MikeMpls

.....

Caradoc

So... Richmond doesn't have any "Behavioral Detection" voodoo practitioners on staff?

Or are they just completely ineffective, as the GAO, Nature Magazine, and anyone with a scintilla of common sense concluded years ago?

jkhuggins

Did Luedecke shoot his father at an airport? If not, then there was nothing for a BDO to detect.

Nothing to see here, please move along ...

MikeMpls

.....

jkhuggins

You want to have a discussion about the quality of TSA hires? That's great.

I object to bringing up BDOs in this discussion when it's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

"Mr. Supervisor? I've been observing my fellow TSO Mr. Luedecke while he performs his screening duties, and my keen observational skills tell me that he's going to go home and murder his father."

Caradoc

That's exactly what the SPOTniks claim the ability to do.

jkhuggins

Citation, please.

Caradoc

The TSA has repeatedly claimed the ability to discern hostile or deceptive behaviors via observation of "micro-expressions" in less than thirty seconds of "interaction" between a "behavioral detection" practitioner and a passenger.

Are we now supposed to believe that they can't tell one of their co-workers is dangerously unbalanced despite working shoulder-to-shoulder with them for weeks, months, or years?

Spiff

No at all. Its completely relevant. These voodoo touts harass people over all kinds of things unrelated to airport/aircraft safety and have an appalling false positive record. If they can't spot something as obvious as the intent to murder from someone they spend all day working with, then they really are no better than random chance at detecting terrorism at the airport.

These TSA employees provide nothing through their snake oil behavior detection.

TheRoadie

According to this, the SPOT program only targets behavioral cues that indicate a person is a threat to aviation safety. So the SPOTnik may discern from microexpressions that a person is going to leave the airport and do some dastardly deed, but that's not in their mission statement so they don't have to report it.

Of course, it's all hogwash. We know that. Just part of the first act of the play.

FliesWay2Much

The spokesholes don't even say that they hold all TSA employees to the highest ethical standards anymore.

Since my home Commonwealth has a bunch of Hanging Judges, I wonder if this guy will be the first TSA clerk to have an appointment with "The Needle?"

halls120

Hopefully so. If Henrico doesn't have the stones to do it, they should send him up to Prince William County.

FliesWay2Much

Maybe we could move the body across the county line???

wahooflyer

How sad and sickening. I definitely recognize this guy's picture from my travels through RIC...he was an ID checker at least part of the time.

jkhuggins

Thank you. This is my point. SPOT is (a) aimed at passengers, not fellow TSA employees, and (b) only designed to look for threats to aviation.

To criticize TSA for not identifying Luedecke ahead of time with a program that was never designed for that purpose is preposterous. Furthermore, TSA advocates will point out how preposterous it is, and use that to continue to justify current TSA practices.

We have plenty of good reasons to criticize TSA for the manner in which it appears to screen its own employees. We also have plenty of good reasons to criticize the SPOT program. Why confuse matters by bringing unrelated topics together? Our criticisms will be far more effective if we stick to the point, rather than just issuing knee-jerk criticisms of anything with a TSA label attached.

(Oh, wait, this is the Internet. Never mind. Carry on with the knee-jerk criticisms, then ...)