FlyerTalk Forums - DHS seeks vendor to test no-fly system

http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/27608-1.html

Quote:

The Homeland Security Department’s Transportation Security Administration today will release a complete request for proposals from vendors interested in testing its Secure Flight system.

. . .

Testing will include validating the effectiveness of Secure Flight’s methods of identifying terrorists.

TSA developed Secure Flight to replace its Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, which is operated by airline employees. Secure Flight is meant to identify terrorists, reduce false positive results and eliminate false negative results as it checks passenger names against federal no-fly and selectee lists.

The procurement notice is at (warning, Word document):

http://216.33.118.202/EPSData/DHS-BT...ice10.6-v2.doc

I find the call for "reducing false positives and eliminating false negatives" to be extremely telling that the government really doesn't prioritize if thousands of innocent Americans have their lives ruined by a screwed-up no-fly list and probably has an "acceptable" rate of false positives in mind. Why couldn't they at least call for elimintating false positives in a theoretical sense?

They also want to:

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Validate the effectiveness of the current passenger screening criteria, currently in use by the Air Carriers, in identifying passengers who should be subject to enhanced screening.

How is that going to work unless terrorists have been flying among us? Are they going to see how many one-ways, last-minute-purchases, etc. have been made by "Ted Kennedy" and "David Nelson" and then use that to validate or invalidate the current SSSSelectee criteria.

Someone needs to teach these people some basic math/statistics/probability about the effectiveness of a system with a miniscule number of positives; i.e. a 0.01% false-positive rate and 0% false-negative rate among 300 million travelers among which 30 are terrorists means 30000 innocent people get harrassed or denied boarding to catch 30 terrorists who in reality should have been caught at the border or killed/bombed in their "home" training camp.

If the government thinks it OK for those 30000 innocent Americans to have their lives ruined (acceptable false positive rate), there's not much hope for them or the rest of us.

Also, as usual, the government is trying to engage in social engineering instead of just getting the task done by the most qualified contractor:

Quote:

Large businesses shall address providing subcontracting opportunities for small business, small disadvantaged business, women-owned business, service disabled veteran business, and Hubzone business. Large businesses will be evaluated on the degree that their approach:

But I suppose that's for another thread . . .

:mad: