Although the Transportation Security Administration road-tested the now infamous nude-image-producing scanners at six major airports in 2009, it wasn’t until they were installed around the country that the huge uproar over their use began in 2010. Which is not to say people didn’t air the same privacy objections when the first six scanners replaced metal detectors. They did. But sometimes a revolt requires numbers to be heard. (And a “Don’t touch my junk” YouTube video doesn’t hurt, either.)
After initial objections, TSA said, sorry, but that’s the way the technology works. After the uprising, TSA managed to find a way to change the technology. This summer it began installing new software called Automated Target Recognition that can “auto-detect items that pose a potential threat using a generic outline of a person,” according to news reports.
TSA didn’t report how much of its roughly $8.1 billion budget it took to revamp the scanners with the updated software. Likely just a drop in the bucket.
But since we’re in a fiscal and logical crisis, let’s pretend it’s important to get stuff right the first time.
On Monday TSA launched a “behavior-detection” pilot program at Boston’s Logan Airport, wherein all passengers in Terminal A are greeted by a TSA official and engaged in conversation as a way to detect those who pose a security risk. After providing their boarding pass and ID, passengers must answer a few questions from TSA officers who have received two weeks of training. The conversation would be casual, with questions such as, “What is the purpose of your trip?” If after such a chat someone was deemed “suspicious,” then a more formal “interrogation” would begin.
Hard to imagine anything going wrong.
At least the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., wrote to TSA Administrator John Pistole asking that the “unproven, costly and potentially ineffective security screening protocol” be delayed, Uselectionnews.org reported.
(Proponents point out that the techniques are proven, but fail to note that Israel’s renowned security system, which relies on profiling, and no body scanners, is the opposite of ours. Also, Israeli agents receive more than two weeks training.)
The program is a spawn of TSA’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program, which has expanded to 160 airports.
The SPOT program has led to the arrest of 2,000 criminals, none of whom have been charged with terrorism.
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If TSA is kept from behaving badly in the first place, we can save money, lawsuits and angry “Don’t talk to me” YouTube protests.
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