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By Root 797 0

this relocation to internment camps as a part of loyal Americans’ duty to their country: “Citizenship has its responsibilities as well as its privileges, and in time of war the burden is always heavier.” When the internment camps were likened to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, the Court quickly wrote off such a comparison as “unjustifiable . . . with all the ugly connotations that term implies.” In other words, it was simply assumed that such measures were just, expedient, and proper, and the executive branch was free to incarcerate innocent civilians so long as it could muster up the most tenuous showing of military necessity. Liberty cannot exist, much less thrive, in such a polity. In 1983, Fred Korematsu, the primary litigant in the case, had his conviction formally vacated. His response? “If anyone should do any pardoning, I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the Japanese-American people.” He is right.

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Moreover, physical barriers to travel can come in the form of endangering the act of traveling. This occurs when the government monopolizes the protection of airports, and thus prevents private enterprises from providing a truly optimal amount of transportation security. Business is done better in the private sector for one simple reason: Private businesses will seek to maximize their source of revenue and minimize costs to the greatest degree possible. For example, if an airline company were in charge of its own security, it would ensure it had the most effective, state-of-the-art scanning machines. The company would hire the most skilled and amiable personnel available to run the machines, paying them competitive salaries. Periodically, the company would bring in engineers to monitor the machines’ efficacy. The company would test its products and employees to make certain it was not allowing any questionable materials or customers through its security process. And lastly, the company would ensure that its consumers, the passengers, made it through its security lines safely, securely, and swiftly. Without providing these services, an airline would most certainly go bankrupt as consumers chose safer, more efficient means of travel. Today, only the government does this, and very poorly. As Professor Robert Higgs notes, “We need to create an institutional structure that aligns the interests of all involved in airport security, a system that will foster innovation and accountability. Such a system can be created and operate successfully only in the private sector.”5

The government, however, infringes upon the right to travel when it monopolizes airport security and performs a mediocre job, thus preventing individuals from providing adequate security themselves. To demonstrate the government’s inadequacy in airport security: Almost one year after September 11th, with all the security implementations that came with a post-9/11 world, a July 2002 TSA survey of thirty-two major airports “found that fake guns, bombs, and other weapons got past security screeners almost one-fourth of the time.”6 In 2006, the government’s own investigators conducted covert security tests at twenty-one U.S. airports. Undercover agents carried the materials needed to create a bomb, including components of improvised explosive devices and common household chemicals, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.7 The result of the test? The forbidden materials got past screeners and scanning machines in every one of the twenty-one airports tested. Since September 11th, “hidden weapons and simulated bombs have made it through checkpoints in hundreds of tests.”8 If our own government can get past TSA, surely a bunch of determined terrorists can do the same.

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The litany of governmental security failures is long, and the taxpayer bill is high—seven billion dollars annually go to the TSA.9 The Christmas 2009 underwear bomber is just one example of how security is breached under the “watchful” eye of TSA. Even more, shortly after the underwear bomb attempt, Homeland Security Secretary Janet