chollie

No, it is no surprise. If it weren't TSA, I would suggest that some of those screeners are pushing the dogs towards crotches and they are thoroughly enjoying watching people squirm and cringe helplessly

But no screener at TSA would ever do that, of course.

petaluma1

Of course this is what dogs do naturally. And that they are doing it apparently so frequently, implies that the dogs are not well trained.

chollie

Or that they are trained to specifically target the genital area. I expect to see greater focus on backsides, too. TSA's hands-on policies have never really enabled them to delve as deeply and thoroughly as they'd like. Their concern is understandable, considering how much contraband concealed in the backside gets found in prisons.

FliesWay2Much

Look at the picture in the second Twitter post quoted above. The doggie looks like he's headed right for that guy's butt.

Randyk47

petaluma1

Here's yet another one:

Boggie Dog

I'm not a dog handler but these pictures look improper on part of the K9 handler.

Any K9 handlers want to chip in and give an opinion?

FliesWay2Much

...and lots of drug-detection discussions in the article.

petaluma1

Totally agree. A handler should NOT allow the dog to get that close to the "target" - if the dog smells explosives (or drugs) it sits and looks at the target. Does make me begin to believe the dogs are being trained to go directly for the crotch. Yet TSA has been bragging about deploying "vapor wake" dogs. https://homeofvaporwake.com/tsa-inno...por-wake-dogs/

chollie

I wonder what will happen when a dog alerts on a pax and the only 'contraband' on that pax is an illegal drug - coke, say.

If LE is called and the pax is found with illegal drugs - but no other contraband that TSA would be looking for - will a possession case hold up in court?

The courts may say that the very act of buying a ticket and showing up at the airport constitutes consent to any searches, no different than being pulled over for a traffic stop and consenting to a search. The question arises: if the dog is not trained to alert on drugs and no aviation-related contraband was found, then what did the dog alert on?

I'm kind of surprised they don't seem to pay more attention to shoes. There have been two foiled attempts - the crotch bomber and the shoe bomber. Shoes go through the xray, but the xray still can't conclusively identify explosives (or so we are told). I don't recall hearing about people's shoes being confiscated, but folks being swabbed have generated false positives from walking through/around fertilizer. The xray can't alert on that and relatively few pax get their shoes swabbed, but I would think the dogs would be picking up on the fertilizer (or hand cream) that the swabs do.

Does anyone know if the dogs are more finely tuned than the swab analyzers? Can the dogs recognize and ignore fertilizer traces that will set off the swab analyzer?

If the dog cleared something and the swab analyzer alerted, I wonder if the item in question would still be confiscated out of an abundance of caution.

FliesWay2Much

I think we have all seen over the years that nobody in any branch of government objects to the TSA searching for and finding drugs. Unfortunately, most everyone caught simply pleads guilty. There needs to be a carefully orchestrated scenario in which a passenger who is willing to put their reputation on the line (or at least their freedom) is "caught" with drugs by the TSA. Of course, the TSA will say that they simply notify LE when they find drugs. So, the inevitable 4th Amendment lawsuit will be against the hapless airport police rather than the TSA. I think that using airport security checkpoints as a dragnet for all sorts of things will continue and perhaps increase in scope because I see no members of congress of either party willing to do anything about it. Worse yet, I haven't seen any evidence that the newest and youngest members of congress even understand the Constitution.

petaluma1

I asked basically the same questions some time ago. It seems as if the dogs do NOT alert on traces of glycerin on hands or fertilizer on shoes. If they did, we'd be hearing a lot more about it on the TSA twitter site. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&...40tsa&src=typd

Loren Pechtel

It makes me think perhaps it's security theater, the dogs are basically untrained.

Boggie Dog

Maybe the dogs gets the same 9 days of training that screeners get at the academy.

'You're at war': I went inside the new TSA Academy

chollie

From the link: