Boggie Dog

Seems to me that TSA officials who deployed SPOT or any other program without proper vetting should be held on criminal charges, tried and if found guilty (I volunteer for jury duty), locked up for 15 to 20 years.

TSA is not in the best interest of the United States!

PV and its TSA writers have become such a laughing stock that no one pays much attention to anything posted there.

Propaganda is all PV is for. I would suggest PV is a larger liability than benefit for TSA.

ehasbrouck

Correct. The GAO report reveals evidence that SPOT records were kept in a database for which no proper notice had been published, which constitutes a criminal violation of the Privacy Act on the part of the responsible officials.

LessO2

Getting even more coverage.

N965VJ

Wouldn't it be great if the Nude-O-Scopes came under the same scrutiny we're seeing here? Although, one issue is the contractors like L3 Communications have higher stakes than some snake oil vendor that sold the TSA a glorified PowerPoint presentation of people making funny faces.

jaymar01

From The London Telegraph..........

A team of more than 3,000 "behaviour detection" officers hired to spot terrorists at US airports have failed to catch a single person despite costing the taxpayer $200 million (�140 million) last year.

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles. Published: 21 May 2010

The specially-trained officers patrol terminals monitoring passengers for suspicious body language and facial expressions.

Since 2006, the officers have been stationed at more than 160 airports across the US in order to provide a hidden measure of security.

But 16 people accused of being part of terrorist plots have passed through US airports undetected a total of 23 times since 2004 - a number of them since the scheme was started - according to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

Earlier this year, officials at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which runs the behaviour detection programme, asked US Congress to expand the scheme, which is known as Spot - Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques.

John Mica, a Republican congressman from Florida who was involved in setting up the TSA in response to the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, said it had become too bureaucratic.

He said the report into behaviour detection would further call into question the agency's ability to perform its security mission.

The TSA said the programme is a "vital layer of security based in science", which has led to more than 1,700 arrests for other crimes like drug smuggling.

However, a 2008 report by a team at the National Academy of Sciences said "behavioural surveillance" had "enormous potential for violating privacy" and there was no evidence it worked.

The report said a person behaving oddly could just as easily be planning an extramarital affair as a terrorist attack.

Stephen Fienberg, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, described the programme as a "sham". By 2008, around 160,000 people had been selected to be interviewed or given further pat downs based on the behaviour detection technique but less than one per cent of those were arrested.

Charles Slepian, and aviation security analyst, said the failure of the programme to catch a terrorist was a "disgrace." He told CBS News: "If it worked, you would catch them."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-airports.html

Ari

Interesting-- didn't think of it that way. Usually when the Mendenhall factors are met (think TSO in police-style uniform "asking" someone to "stick around"), the 4th Amendment seizure alarm bells go off in my head.

PTravel

Hey, I'll go with the 4th as well. "TSA . . . what Constitution?"

RadioGirl

Unfortunately, the coverage will be lost in the news about financial reform, the Gulf oil spill and other high-profile stories of the day. While we've seen media coverage of TSA boondoggles before, when has it ever led to a change in TSA direction? The only one I can think of is the change in breast-groping in the early days of TSA. Since then, the TSA just thumbs its nose at Congressional oversight and plugs ahead.

OTOH, the comments from the msnbc story indicates that more and more Americans see TSA for what it really is.

LuvAirFrance

Run me through the scenario whereby they would find a terrorist. Suppose their efforts deter terrorists. The thing is that a terrorist has to get BY them to know they are failing. So what are the examples we know of terrorists that get by them? Abdulmuttalab got by Dutch security. Reid was stopped before he could reach TSA's jurisdiction. Terrorists have flown in WITHOUT carrying explosives. I'd call that half a failure. The ideal system would catch people who want into the country so they can assemble bombs here.

By the way, props for border security for stopping that guy at Port Angeles who had a trunk full of bomb material. But that was before 2001.

A lot of skull energy is spent here on how TSA totally fails. Perhaps a speck of that could be marshalled to show how terrorists with explosive penetrate our defenses.

Ari

Did you bother to read the report? If you did, you'd have one answer to your question-- not the one you'd want, but it doesn't look like you bothered to read the report based on your post.

LuvAirFrance

That isn't an answer to my question. They were later accused of terrorist plots. Well, TSA doesn't exist to stop terrorist plots, it exists to stop blowing up of planes

GUWonder

There will be fools willing to buy into (and/or defend) voodoo "security" -- TSA-style or otherwise -- and that is also clear with the over-funded ridiculous TSA SPOT foolishness.

Ari

What you say above isn't what you said in your post above. You asked "[s]o what are the examples we know of terrorists that get by them?" and I provided an answer. Simple.

I provided one answer to that question. I cannot be responsible for the fact that you didn't qualify your question above and only made a reference in passing to terrorists with explosives in passing in the last sentences of your post.

GUWonder

The failed Times Square car bomber got repeatedly cleared by TSA at airports with these TSA voodoo "security"-"trained" personnel.

Ari

It wasn't a TSA failure since he didn't have explosives with him when he flew-- just ask LAF.

They also missed him on his way out after the botched bombing-- you'd think he'd have been nervous then with the manhunt and all and exibited those telltale microexpressions, but the TSA didn't SPOT him. Alas, he didn't have explosives with him, so all is well.