Zero2Cool
13 years ago

TSA security looks at people who complain about ... TSA security 

Washington (CNN) -- Don't like the way airport screeners are doing their job? You might not want to complain too much while standing in line.

Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.

Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.

But one addresses passengers' attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures."

TSA officials declined to comment on the list of indicators, but said that no single indicator, taken by itself, is ever used to identify travelers as potentially high-risk passengers. Travelers must exhibit several indicators before behavior detection officers steer them to more thorough screening.

But a civil liberties organization said the list should not include behavior relating to the expression of opinions, even arrogant expressions of opinion.

"Expressing your contempt about airport procedures -- that's a First Amendment-protected right," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who now works as legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We all have the right to express our views, and particularly in a situation where the government is demanding the ability to search you."

"It's circular reasoning where, you know, I'm going to ask someone to surrender their rights; if they refuse, that's evidence that I need to take their rights away from them. And it's simply inappropriate," he said.

The TSA says its security programs are informed by real-world situations and intelligence. Indeed, the immigration agent who refused to let the alleged "20th hijacker" into the United States in 2001 later testified that the man's arrogant behavior contributed to his suspicions.

Agent Jose Melendez-Perez told the 9/11 commission that Mohammed al-Qahtani "became visibly upset" and arrogantly pointed his finger in the agent's face when asked why he did not have an airline ticket for a return flight.

But some experts say terrorists are much more likely to avoid confrontations with authorities, saying an al Qaeda training manual instructs members to blend in.

"I think the idea that they would try to draw attention to themselves by being arrogant at airport security, it fails the common sense test," said CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen. "And it also fails what we know about their behaviors in the past."

The 9/11 commission's report says that "none of the checkpoint supervisors (on September 11th) recalled the (successful) hijackers or reported anything suspicious regarding their screening."

But, it says, an airline ticket agent that checked in hijacker Mohammed Atta says Atta "reacted negatively when informed in Portland (Maine) that he would have to check in again in Boston." Atta "clenched his jaw and said ... with some irritation, 'They told me one step check-in,'" he recalled. The ticket agent recommended the United States hire "behavior profilers ... the way they do overseas," the report says.

Rafi Ron, former director of security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, said an arrogant complaint about security is a legitimate factor to consider. But officials also should be suspicious of effusive praise, he said.

"The other end of the spectrum is almost as bad, although it is maybe less offensive," he said.

The TSA is expanding the behavior detection program, formally known as SPOT, for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique.

Currently, some 3,000 uniformed behavior detection officers are deployed at about 175 airports. President Obama is calling for an additional 175 such officers in his 2012 budget proposal, and the TSA is expected to spend a total of $1.2 billion on the program over the next five years.

In recent years, the TSA has also expanded the scope of the program. Originally intended to look only for suspected terrorists, the program now also seeks to ferret out possible criminals in airports.

Many details of the program are publicly available. According to a Government Accountability Office report, uniformed behavior detection officers typically work in two-person teams at airport checkpoint lines, looking for behaviors that are on the SPOT checklist, each of which is assigned a numerical value.

The officers sometimes initiate casual conversations with passengers, particularly if a passenger is exhibiting behaviors on the SPOT checklist.

In most instances, the Accountability Office said, the conversation resolves the suspicion.

But if both behavior detection officers agree that observed indicators exceed a predetermined numerical threshold, the person is referred to additional screening, which can involve more questioning and physical searches of a person or property.

If the person's behavior escalates, accumulating more points based on the SPOT checklist, the officers can refer the person to local law enforcement for investigation. After the law enforcement investigation, the TSA officials determine whether to allow the passenger to board the flight.

The Department of Homeland Security says the program is successful, telling Congress last week that, in a recent test comparing behavior detection officers to random screening procedures, the officers were 50 times more likely to refer people they checked to local law enforcement, and about 4.5 times as likely to identify people with prohibited items or fraudulent documents.

Taken together, such officers are nine times more likely to identify "high risk" passengers than random screening, the department said.

"SPOT identifies high-risk travelers at a significantly higher rate then random screening," Larry Willis of the department's Science and Technology Directorate testified.

But one member of the study's Technical Advisory Committee said the study did not establish the program's scientific validity.

"The advisory committee has not been asked to evaluate the overall SPOT program, nor has it been asked to evaluate the validity of indicators used in the program," Philip Rubin testified to Congress last week.

Advisory committee members were not shown the list of behavioral indicators, he said.

"My concern is that if I'm a member of the public and I hear (Willis') testimony, it sounds like the SPOT program has been validated," Rubin told CNN.

He said that while large numbers of people were screened, very little criminal activity was detected, and the numbers may not be statistically significant. "The hit rate is so low on this, it could turn out to be a random glitch," he said.

The Government Accountability Office also criticized the study, saying TSA's records are incomplete and the study is not designed to answer the big question people have about the program: Does it work?

The study "is not designed to fully validate whether behavior detection can be used to reliably identify individuals in an airport environment who pose a security risk," the agency said.

Members of Congress also expressed concern about the number of "false positives" -- people flagged for additional screening that resulted in nothing being found. For every person correctly identified as a "high risk" traveler by (the behavior detection officers), 86 were misidentified, Willis said. At random screening, for every person correctly identified, 794 were misidentified.

The TSA does not track the number of arrests, convictions or exonerations of people that are referred to law enforcement, he said.

The ACLU's German, who has not seen the behavioral indicators list, said he fears the indicators "are being used simply as a proxy for racial profiling or other inappropriate police activities." The number of people arrested at airport checkpoints for immigration violations suggests the behavior detection officers are profiling, he said.

Thirty-nine percent of the 1,083 people arrested during the first four and a half years of the program were arrested because they were illegal aliens, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Experts agree that the fact that there is an extremely small number of terrorists makes it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of behavioral observation programs. The Accountability Office said it looked at 23 occasions in which 16 individuals -- people later charged with terrorism-related activities -- passed through high-threat airports. None is known to have been identified. But it is not known if the behavior detection officers were working at the time, the agency said.

Stephen Lord of the Accountability Office is recommending the TSA study airport videos of those instances.

"We believe such recordings could help identify behaviors that may be common among terrorists, or could demonstrate that terrorists do not generally display any identifying behaviors," Lord said.

"Mike M. Ahlers and Jeanne Meserve" wrote:


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Nonstopdrivel
13 years ago

the officers were 50 times more likely to refer people they checked to local law enforcement



Is that seriously how we define success these days in the "Land of the Free"?
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Zero2Cool
13 years ago

the officers were 50 times more likely to refer people they checked to local law enforcement

"Nonstopdrivel" wrote:



Is that seriously how we define success these days in the "Land of the Free"?



Land of the Free, if it's convenient to falsify a perception of safety to others.
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Wade
  • Wade
  • Veteran Member
13 years ago
So because one person who was upset at an intrusion turns out to be a terrorist nutcase, its okay?

(Comments about the TSA omitted until I'm home from my trip.)
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
Zero2Cool
13 years ago

TSA head: Airport screeners must avoid pat-downs of children 
The Transportation Security Administration is changing its policy on how screeners can search children, the agency's head has said.

TSA Administrator John Pistole announced the change at a Wednesday meeting of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

The change was prompted by outrage over a video-recorded pat-down of a 6-year-old airline passenger at the New Orleans airport on April 5. The video, which was posted on YouTube, shows the girl protesting at first to the search, although she complies quietly while it is under way.

Pistole explained to committee members that a female security screener performed a pat-down search on the 6-year-old girl because the child had moved while passing through an airport body imaging machine. That prevented the device from getting a clear reading that the child was not carrying any banned objects through airport security.

"We have changed the policy to say that there'll be repeated efforts made to resolve that without a pat-down," Pistole told committee members.

The new policy will apply to children 10 years old or younger, Pistole said.

The incident renewed debate over the the TSA's security practices, especially their use on such low-risk passengers as young children. A backlash against passenger pat-downs -- an alternative to full-body scans in some locations -- swelled during the holiday travel season last year. Pistole maintained at the time that the agency walks a fine line between privacy concerns and public safety.

However, during the committee meeting, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, grilled Pistole for erring thoughtlessly too far on the side of safety.

"This isn't to say we don't believe in safety procedures," Paul said. "But I think I feel less safe when we're doing these invasive exams on a 6-year-old. It makes me think that you're clueless, that you think she's going to attack our country, and that you're not doing your research on the people who would attack our country."

Pistole suggested a pat-down of a child is not entirely unjustified.

"Unfortunately, we know that terrorists around the world have used children as suicide bombers," Pistole replied.


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Zero2Cool
13 years ago
She's definitely a threat to our safety.

TSA stands by officers after pat-down of elderly woman in Florida 

The Transportation Security Administration stood by its security officers Sunday after a Florida woman complained that her cancer-stricken, 95-year-old mother was patted down and forced to remove her adult diaper while going through security.

Reports of the incident took hold in social media, with scores of comments on the topic and reposts appearing hourly on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

The TSA released a statement Sunday defending its agents' actions at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport.

"While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner," the federal agency said. "We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure."

Jean Weber told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield on Sunday that the security officers may have been procedurally correct, but she still does not believe they were justified, especially given her mother's frail condition.

"If this is your procedure -- which I do understand -- I also feel that your procedure needs to be changed," she said.

Weber said the two were traveling June 18 from northwest Florida to Michigan, so her mother could move in with relatives before eventually going to an assisted living facility.

"My mother is very ill, she has a form of leukemia," Weber said. "She had a blood transfusion the week before, just to bolster up her strength for this travel."

While going through security, the 95-year-old was taken by a TSA officer into a glassed-in area, where a pat-down was performed, Weber said. An agent told Weber "they felt something suspicious on (her mother's) leg and they couldn't determine what it was" -- leading them to take her into a private, closed room.

Soon after, Weber said, a TSA agent came out and told her that her mother's Depend undergarment was "wet and it was firm, and they couldn't check it thoroughly." The mother and daughter left to find a bathroom, at the TSA officer's request, to take off the adult diaper.

Weber said she burst into tears during the ordeal, forcing her own pat-down and other measures in accordance with TSA protocol. But she said her mother, a nurse for 65 years, "was very calm" despite being bothered by the fact that she had to go through the airport without underwear.

Eventually, Weber said she asked for her mother to be whisked away to the boarding gate without her, because their plane was scheduled to leave in two minutes and Weber was still going through security.

By this weekend, the 95-year-old woman -- who was not identified by name -- was doing "fine" in Michigan, where her niece and her family "was treating her like royalty because they love her so much."

"My mother is a trouper," Weber said.

This is not the first time that the TSA's pat-downs of passengers have come under fire, nor the first time that the agency has rallied behind its officers and policy.

Last year, the administration announced it was ramping up the use of full-body scanning and pat-downs to stop nonmetallic threats, including explosives, from getting on planes. The goal is to head off attacks such as the one allegedly attempted in Christmas 2009 by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who allegedly had a bomb sewn into his underwear on a flight from the Netherlands to Michigan.

The TSA estimates that only 3% of passengers are subjected to pat-downs -- and then only after they have set off a metal detector or declined to step into a full-body scanner. Yet the new policy has triggered an uproar online and in airports, from a relatively small but vocal number of travelers who feel their rights and privacy were being violated.

But the federal safety agency hasn't backed down, making some adjustments but no major changes to its policy.

"Every traveler is a critical partner in TSA's efforts to keep our skies safe," Administrator John Pistole, who ordered the new approach, said last fall. "And I know and appreciate that the vast majority of Americans recognize and respect the important work we do."

More recently, outrage erupted over a video-recorded pat-down of a 6-year-old passenger last April at New Orleans' airport. The video, which was posted on YouTube, shows the girl protesting the search by a female security officer at first, though she complies quietly while it is underway.

Pistole addressed this controversy at a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee meeting last week, explaining the pat-down was ordered because the child had moved while passing through a body imaging machine. He told committee members that "we have changed the policy (so) that there'll be repeated efforts made to resolve that without a pat-down."

The next day, TSA spokesman Greg Soule said that the new policy -- which will apply to children age 12 and younger -- is in the process of being rolled out. It will give security officers "more options," but does not eliminate pat-downs as one of them.

"This decision will ultimately reduce -- though not eliminate -- pat-downs," Soule said.


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Zero2Cool
13 years ago
The more of these stories I hear about, the more I'm thinking we've lost our freedom while choosing to fly.
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Nonstopdrivel
13 years ago
And for what? So far the TSA hasn't caught a single terrorist.

My prediction: They never will.
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Zero2Cool
13 years ago

And for what? So far the TSA hasn't caught a single terrorist.

My prediction: They never will.

Originally Posted by: Nonstopdrivel 



I think I feel more violated from the TSA than I do safe. Myself personally, I don't care if they pat me down, but my daughter, or kids in general I think is just wrong. Even cases like the one quoted above too.

I still think they should just make the cockpits impossible to access during flight and quit with this over protective freedom infringing process. As someone else mentioned, it's costing us quite a bit of money for an illusion of safety.
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