(NEWS CENTER) -- Some issues stemming from inside the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have only continued to grow in the last few years.
The governmental overhaul of airport security gave birth to the TSA in a post-9/11 political landscape that quickly condensed numerous agencies inside what we now know as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The TSA replaced private security firms that were screening passengers and their baggage but had failed to contain the coordinated air threat against high-profile targets on September 11th. The main goal of the somewhat young administration is stopping the hijacking and/or crashing of flights in US controlled airspace.
The TSA's biggest service issues come from two divergent patterns, a reduction in the number of working agents, as more Americans choose to fly than ever before. With more passengers, comes more baggage and chances for agents to miss concealed weapons, bombs or contraband.
In the recent national political spotlight, TSA's (acting) Under Secretary of Transportation for Security Huban Gowadia has been under an impending threat by some of the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to stop redacting records and provide internal documents to the Office of Special Counsel about how the administration handles whistle-blowing employees that have noticed flaws in their agency procedures.
"We have a legal obligation to provide documents to the OSC...my personal relationship with the OSC has only just begun." - Under Secy. Gowadia
After attending the hearing on Capitol Hill, Under Secretary Gowadia and her administration failed to comply with a subpoena that would make the matter become more transparent and give the OSC the resources it needs to pursue an investigation.
In the not so distant past, the high costs of baggage theft claims became national news. NEWS CENTER investigated to learn more about how local airports like PWM reduce these incidences.
File video: Maine perspective on lost airline items (2015)
One of the continual air safety issues is related to how many more weapons travelers are 'packing.' An official TSA weapons blog lists at least 50 guns, many of them loaded and chambered, per week. There were 6,044 firearm seizures in 2015/'16.
As scary as the idea of firearms making it on planes is, there is also a variety of contraband, including grenades, hazardous materials (and strangely, numerous cane swords) that are routinely seized across the country. Even though major incidents have not arisen mid-flight, getting a solid figure on how many weapons or banned materials are actually getting on board could be much higher considering that 95% of banned items passed by TSA security during tests as recently as 2015.
To combat the summer surge of passengers the TSA has pledged to hire thousands of employees to keep from a repeat from when some major airports had massive lines and wait times that led to a ripple of delayed flights and cancellations.
