On November 19, 2001, in the panicked aftermath of the worst attack on American soil, Congress created the Transportation Security Administration. It was supposed to be a shield. Instead, it became a cage.
Twenty-three years later, the TSA has spent over $200 billion of your money. It employs over 50,000 agents. It screens 2.5 million passengers every single day. And in all that time, across all those dollars, through all those searches, it has caught exactly zero terrorists.
Not one.
The Numbers Don't Lie
In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security ran an internal audit. Undercover agents tried to smuggle weapons and explosives through TSA checkpoints 70 times. They succeeded 67 times. That's a 95% failure rate. The TSA's own parent agency proved it doesn't work.
The response? Not reform. Not accountability. They shuffled leadership, held press conferences, and kept the lines moving. Nothing changed.
Meanwhile, 20 airports in the United States use private security contractors instead of the TSA. San Francisco. Kansas City. Key West. Their screening is faster, more effective, and costs less. During the current DHS shutdown, while TSA airports see 4-hour waits, these airports operate normally.
The proof that the TSA is unnecessary isn't theoretical. It's already running, in American airports, right now.
The Real Cost
$11 billion per year. That's what you pay for the privilege of removing your shoes, surrendering your water bottle, and being patted down by a stranger.
$11 billion per year for body scanners that can be defeated by sewing something into a side pocket. For agents who miss 95% of test weapons. For an agency whose own administrator admitted it's "security theater."
But the financial cost isn't even the worst of it.
Your Rights, Stripped at the Gate
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects you from unreasonable searches and seizures. It requires probable cause. It demands a warrant. These aren't suggestions. They're the bedrock of American freedom.
The TSA ignores all of it.
Every time you walk through a checkpoint, you submit to a warrantless search. No probable cause. No individualized suspicion. Just the blanket assumption that every American is a potential threat until proven otherwise.
Children patted down. Elderly travelers humiliated. Cancer patients forced to remove prosthetics. Veterans with PTSD triggered by aggressive screening. Disabled travelers subjected to invasive "enhanced" searches for the crime of needing a wheelchair.
This isn't security. This is submission.
What Actually Works
Real aviation security has nothing to do with taking off your belt.
Reinforced cockpit doors, installed after 9/11, make hijacking effectively impossible. This single change, costing a fraction of the TSA's budget, addressed the actual vulnerability that enabled 9/11.
Intelligence and law enforcement have stopped every real plot since 9/11. The shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the liquid explosives plot: all stopped by intelligence agencies, not TSA agents.
Air marshals provide targeted, trained security on flights.
Private security, as used in 20 US airports and across Europe, delivers better results at lower cost with less invasion of privacy.
Israel, the gold standard of aviation security, doesn't rely on mass screening. They use intelligence, behavioral analysis, and targeted protocols. Their system works. Ours doesn't.
The Moment Is Now
Right now, as you read this, the TSA is in crisis. A government shutdown has left 50,000 agents working without pay. Wait times have hit 4 hours at major airports. Hundreds of agents have quit. Some airports are threatening to close.
And the country is finally asking: why do we do this?
All the news coverage. All the questions about how to deal with long lines, missed flights, preparing for extended travel times. Yet nobody is asking the most important question of all:
That's what Fly Free Again is here to do. Not reform. Not improve. Abolish.
Replace it with private security that actually works. Return to a system that respects your rights. Stop wasting $11 billion a year on an agency that has never, not once, caught a terrorist.
The TSA was a panic response to a tragedy. Twenty-three years is long enough to live in panic. It's time to think clearly, act boldly, and fly free again.