MikeMpls

.....

chollie

(bolding mine)

Come on, you can't be serious.

I agree, they focus 100% on pax (and, as we saw at one eastern airport, they focused on pax that fit certain physical criteria - dress or apparent ethnicity) and not on each other.


But to be able to distinguish that someone's antsy because they're an aviation threat vs. someone's antsy because they're headed for a job interview or they're smuggling a joint or dreading a karate chop from a groper?

jkhuggins

Heavens, no. Read my history of posting here on FlyerTalk to see my point of view.

What I am an advocate for, above all else, is clear and coherent reasoning. I poke holes in that reasoning from both TSA critics and TSA advocates alike.

If we are to have any hope of persuading those in power that the status quo regarding TSA must change, our arguments must be crystal clear, logically unimpeachable, and free of emotional bias. We must be better than those who oppose us. We must take the high ground, even if our opponents do not.

But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

I completely agree with you; this is a perfectly valid reason to criticize the BDO program. And, if this was a thread about the BDO program, that would certainly be a wonderful discussion to have.

But this is a thread about Luedecke murdering his father. Criticizing the BDO program because they didn't detect Luedecke before he murdered his father makes absolutely no sense; it's a non-sequitur.

More importantly, it's a distraction from what I assume was the point of starting this thread in the first place (other than schadenfreude): wondering how TSA seems to hire employees who commit felonies at higher rates than random chance would normally predict.

Caradoc

"Threats to aviation" like undeclared cash, sequentially-numbered checks, et cetera ad absurdum?

The program itself is preposterous, and as long as the TSA wants to tout "good catches" that has absolutely nothing to do with threats to aviation and everything to do with overreaching their "administrative searches," they should not be allowed to call out-of-scope "finds" "good catches" while insisting that the very real threats presented by their co-workers are "out-of-scope."

They love to play both sides as it suits their PR agenda.

jkhuggins

And we are no better if we complain about TSA "catches" that are out-of-scope and simultaneously condemn TSA for not making a catch (in this case) that is clearly out-of-scope.

Caradoc

I don't think this case should be out-of-scope - as long as the "program" is allowed to exist, anyway.

I think that if the TSA wants to play at behavioral detection voodoo, their own employees and co-workers should be the FIRST in line to be SPOTted - as they obviously represent a far, far greater risk to the security of aviation than any random passenger.

SPOTniks should be leapfrogging over each other in an effort to be the first to turn on their co-workers, since we've seen several SPOTniks convicted so far.

Carl Johnson

But the problem is that all of your reasoning here is faulty; none of it is either clear or coherent. You are not using the proper level of generalization. The skills that are supposedly taught by behavioral detection are not directed toward detecting the specific intent to attack and aircraft, and they are not directed toward detecting nefarious intent by airline passengers. The program supposedly teaches its participants ways to detect persons who represent a danger of some sort. If the program worked, Luedecke's thoughts and feelings in the days leading up to his attack on his father would have caused him to give some sign that could be detected by behavioral detection skills, and the behavioral detection officers with whom he worked would have had sufficient confidence in their own skills to report that he was exhibiting behavior indicating that he might cause harm to himself or to others.

That's what we're saying. You are artificially narrowing the subject of discussion and thus failing to see what seems clear to all of us - that if the behavioral detection program worked as advertise, it would have detected signs that talking to Luedecke about his feelings would be a good idea. What seems clear to us is that the behavioral detection officers have not been taught to look for microexpressions that indicate a plan to attack and aircraft, without being taught to look for microexpressions that indicate an intent to kill one's father. Microexpressions are not represented to be that specific. If there are microexpression, they indicate a generalized intent to cause, or at least an increased possibility of causing, harm. Luedecke harmed someone, and the supposed skills of his colleagues did nothing to help them predict that behavor.

Carl Johnson

And here, you are overgeneralizing. The TSA catches that are out of scope are catches based primarily on skin color or clothing. Being about to murder one's father is not out-of-scope. It is every citizen's duty to do what can be done to prevent someone from murdering his father, and if the behavioral detection program worked, the behavioral detection officers would have had skills that they could have used to detect that something wasn't right. It's not a matter of "scope". It's a matter of whether the behavioral detection program can detect someone's increased likelihood of causing harm.

gsoltso

I doubt it, this has all the hallmarks of a domestic situation at this point.

gsoltso

It also appears there may be more to the story. I would love to see the forensics on this case, along with the different crime scene layouts and measurements. I will reserve judgement until more info is available, but take a read here:

http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/lo...178e16d3a.html

jkhuggins

This is where you are wrong.

SPOT is not supposed to be detecting random unspecified dangers; it is supposed to detect passengers with an intent to deceive. The theory is that if you're trying to deceive TSA, you'll reveal these so-called micro-expressions that show your intent to deceive, which would merit a closer examination of you and your property.

(Note: I'm just as skeptical as everyone else regarding how well SPOT actually works ... but that's a discussion for another thread.)

So, Luedecke comes to work. Suppose he intends to shoot his father in a couple of days. Where would that thought manifest itself in any of his normal TSA duties that might lead him to want to deceive his co-workers, and therefore give him the opportunity to exhibit these micro-expressions? Do TSA employees regularly go around asking each other "gee, are you planning on killing any family members this weekend?"

Even if you concede that SPOT is useful, and even if SPOT were used on TSA employees themselves (which isn't the case, even though it should be), I claim that there was nothing for SPOT to detect in this case.

Caradoc

Even if there were something for SPOT to detect, SPOT wouldn't detect it.

1) The SPOT program has no basis in actual science.

2) The SPOT program is "implemented" (using the term incredibly loosely, as we are after all discussing TSA employees) by a collective of defectives hired from ads on the tops of pizza boxes and on gas pumps who are as a group wholly incapable of being trained to remember that photography at the checkpoint is not prohibited by the TSA.

jkhuggins

So then we shouldn't be criticizing TSA for its failure to detect something that (a) it's not designed to detect and (b) can't detect. *headdesk*

Caradoc

At this point, it's worth criticizing the TSA and its "employees" for the mere existence of their "agency."

jkhuggins

Because the mere existence of TSA led Luedecke to kill his father, right?

Seriously ... I'm really trying hard to stay on-topic here. But I suppose that the schadenfreude of this forum regarding any embarrassment to TSA, no matter how tangential it is to TSA's purposes, is too much to overcome.