Racial Profiling at BOS
 

From the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/us...s-say.html?hpw

Not surprising.

I remember when I flew back from Hong Kong a few years ago, customs was pulling everyone aside who wasn't white.

And shameful as this report and alleged practice is, has a BDO ever found a ter'wrist? Anyone? ;-)

(bolding mine) Aaah, so there ARE quotas to be met! A certain number of people must be hassled on every shift for the sake of appearances... or something. We're not finding terrorists under every rock, so we'll settle for any number of other "good catches" in the name of transportation security!?

:td::td:

I wonder if the quotas are absolute numbers or if they are based on percentage of pax passing through a checkpoint?

I suspect a direct correlation between the numbers and managers' bonuses or pay increases.

DHS engaged in racist profiling? "I am shocked -- shocked -- that [racist profiling] is going on 'here'". :rolleyes:

The more amusing thing is how DHS and some airport "profiling" advocates are trying to defend the voodoo "security" program of "behavior-detection" at airports and on airplanes as if it were generally effective in identifying and/or even "deterring" terrorists. Closet racists -- which includes, but is not limited to, those who may publicly pretend to be shocked or disappointed by racist profiling of one sort or another yet advocate on its behalf in large part -- aren't locked in a closet. Peter King and his fans are involved, so shock at racist profiling at airports and on planes is merely from those feigning shock, the ignorant and/or those playing to the ignorant.

From the article..."That is what happened last month at Logan airport to Kenneth Boatner, 68, a psychologist and educational consultant in Boston who was traveling to Atlanta for a business trip.

In a formal complaint he filed with the agency afterward, he said he was pulled out of line and detained for 29 minutes as agents thumbed through his checkbook and examined his clients’ clinical notes, his cellphone and other belongings."

So much for your privacy even if you don't fly.

I wonder how far they can take this at the checkpoint.

If my cellphone is password protected, can I be forced to give them the password to allow them to search my pictures and call log as part of the 'administrative' search?

The excuse for going through his checkbook and papers, of course, is that they are looking for dangerous items like razor blades and sheets of plastic 'nasty'.

Let's not overlook this, toward the end of the article:

I believe at that point the only thing you have on your side is silence.

Or state that you'll be happy to help after consulting an attorney during their questioning.

I'm surprised phone manufacturers haven't come up with an option where one password decrypts a "clean" phone and a different password decrypts the regular one.

For those who haven't heard about it, TrueCrypt lets you do that with computers, you create a hidden volume inside the encrypted volume, so the hidden volume contains the valuable stuff and the regular encrypted volume contains bogus data and the passwords are different. So you can have your highly confidential documents in the hidden with a password of "12345" and then non-sensitive documents filling up the regular one with a password of "67890", so if asked for a password, you give them 67890 and they will only have access to the data that is there just to throw them off.

Of course, you can always set up your BlackBerry to erase itself off after 3 failed attempts and you give them the wrong password to wipe it, then you remember that the phone has a different password, and the phone is now wiped.

"Cellphone" and "privacy from government intrusion" are diametrically opposed.

Consider. Then chicken out.

Seriously is anyone surprised that the SPOT program is absolute nonsense? It's not alone in that regard but the TSA will never, ever capitulate on any of them. The whole agency is a joke; or would be if it weren't so damned dangerous.

TSA wastes 8 billion dollars each year, ($8,000,000,000.00), and has never found a terrorist even with staffing levels of approximately 60,000 employees.

The TSA Vodoo Science BDO program has only profiling or out right chance to rely on and is a total waste of taxpayers monies.

Just one of the 20 Security Theater Acts TSA calls security.

Odd that they were looking for drugs, warrants and illegal immigrants but somehow forgot the whole terrorist thing.

Mike

Wouldn't this be a violation of HIPAA laws?

The BDO program seems like a great way to catch people with warrants and drugs that aren't a threat to aviation. It's much like the NoS which is great at finding drugs and toothpaste.

TSA will say that they only searched the checkbook and documents looking for concealed razor blades or other harmful items. They will deny actually reading the content of the documents. This may or may not be official policy, since TSOs have been caught actually reading and challenging documents (including checks) before.

A review of tapes could indicate whether or not the documents were simply leafed through or actually studied, but you know how unreliable the cameras are - tapes get lost, erased, cameras don't happen to cover the area where the scrutiny took place, etc.

Odd indeed at first glance.

But given that

1) there aren't that many "terrorists" for the TSA to find in the US; and

2) the terrorists that do fly (from airports with a TSA wanted-and-approved "security" screening) have generally not been identified as terrorists by the TSA and routinely missed

even where the voodoo "security" of behavior-detection is part of the picture,

it is odd but not surprising that Team TSA comes up with their own wacky idea of "success"/"succeeding" so as to carry-on with business as usual for the TSA.

Yup, pretty much sums it up. Thinking of bringing a copy of this article to Logan tonight and keeping a copy in the top of my bag and a copy in my pocket to see what they say if they start reading it after I opt out and they search me.

Mike

TSA HQ denies that this happens, but because it keeps no records of race/ethnicity, the organization actually has no idea whether or not it happens.

We have the word of the folks on the front lines doing (and objecting to) the profiling that say it does happen. Thirty of them say it happens. I don't know how many BDOs BOS has, but thirty folks telling the same story seems somewhat persuasive to me.

And we have the Massachusetts State Police, who don't provide specific numbers, but who have questioned why the overwhelming number of the cases referred to them are minorities. Just coincidence, of course.

Liar, liar
 

Let's not forget that this board's TSA participants have steadfastly denied that they look for drugs, etc. and that there are no quotas.

While we have never believed them, their lies are now revealed. And anyone who believes anything they say has got a screw loose.

...I guess no one could never compete with the straw men of your arguments.

Mastering the English language might help you obtain a job with a non-criminal organization.

(bolding mine) Sorry, I have believed things that were posted here or PM'd to me. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that one of the most prolific posters was untrustworthy. I followed the advice I was given and ended up having a supervisor take copies of my ID/BP and the TSO's 'helpful' PM and giving me a lecture on how stupid I was to believe that just because someone self-identified as a TSO and posted as such, it was not necessarily the case. In fact, he told me, it was a likely scenario for someone with bad intentions to try to test the system by taking advantage of my naive trust.

He kept the PM for the 'report' he was making on the incident.

That is actually a very helpful piece of advice! :D

HIPAA only covers healthcare providers. That means that the TSA would be held blameless in the revelation of sensitive medical information, and the only person punishable in this situation would be Dr. Boatner!

The TSA has made a regular practice of revealing private medical details of travelers, often in an extremely loud voice by shouting about these across a crowded checkpoint. I found out about a colleague of mines' pacemaker that way. He didn't want me to know about it. After the TSA had its way with him, everyone in a 300 foot radius knew.

From a Boston Globe article:

The training is working . Baa baa, little sheep.

Also, all investigations into the profiling allegations are being conducted by TSA, so it's sure to be exposed :rolleyes: The rest of the article is worthy of a read.

The reports specifically mention dress as well as race as factors.

A prominent libertarian commentator adds her opinions and makes what IMHO is an excellent point in her blog here:

I got to experience the BDO's at BOS departing on B6 last year. For a few moments I actually wondered if I somehow mistakenly ended up in the Federal Inspection Service area after the officer started asking me about the purpose of my trip to Boston, who I met and what I was bringing back with me. The questions would have made perfect sense for customs but I see no connection with air security.... looked like a fishing expedition to me.

Supposedly that's just to verify that your story is consistent and what not.

The natural TSA response
 

The only response you can count on - as told in the DL forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...r-liquids.html

Casually dressed caucasians traveling alone seem to get hassled the most

Managers’ demands, hmmmmm

The story is also in USA Today:
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/s...terstitialskip

And the comments below the article are the typical mix of stuff that sound like it came from FT, and the AFS crowd using the same tired, lame old argument, "You would be the first one to complain about TSA not doing enough if something bad happened!"

The equivalent of "reverse discrimination" with regard to racial profiling. Instead of doing the right thing, which in this case would be to abolish the pseudo-science BDO program, they simply decide to target extra white people to get their ratios to look better. Casually dressed travelers are likely perceived as more cooperative and less likely to file complaints, yet another form of assumption-based profiling.

Anyone who believed this program would not lead to forms of profiling considered inappropriate in the US, particularly race and apparent ethnicity, was in complete denial of human nature. The profilers are inevitably going to use all of the information available to them, even if they are not supposed to, and draw conclusions both correct and incorrect based on their common experiences and beliefs.

The mythical "reverse discrimination" wasn't goosing the numbers the way racist discrimination against non-ethnic European minorities was "accomplishing".

Compared to "black" and "brown" minorities, the European-American passengers wearing jeans, T-shirt and sneakers were far less likely to be singled out for extra hassling by these TSA clowns "profiling" than the mentioned ethnic "black" and "brown" minorities.

Profiling -- racist profiling as it continues to be -- by "security" screeners at an airport is but a euphemism for invited bigotry against classes of ethnic and/or religious minorities that relies upon some prevailing, emotional narrative of (group) guilt by association.

While they may attempt to mask the racism by goosing up the numbers of persons from primarily European ethnic background, the harassment has not been equally intense for all groups.

Knowing the TSA's overreaction and SOP, I'm guessing it's going to be a bad time to be white and flying out of BOS for the next few days. I have a feeling their "solution" will be to scrutinize white travellers more thoroughly.

I don't like the racial profiling, but the quota system really bothers me. Drugs, fake ID's, and immigration issues are not a danger to aviation, but the TSA is going out of their way to find them instead of concentrating on actual threats. I'm not surprised that they are doing this though.

I already quoted above what a libertarian writer argued, and IMHO she makes an excellent point that bears repeating, including the sentence I've bolded:

Doesn't the tacit admission of this kind of behavior put the entire "Administrative Search" schema in jeopardy? It should.