TSA agent arrested in alien smuggling ring
 

Looks like someone's going to need some serious retraining...

http://www.wokv.com/news/news/local/...ople-us/nZwrM/

more details in this Spanish language article from a Puerto Rican newspaper...

http://www.elnuevodia.com/arrestanae...s-1594548.html

Apparently, the TSA agent is based in Orlando but allegedly helped Brazilians without proper papers transit to the East Coast via SJU. Oddly, it doesn't appear that he was caught by a BDO...

Didn't this TSA employee have a background check? How could this have happened?? :confused:

When a passenger breaches the "sterile" area, the TSA response is a terminal dump. Shouldn't incidents like these trigger a payroll dump??

Oh, fer cryin' out loud ...

This TSO wasn't doing anything that was a threat to commercial aviation. If the BDO program is only supposed to be focused on threats to commercial aviation, there's no reason a BDO should've found this individual.

The behavior detection idiocy also focuses on and touts non-threats to aviation and TSA routinely attempts to insert itself into matters that are not even remotely connected to commercial aviation threats.

Dishonesty in any form is unacceptable for someone in such a vaunted position of "security". Someone who will engage in human trafficking will very likely be willing to commit other crimes, perhaps even crimes that are related to commercial aviation security.

It's time for a "terminal dump" of the 60,000+ TSA Workfare employees.

Oh, for crying out loud....

TSA BDOs focus on and catch people who are not "threats to commercial aviation". When was the last time a TSA BDO caught a terrorist with the means, motivation and an otherwise immediate opportunity to threaten commercial aviation? Like never? Well, then with such excellent performance and/or unnecessary, why not dump TSA BDOs? BDOs divert (and waste) resources, much like the TSA's ID-boarding pass checks.

Was the suspected TSA employee "background checked" and "profiled" using the magic BDO type powers to identify "nefarious" "intent"? So much for the wonders of "background checks"; and so much for the wonders of "BD".

I am curious what exactly did this TSA employee do that infuriated the USG? Take a few bucks to skip over the boarding pass-ID check nonsense for a couple of passengers? Sounds like the government doesn't want its TSA employees undermining its own racket.

The prosecutor's press release:

http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/pr/2013/oigpr_091213.pdf

The indictment isn't in the PACER database yet. It looks like the case will be moved to the District of Puerto Rico, and that Mr. Diaz is cleared for pre-trial release.

[edited post/bolding mine]

Are you suggesting the BDOs are so intuitive that they can tell which crime is being committed and then only act on ones that are a threat to aviation?

This is incorrect. BDOs cannot detect threats and, therefore, they cannot focus on them. TSA doesn't even claim they can detect threats. Instead, they claim the ability to detect suspicious behavior because that behavior might be an indication of a threat to commercial aviation. But they can't and don't do this. There is no scientific evidence that shows this program is anything more that a giant steaming pile of ****. You would think that BDOs would occasional and randomly stumble into success.

In this case, the TSO was doing something illegal. The theory goes that people doing such things would act suspiciously and that BDOs are capable of detecting this suspicious behavior. The former is questionable. The latter is a lie.

Given the BDO program is clearly a load of crap, people tend to post sarcastic, correct, and very telling comments, such as: These are Behavior Detection Officers fer cryin' out loud. Why can't they detect the behaviors of a clerk doing something illegal? (Hint: see sentence above that ends in ****.)

.

And folks like us here in TS&S complain about such actions all the time. If we're going to complain that BDOs are being used to detect non-threats to aviation, we shouldn't complain that BDOs fail to detect a non-threat to aviation.

I'm not willing to buy the second premise; that's exactly the mentality that leads to the present use of BDOs in the first place. ("If you're smuggling drugs, you're a bad person who might want to hijack a plane.")

But I agree with you on the first premise. If you're not acting as a person of integrity, you shouldn't be trusted with authority.

I agree.

"Behavior detection" and "background checks" aren't the same thing ... and we shouldn't be trying to discuss both at the same time. And, yes, I agree ... if background checks are so wonderful, this should've been detected.

What little I understand about the "magic" of "behavior detection" is this: it's supposed to detect an intent to deceive. So, this TSO is standing at a checkpoint. An hour earlier, or an hour from now, this TSO is going to smuggle someone through the checkpoint. How is that supposed to be reflected in what the TSO is doing right now in order to create something that a BDO will be able to detect?

Enough said.

Trying to make sense of the BDO program is like trying to figure out why unicorns are unable to make magic carpets fly upside down.

Neither is 99.99% of the population, yet here we are.

Ignoring the validity of SPOT techniques, TSA is the one that made it about more than aviation by claiming detection of common criminals. If it didn't want to be held accountable to that standard, it never should have brought it up.

TSA made the bed. They need to lay in it.

By that logic, the whole BDO program is a sham. The terrorist isn't going to be hijacking or bombing the plane at the instant he goes thru the checkpoint - he's going to do in the next few hours. The BDO will never detect him because he's not going to do it right then.

So the program is a failure because it will only detect what someone is about to do in that instant (thus making them useless at the checkpoint), or it's not working when someone is actually acting suspicious (or actually committing the act).

Neither speaks well of the program.

That is all you had to write...

At that moment, the terrorist is attempting to deceive the TSOs performing the screening, so that the terrorist's "contraband" is admitted to the sterile area despite TSA's regulations forbidding that material. Thus, there is an immediate attempt to deceive that a BDO could detect. In theory.

Whether or not any of this makes sense in practice is, of course, another matter entirely, which has been beaten to death in many other threads.

But I'm clearly losing on this discussion, so I'll lick my wounds and leave the battlefield ...