Only as long as Francine has access to Google.

But that gets tricky because you're a human being. Here's a scenario that may well have been what happened in the kiddy porn case. You're looking through a bag and there's an envelope full of pictures. One of them falls out. That picture is of a naked young child. From that picture, you can't tell whether it's an innocent picture of a toddler about to take a bath or potential kiddy porn. Do you look in the envelope at the rest of the pictures to decide what to do? Do you call an LEO? The former is clearly outside of the SOP. The latter is somewhat dubious because the picture in itself is not suggestive of anything illegal. So the line is even finer.

C'mon ... that's not what he said. There's plenty of room between "knowing more than I do" and "constitutional expert".

TSA has lawyers that claim that what TSA is doing is constitutional. No challenge to TSA procedures has been successful to date; that doesn't mean a future challenge won't be successful, of course, but it also means that the procedures aren't laughably unconstitutional. gosltso's statement still holds; unless someone gets a court to intervene in ways they haven't done to date, or senior management changes direction, TSA's current procedures are what we're all stuck with.

...or until the TSA's spineless "employees" evolve some backbones and start refusing to mistreat fellow citizens based solely on their desire to travel in a timely fashion.

I don't see that one happening any time soon, either.

Or, until the US flying public rises up and refuses to tolerate the current state of affairs. That ain't gonna happen any time soon, either.

Plenty of apathy on both sides to go around ...

I disagree with that. I think you're assuming the courts operate at a speed much faster than they do. Many of the procedures we're talking about have only been in effect for a few years. It takes far longer than that for constitutional cases to work their way through.

Not that I know of as a matter of policy, but I have heard reports of awards being given for finding items (guns are the only thing I can recall at the moment and I can't find the article on it, it was like 5 or more years ago).

Not necessarily, but I do know other people than TSA senior management.

Agree that this is a touchy issue, but I tend to operate based on what I can glean from the actual situation. Based on your situation, there is no overt indication of child pornography, simply a photo of a naked young child. I think that more of us have photos of our family members in less clothing than they are usually in, and none of them have any sexual component at all. I even have a pic of my daughter when she was tiny (6-7 months old) sitting in a bucket with full imagery of her above the waist with a huge smile, it was a great picture. There are tons of art exhibits with naked imagery of children and adults. Without fairly conclusive evidence that it is actually pornography (such as sexual acts or lewd posing) it is simply a photo of a child in their natural state.

^

But clearly, as you say, many (if not most) TSOs don't have equal sensitivity to this issue as you apparently do. Then there's the proverbial "bag of white powder". Some TSOs have posted there that they don't try to figure out what the powder is, but call an LEO to do so. That's exactly the same sort of ambiguity as the naked picture of a child, though less likely to run into emotional concerns. But calling an LEO in that case is equally wrong, I believe. The constitutional problem with this scheme is the fact that so many people are being required to "do the right thing" for it not to be a violation. And that sort of situation has been found, many times, to be unconstitutional for just that reason.

I think it's interesting that, as far as I know, there was no appeal to the two losses in an exclusionary hearing when a TSO found an illegal, but non-WEI, object. That tells me that DOJ is much more concerned about the constitutional issue than DHS and doesn't want to have a negative precedent. If DOJ keeps the practice of not appealing such, we may never have a definitive court opinion on the topic.

I agree that not every TSO thinks and operates the same way I do. It is a tough call on many of the things and I am certain that we could list a whole slew of items/substances that would be a subjective call on the part of the TSO. I just think there is no easy answer for this, we have both sides indicating that they are right Constitutionally, and it appears that neither side will go lightly on this issue.

There may have been procedural or technical issues that prevent those appeals, or it may be that they do not think they have anything to appeal on. One of the cases thrown out was because the TSO clearly exceeded the scope of the SOP, by looking specifically for something outside the WEI description - by her own admission. An appeal in that case would have been a moot attempt. Which cases are you referring to so I can look them up and see what type of situation you are commenting on? (I don't need necessarily a specific link, just something I can use to look them up)

I'll stand by my comment.

TSA's brain trust is imposing rules on the public without any real means of challenging those rules. TSA has failed to follow the Administrative Procedures Act prior to its rulemaking and even when ordered by a court to conduct a period of public comment has failed to act promptly to do so.

Everything TSA is doing that goes beyond a limited Administrative Search solely for WEI is in my opinon unconstitutional.

Don't forget that BOS is part of an acknowledged "pilot" program to interrogate passengers about their travel that goes well beyond the run-of-the-mill BDO program, which I assume is where you participate. A colleague of mine was subjected to 20-30 min of intrusive and IMO harassing questions on his residence, work, family, education, etc., by your pilot-program colleagues at BOS.

So, either by official policy or made up by the local management policy, BOS may have some sort of quotas beyond what you experience. Perhaps for no other reason than to ensure that the pilot is "successful."

I seriously doubt management told TSOs to go single out minorities. The leaders are stupid, but not that stupid. What I find plausible is that management told TSOs to generate some number of referrals, and the individuals involved started using their own experience and intuition, both right and wrong, as to which passengers were more likely to help fill their quota with drug finds, etc. It's completely non PC to admit this, but there is a statistically higher chance of "finding something" on certain ethnic/class groups relative to others (just look at conviction stats relative to proportion of population--no way that is *all* bias). But TSA and LEOs (rightly) aren't allowed to use that as selection criteria, because it leads to a very bad place. The problem is that if you set people loose with the BDO mission and a quota, human nature will kick in and use of inappropriate criteria is virtually inevitable. This is exactly the same scenario that has led to major racial profiling cases among state highway patrols.

The problem with quotas in this situation is also that it leads to an assumption that every day, every week, there will be 'x' number of guilty pax. Failure to meet the numbers suggests sub-par performance by the BDOs.

It also generates a false sense of security. If the targets are met, we must be safe - even if the targets are met by attacking folks who are not and never were a threat to aviation security.

Hypothetically, if part of TSA's 'unpredictable' approach (meaning "we can't train our people to maintain the same level of consistency that the average McDonald's worker produces) is to act as a deterrent to bad guys, at some point, most, if not all, of the bad guys will give up and go try something else somewhere else. If that is not true, then it undercuts TSA's rationale for random make-it-up-as-you-go standards at the checkpoint.

Imagine if the President's Secret Service worked this way - if they were required to 'bust' a certain number of suspicious characters every day as part of their job protecting the President. Does anyone think that would make the President safer? Or, instead, less safe, because a Secret Service agent who is pre-occupied with a quota might be so focused on a non-threat that will satisfy his quota that he misses a genuine threat.

I don't think "apathy" is part of the problem in many cases.

Too many TSA employees are entirely dependent on the lie that the TSA is the only thing keeping aircraft from being blown out of the sky to obtain their only possibility of a paycheck for it to be apathy on their part.

And too many sheep believe the lie, so they support "anything for the illusion of security."

Neither is apathy.

I would argue that many passengers are also dependent upon submitting to TSA's policies, because of the requirements that they travel by air for their (non-TSA) employers.

But ... yeah, "apathy" is probably not the right word for the argument I was trying to make. Which is it would be just as fair to "blame" the lack of change in TSA's policies on the millions of passengers who don't challenge those policies as the thousands of TSA employees who don't challenge them, either. Mass uprisings of either group have yet to be seen.

Of course, it's not fair to "blame" either group --- the real responsibility lies elsewhere.

What you indicate is a natural progression in many cases, and may be the case here, it may also be that the senior management on scene told them "I want x number of pulls today, and x number of them must be of y ethnic group". At this point, we simply do not know what actually happened, and the sad thing is, we may never really know what happened. There is currently an investigation going on, to try and get to the bottom of the complaints and determine what (if anything) out of the ordinary has happened.

Based on information I have from fellow BDOs that are more familiar with the pilot program, they are subject to the same restrictions and prohibitions that I and all other BDOs are, so I really do not know what has happened up there - IF anything at all happened.

Agreed, and that is a part of why the regulations for this position specifically prohibit any sort of profiling, and direct the program to be focused solely on behaviors that are observed. Quotas do not serve in an industry that is not manufacturing or specific goal oriented - security should have no quotas unless you have something like an assigned pattern patrol (which boills down to x stops at x locations during an assigned shift - which is also bad security in and of itself). Quotas in a process like this, will only result in the wrong type of actions by the employees, and that is bad for the passengers, bad for the employees and bad for security.

^^ Very well stated. The federal government has created this problem with their "you must federalize to professionalize" bovine excrement.

Another ^^ for stating the patently (to anyone but a TSA employee) obvious.

^^ one more time. This scenario is not limited to TSA - it is applied across the federal government by virtually every agency with enforcement power. It is simply more visible when applied by TSA.

LOL, unless the investigation is conducted by personnel outside TSA, we are never going to know what really happened. The federal government goes out of its way to make sure employee misconduct is covered up or spun to minimize the real story.

I took the time to read through the entire thread, including the article. The article itself is much more condemning of the TSA that almost all of the people posting. It is a serious accusation with a large number of people willing to stand up and say it is happening. At least 32 TSO's and multiple LEO's are mentioned by the article. The practice is repugnant and a bit scary in that secret procedures can be put into place to trap certain people outside of the TSA WEI mandate and it still be considered fine as they are trying to catch terrorists.

As to the bag searches for WEI that turn up other potentially illegal items, it is a difficult problem. However, the TSA is given statutory authority to look for WEI and that is not a problem. They do not, as far as I know, have statutory authority to do a search that includes the potential for criminal activity unrelated to aviation safety. It was said that they have the same responsibility to report potential illegal activity that is coincidentally found that a private citizen does. Fine, surrender the protection that being a federal employee gives to you in the performance of your duties to the reporting of non-WEI items, just like a private citizen, and then we will have a genuine comparison.

TSO's never operate without the protection of their position. It is what makes the expansion of the administrative search doctrine to the CP such a contentious policy, and it is the reason many of us say that its expansion exceeds the bounds of The Constitution, statutory authority and/or the regulatory process.

No, I think it's perfectly fair to blame the thug juggling my junk for doing so.

Many investigations by TSA internally have resulted in varying forms of discipline, ranging from a "Don't do that again" all the way to mass firings. The investigation in Hawaii began with complaints from TSO(s). Look at the boondoggle that turned out to be. I think that if something is there (and I concede that with this many employees coming forward, it is hard to imagine that nothing is going on), we will hear of some folks hitting the bricks. I also understand (having been involved in investigations before) that jumping to conclusions without evidence is a good way to make such a mess that the wrong people often get punished. A true investigation doesn't take place in a 45 minute tv show, or two days, it can take months to do things and do them right (unless you get what we used to call a golden egg - you have a full confession from someone deemed sane, and all the evidence links them, and even those took a couple of days to a month depending on the evidence processing/testing).

No one is saying that the investigation should "jump to conclusions." I simply have little confidence that an in house investigation will hold senior people accountable for their role in crafting a policy that led to line TSO misconduct.

The public has a right to know the degree of corruption in government agencies and with TSA doing the invedtigation we will never know the whole story. Tsa, the corrupt investigating the corrupt.

The concern here is multi-faceted.

TSOs and LEOs have come forward to say that there was racial profiling (which is a fancy Newspeak term for persecuting people based on their race rather than on any kind of legitimate evidence, cause, or suspicion).

We're concerned that this profiling is mandated by the secret policies outlined in secret documents which are not available for us (the public) to review. You can deny it all you want, but until those documents come out, there is no way to prove that racial profiling is not an official part of TSA's SOP.

We're also concerned that, even if there is no official policy of racial profiling, it may be an unofficial, unspoken policy, encouraged in a quiet wink-wink manner by TSA management in BOS, and either not known or tolerated or even encouraged by TSA higher management.

We're concerned that the entire BDO or enhanced interrogation pilot program in place at BOS is inherently flawed. These programs may have a built-in racial, cultural, gender, or age bias, or the implementation of the programs may be inherently flawed by the biases of those who created them, or the programs may be inherently flawed in that they don't compensate for possible inherent bias on the part of individual BDOs.

And we're concerned that an investigation of TSA by TSA may cut loose some scapegoats - a few bad apples - while not addressing the actual problems that caused the racial profiling in the first place, because TSA's primary aim in this investigation is not to solve the actual problem, but to address the public-relation problem alone.

So, even if we do hear of some folks hitting the bricks, I won't be satisfied with that unless the investigation is conducted by objective third-parties outside of DHS, or the entire interrogation and BDO programs are eliminated.

Scratch that. I won't be satisfied till those programs are eliminated. Period. There is no justification for them, and they are far too dangerous to allow them to continue.

I think the Nature article says everything we might need to know about the fatally flawed "BDO" program.

Namely:

This.

There are too many incidents where we never hear the outcome, but of the rest, there's way too much "retraining" and "reprimanded", with the occasional "no longer works for TSA." But the policies themselves continue, to be used (or abused) by the next load of bad apples.
+1e6. BDOs, NoS, groping, shoe carnival, the war on liquids, the lot.

I agree with Richard and BD. At best, TSA has lawyers that claim that what TSA is doing has not yet been shown to be unconstitutional.

In practice, TSA claims that their policies, SOP, regulations, etc, are necessary, whether or not they're constitutional. They'll push it until some case makes it through the court system; even then they may ignore the court's ruling, as they've ignored the Congress and the APA, expecting that subsequent victims will not pursue the matter.

Point taken.

I understand what you are saying, I just do not necessarily share that point of view. Every investigation that I have seen first hand, reached a conclusion that was right and just according to not just the regulations, but mostly the spirit of the regulations as well.

I understand your concerns, and hope that when the investigation is completed, the results can allay some of those fears. I have voiced before that I take the position that, if I have done something wrong, whether by mistake or ignorance, the best process is to admit the mistake, learn from it, and move forward. Large institutions do not always subscribe to that point of view for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which involves legal reasonings. I hope that when the investigation is over, they at least publish the basics - "this is what we found substantiated, this is what we found to be false and here is what we have done to rectify it". From the POV of TSA, that may not be feasible, again for a myriad of reasons, although it would be better PR to do so.

Isn't the above post contradicting an earlier post where it was mentioned something about the wrong people often getting punished as a result of investigations?

I understand what you're saying, but I have zero confidence that TSA will ever take the high road.

Yes, when this investigation is over, there will be some sacrificial lambs who are given their walking papers, and TSA will put out a press release stating that some bad apples went far beyond what they were instructed to do, so the remaining apples will be retrained and new rules will be put forth - SSI, of course, so the public will never see them - banning racial profiling. The actual IG report will also be SSI - after all, it will have to include some of the super secret details of the enhanced interrogation program, which terr'ists could then use to play the system - so we'll never see it, either.

Meanwhile, the inherent flaws in the programs will not be addressed, and the interrogation program at BOS will eventually be rolled out nation-wide, probably very quietly and only a few airports at a time, and the racial, gender, and socioeconomic biases of the various interrogators will continue to play into their LEO referrals and their enhanced screening referrals.

On another note, please don't take my dislike of your employer personally. I have found you to be the most reasonable, logical, and civil of the TSOs who post on FT, and I hope that you don't take our disagreement and my vehement dislike of your employer and its policies as any sort of personal attack on you.

^

Unfortunately, I don't fly through GSO, so I generally run into a different sort of attitude than yours (at BOS, for example). :(

Let's be clear about a few items:

• The search is an administrative search and not a consent search.
  
  
• The "illegal items" at issue are those found in the administrative search and are not "in plain view".
  
  
• TSA provides no training to TSO's as to what are illegal (but not prohibited) items. The only training is as to prohibited items. As such, the analogies to teachers noting child abuse and firefighters noting fire code violations are not relevant.
  
  
• The SOP says to report the suspected illegal item to an LEO (technically, a one-striper would have to report it to his supervisor who would report it to the LEO). What are the repurcussions for failing to report the suspected illegal item? Since the TSO has no training, there can be no repurcussions. The SOP is a bark without bite. (If, in fact, a TSO has been disciplined in the least for failing to report a suspected illegal (but not prohibited) item, then that would vitiate the administrative search exception being used.)
  
  

Seeing as my previous comment was spoken from the point of view as an investigator myself, and using that as a generalization about how jumping to conclusions can result in the wrong person being punished, no.

Looking back I thought the phrasing was enough, but I should have indicated the difference in situations.

The primary flaw in the "program" is that it simply doesn't work.

It's like the TSA had so many people totally unqualified for any sort of real task that they had to make up an entirely new set of theatrics for them to fail at.

What you state is a possibility, there is also the possibility that the program is scrapped and started all over again, or is done away with, or that they find out what actually happened and take the proper steps. Whichever situation rises to the top, I think that the direction the security focus is heading for the foreseeable future is of a Risk Based style of approach - which has its positives and negatives (just like all the other security programs out there). One positive that may result from this is more training for the BDOs, which should be better for all involved, because better trained individuals tend to make better decisions. Don't get me wrong, while at TSA, I have done more training (even before the BDO job) than I have done since I left the Army, and that is saying something. I have been accused of being an eternal optimist (many times by folks here, but it was not nearly that nice of a phrase), but I like to think that the right thing will surface in most situations. That does not happen as often as I would like, but I would like to think that it does happen, many do not share this viewpoint, and that is good, it helps to keep the system honest, and force changes when the system breaks down or is not reflective of the public conscience.

Logical and reasonable people can disagree in fundamental ways and still have discussions about those disagreements. I take no disagreement with me as a personal affront unless it is phrased as such (and even then, I tend to simply ignore the insult and look for what I can learn from the statements tied to them). I appreciate the kind words, and look forward to discussions in the future, and if I ever post something that strikes you as personal, I hope that you would let me know, because these posts are not intended as such.
:D

Yes, you are an optimist. I'm usually an optimist, but this is one area where I have given up.

I would like to live long enough to see a checkpoint that routinely provides me:
- a polite, respectful experience - keep your hostility for proven bad guys
- a no 'hands in the pants/between the legs/down the collar' experience every time I fly because I am physically unable to use the NoS.
- ability to secure my belongings - checked bags (locks) and standards for what can and can not be taken through the checkpoint.

I currently get all three consistently at overseas checkpoints. (I mention this only to demonstrate that I know from personal experience that it is possible, particularly #1, which would cost the TSA nothing (unless they feel that bloated over-priced outsourced video 'training modules' are necessary to try to teach professional courtesy, something which should be a job requirement in the first place - new hiree can't be polite and respectful, let them go during probation, end of story).

I just returned from a flight that routed me through CDG. There, just like at other airports in the EU, such as AMS, CPH, BRU, and MUC, security is professional, low key, and non confrontational. No ineffective AIT machines, no barking employees, no long lines, no shoe carnival, and passengers being treated with respect. In other words, the polar opposite of the TSA experience. And guess what - airplanes aren't falling out of the skies departing from those airports.

While you are one of the few sane people from TSA posting here, you are working for an agency whose very existence is an affront to the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution.

I have a serious question about a "risk based" approach to security. It seems to me that any true risk based approach would have to take into account all the potential risks; otherwise a significant security hole would exist. Based on new reports it seems that TSA employees themselves represent a considerable risk.

News media have reported numerous incidents of theft from checked baggage. It should be obvious that if a TSA employee can remove things from a check bag without being detected that same employee could insert a WEI into a bag. We have also seen accounts of TSA screeners taking payoffs to allow what they thought were illegal drugs through at checkpoints. The would-be drugs could just as easily been WEI's.

Any true risk based security approach would necessarily begin with an enhanced focus on TSA itself. TSA is most likely the single largest security flaw in the entire system.

What I find particularly fascinating about security at large international airports (outside the US) is that there's no huge proliferation of taped loops, signs, large-screen videos and roving, barking security people shouting instructions (all of which are bought at inflated prices with taxpayer dollars in the US).

But somehow my waits are always shorter and there isn't the sort of last-minute mess as pax approach the belt that TSA says we'd have in the US without all the signs/shouting/taped loops/TVs.

And in many of the large international airports, there are far more languages being spoken (or not) at any given time than in many US airports. Yet somehow people know what to do.

Isn't that the truth, Chollie. Even the Chinese are polite and professional. Perhaps they would like to re-train the TSA?

It's quite amazing that the TSA and the rest of the world are such polar opposites.

The largest part of the mess at US airports is because of the TSA's ridiculous idea of "security", while a substantial part of the mess at the same airports is due to passenger cabin baggage policies being more "generous" at US airlines than with most foreign airlines.

I haven't personally witnessed that at non-US airports, even when flying non-US carriers. Of course, I don't have to fumble at the last minute to take ID/BP out, re-stow ID/BP, remove baggie, remove shoes- that's a fair amount of activity that's not standard outside the US.

In the US, even if you have a very small single carry-on, suitable for the most rigorous foreign LCCs, you will still have the added activity of BP/ID out/in, shoes off/on, LGAs out/in, laptops out/in (not to mention possibly belts/suspenders and, at an airport with NoS, all pockets emptied of even a piece of tissue).

Perhaps it's also the carriers I fly (haven't flown any LCCs), but I always take essentially the same carry-ons - a rollaboard and a rucksack/satchel, possibly a jacket that I leave out overseas, but stuff inside my rucksack in the US rather than putting it a dirty bin.