa Security Program was implemented. Fifteen countries now have nineteen posts for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These posts are tasked with performing thorough background checks on anyone who applies for travel to the United States from high risk areas. The Department of Homeland Security(DHS) has also signed Preventing and Combating Serious Crimes Agreements with many different countries. This agreement requires other countries to share data that has been collected about terrorists and criminals. They also share and analyze data that shows travel patterns that may indicate a threat. Those patterns a llow DHS to predict and understand the travel patterns of know terrorists. DHS can then watch for these patterns in other passengers and flag those with suspicious patterns. The Federal Air Marshals program grew drastically also. They are