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Fewer Than 1% Arrested From TSA's "Behavior Detection"
An anonymous reader writes "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports using the much vaunted 'suspicious behavior detection' techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. It has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program." In related news, the odds of sanity coming to the TSA plummeted today when Schneier said he's not interested in the top job there.
How does that figure compare to random searches? Without that figure for comparison it's completely pointless saying "OMGZ TSA FAIL" because nobody ever claimed that everyone stopped would be arrested. If it gets higher arrests than random searches what's the problem?
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
You're right! We should extend this outside of airports, so that any jumped up minimum wage gomer with a tin badge can stop anyone they like, declare Facecrime, and use that as probable cause for an invasive search up to and including internal! I'm sure that the 99% of innocents who get Probed would also agree that the payoff is worth it, whatever the cost!
Let's start with you, shall we?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program
Of course not - That would presume the TSA (and DHS in general) actually has the goal of stopping terrorists.
Don't make the mistake of taking their name and stated goals literally. The DHS exists solely for the purpose of keeping the US populace in fear, making us easier to control and more tolerant of increasingly draconian laws relating to "security". For proof, you need look no further than how well FEMA (once an actually useful agency) has handled various disasters since they got sucked into the DHS... Or for that matter, the TSA's record at catching weapons carried by various reporters.
The second amendment grows increasingly relevant to our society every day... And not for protection from dark-skinned foreigners, but the real "terrorists" running our country and our world.
150k+ more people were wrongly harassed for those 1.2k arrests. Doesn't sound so good when you look at all the numebers involved.
Arrested != convicted. Oooh - someone smuggling drugs. Big national security risk there.
If this were a medical test, it would have been tossed out well before implementation based on both the false positive rate and the admission of questionable sensitivity.
You don't know how well a detector works unless you know how many cases it failed to detect a true positive (what's called a false negative in the biz). Let's say if you searched everyone in line you'd arrest 0.2% of them for some suspected crime. In that case, the 1200 in 600k means your detector is worthless. It works no better than a random sample.
Most of us want to catch people doing illegal things. Fewer and fewer of us want to prevent a police state that asks people for their papers at every turn, and performs strip searches because they smiled at the camera a little funny.
1.2K arrest for 160K control.
How many would have been arrested if 160K person had been randomly controlled instead of using that technology ?
Also how many of those person with fake id would have been catched later-on at passport control ?
Police Officer are already very good at behavior detection. Can this system be replaced by simply adding more cops in critical area ?
I'm betting if the police just randomly grabed people off the street and subjected them to everything up to cavity searches more than 1% would be found to be carrying drugs,knives longer than the legal length, fake ID's or be found to be violating some other pisant little law.
Hell if a police officers followed any random person for a single day as they went about their blameless buisness there's close to a 100% chancethat person could be caught commiting enough "crimes" to put them away for life.
It boils down to the fact that if a law enforcement official doesn't like your face he can find some ancient law you've been violating and put you away.
160.000 people were frisked and only 1.266 were found posses something they shouldn't*. That's a hit ratio of fewer than 1%.
According to Wikipedia, by the beginning of 2008, more than 1 in 100 Americans were incarcerated, so that's more than 1% "hit ratio" if you simply searched every American for illegal drugs, fake IDs or similar. Still a decent tradeoff?
*I don't see how a person carrying pot can bring down a plane, but apprently it's already possible with nail scissors, so who knows.
I still don't understand why drugs are illegal? Regulated yes, like alcohol, but why illegal? If I want to kill myself with cocaine that's MY business and none of yours. My body; my choice. (Same argument used to justify abortion.)
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
How many people that get pulled out of the metal detector line actually get arrested? Its the same basic idea as this system, see a sensor reading that potentially represents something harmful, pull them out of line, check to see what's going on, keep going.
If you kill someone in a drunken rage or kill someone drunk driving is that the barmans fault or your own since you chose to drink?
It's your fault no matter what you're on.
The drugs are not killing your victim, you are and it's your fault if you chose to take the drugs.
So no, this is an entirely invalid point.
This is just another case of statistics being used to try to manipulate the story. Saying that this detection method only managed about a 1% arrest rate is meaningless unless we also know what the arrest rate was with previous / other methods. If other methods were only achieving 0.1% then this is fantastic improvement.
On a more personal note though I think any technique that can only manage a 1% success rate probably needs scrapping. There are obviously far to many false positives for the system to be trusted and of course you can't count the number of false negatives. The fact that it was specifically brought into catch terrorists and it would seem it hasn't succeeded speaks even worse of it (I imagine if they had caught a terrorist they would be shouting it from the roof tops).
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
The summary used a lot of words to say it doesn't work. Not that they'll stop using it unless they are made to. Honestly, all this 'using a Buick to swat a fly nonsense has to end sometime.
The thing is, if you know your entering a country that starts off on the assumption your probably a terrorist, that doesn't make people relax.
Personally I find airports immensely stressful, seriously so, to the point that I take the train if at all possible. Flying is bearable, but all that waiting around in the airport buying overpriced coffee and getting 'approved as terror free' is a deeply unpleasant experience.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Picking out 160.000 people at random, or based on a border guard's hunch would likely have gotten as many hits.
Sounds like a waste of money to me.
McCarthyism resulted in less than 1% of the citizens of Hollywood being blacklisted from the movie industry (on hearsay and specious evidence). So that was OK, then?
Numbers don't matter. Justice matters. What ever happened to "probable cause?"
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Picking out 160.000 people at random, or based on a border guard's hunch would likely have gotten as many hits.
Sounds like a waste of money to me.
Sounds like a serious threat to civil liberties to me. The money involved is of little interest.
---- Sig. gone.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646&hl=en
Why nobody in america should ever talk to the police. ever.No matter how innocent.
You can be a criminal for possesion of a lobster, opeing a packet of cigarettes without fully destroying the tax seal and for any number of lesser known laws.
Nobody in america is truely innocent. Everyone has broken the law at some point and almost everyone breaks the law many times a day without ever knowing.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. So we have 1200 people committing victimless crimes, and in order to catch them, I have to get "randomly selected" at LAX for a pat down and full luggage search. They even bitch when I forgot to take a freaking comb out of my back pocket. Bullshit. So someone has a fake ID or a bit of heroine, who gives a flying fuck?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Have you actually READ the bible? there's sections in there about how smashing babies heads in with rocks is doing gods work and that slavery is perfectly ok.
As a matter of fact, I do have something to hide. Most people would not be happy about a complete stranger going through their underwear drawer at home, why should I feel comfortable with a complete stranger going through my underwear at an airport where everyone can see? It's embarrassing and humiliating to pat someone down in public and search through their belongings when they have done nothing wrong.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
I believe their reasoning (detaching my own personal opinion) is that drugs impair people. Imagine a lot more coked up people driving on our roads and highways and walking around neighborhoods. Unlike alcohol, some drugs cannot be used in moderation - some instantly and completely get people wasted and make them dangerous to society.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
"you have nothing to hide, right"
That idea is an extremely slippery slope, that is all too often used to extend ever more control over people. For example, one of the fundamental principles of law, is someone is innocent, until proven guilty. But by applying the idea, "you have nothing to hide", it means anyone suspected (in this case, by automated profiling) of being a criminal, now needs to prove they are innocent. It means if you are a false positive, then you will be stopped from what you are doing and interrogated and even your house and belongings can be searched, until you can prove you are innocent. While all this is happening, you will also have no privacy at all and your freedom is removed from you while you prove you are innocent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_guilty
So over time, as they add ever more automated profiling, they get ever more ways to get more people caught up as false positives. That's ever more people, being deprived of freedom, until they can prove their innocence.
The route to a totalitarian society, is via people using the idea of, "you have nothing to hide". Yet ironically, all too often, its the minority of people who have power in (ever more) totalitarian style societies, that are able to cause the greatest injustices to their powerless minions. They cause their harm through multiple means. Some are self-righteously ignorant of the harm they cause. Others deliberately seek to exploit their position of power, for their own gain.
The real danger is this minority of people (in ever country) who seek to dominate and control others. This applies to people who seek political or business power over people and ironically terrorists also seek to dominate and control others, into their twisted points of view, for their groups gain. In the case of the terrorists the gain they seek is for their own side, (even if their lower foot soldiers don't gain) as they see it as a battle for their point of view. In the case of political or business power, the gain is directly for them.
The majority of us who don't seek power over others, are simply caught up in an endless power struggle, throughout history between different minority groups, who do seek power and so seek to get others on their side, to boost their own power and to overthrow the other power seeking groups.
Therefore, "you have nothing to hide", is wrong. Everyone has something to hind from some of these groups, who seek power. Because some of the groups will use anything they learn to gain power over people and the more extreme they push towards a totalitarian controlled society, the more they can exploit, stop, search, detain or interrogate, you and your family. That's not the kind of world I want to live in. Plus once these laws are passed, they can be used by any new party getting into power later on. Imagine what power some more extreme groups would do, if they gained access to this kind of power in the future.
For example, in the UK, http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00065/cartoon291008_65504a.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Smith "As the UK Home Secretary, she has been noted for advocating strongly authoritarian policies."
"Authoritarian", in her case, as in extremely arrogant, self-righteous, self-serving, power seeking, contempt for the views of others. She is a great example of how power corrupts and she is dragging the whole UK into her own total police state hell.
For example, in the UK, even some companies can legally break into peoples homes.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/bills/article.html?in_article_id=427634&in_page_id=510
That
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
So if the government labeled your kids/spouse/parents as enemy of the state without proof you'd just kill them with no hesitation?
Have there been any terrorist attacks? No. So they couldn't have stopped actual terrorists "in the act", because there haven't been any.
To judge whether 1% is actually decent, we'd need to know what percentage of *all travelers* are guilty of the offenses they're arresting the 1% for. If the number for all travelers is, say, 0.001%, then 1% is fairly significant.
This is a clear case of a psudo-police force being allowed to act outside the normal rules of engagement. The "probable cause" used by the TSA to initiate in-depth searches would usually never hold up if police used the same. I assume that you can refuse such searches, but you are never informed of that right, and the high profile and official appearance of the TSA makes it appear that this is not an option. Certainly if someone who had a dime bag knew this was an option, they would refuse, go ditched the weed, and come back through. So we have arrests being made that could have never been made elsewhere because no reputable court would ever allow the evidence. If I'm cranky and give a police officer a little lip, they do not then have the authority to search me.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
The TSA is there to make people feel safe. We all know much of what they do is theater and not actually making people safer, but that doesn't change the fact that more people fly when they feel safer. That's a benefit. A lame one, but there's no denying it's a benefit for the airlines and some other interests. It's it a benefit to society at whole? I say "No" and I think you'd agree, but it's still wrong to say they do nothing beneficial.
People don't abuse vicodin. Wait they do. But it's not widespread. Wait, it's more widespread than illegal drug use. Damn, I guess we need to ban it.
And this problem is only going to get worse with time, as more and more stupid laws are added to the books. Passing a dumb law is relatively easy, all you need is one extraordinary event ('preferably' involving a child) to make it into the mainstream media and you can pass a law against some aspect involved in that event. Getting useless or stupid laws repealed afterward is much harder.
Personally I think every new law should come under review every 5 years to a) judge its effectiveness in reducing whatever it is it was meant to reduce, b) re-assess its applicability in light of new developments (whether that be technological, court rulings, false positives etc) and c) gauge public opinion about whether this law is still necessary. It's a lot to ask for sure, but then again passing a new law is a big deal, or at least it should be.
Without some kind of review process like this the law books will just get thicker and thicker, until it becomes impossible to live a normal life without breaking some law every day. I'd argue we've already reached that point.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
perfectly true but remember next time you hear some reference to some horrible command in the koran- there's probably just as much background as there is for this. The fact that this is in the bible doesn't make every christian evil even if a few nutters smash kids heads in based on it.
What I find more interesting is the speculation that these searches would have been more effective if performed randomly. Not only would you still likely catch the same amount of petty crimes, but you rob the actual terrorist of the ability to circumvent the system by acting natural.
If the terrorist knows he can avoid the search with practice, plastic surgery, or a name change, he will be more likely to do so.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
If the government told you your children were enemies of the state, you would kill them no questions?
Remember:
All americans are not indiginous.
Koresh was an American.
So was the Unabomber
And other US terrorists, who were enemies of the state.
The UK bombers were UK residents, proving that being born in a country doesn't mean you cannot be an enemy.
You don't know what your kids get up to 100% of the time, so they could be being subverted into muslim faith and told not to tell you because you would kill any asian muslims and may kill white ones too.
So, you don't know they AREN'T enemies of the state, the fact of them being born in the country doesn't make it impossible and the US government know vastly more about the situation than you because they have special agents looking into these things.
And they tell you your children are enemies of the state.
Do you kill them?
Please don't quote that idiotic bint with regard to freedom. The only freedom she understands is the bogus 'freedom' of middle and upper class landowners to be left alone to exploit their slaves.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
If you start making exceptions just because someone is indirectly responsible for a lot of deaths then you start on a slippery slope that undermines the entire justice system.
If Adolf or Stalin were still alive then it would be trivial to prove their crimes and deal with it through the justice system. No need to become like them yourself and destroy the very thing you're meant to protect.
You might feel no guilt, but I'd still charge you for murder.
Oddly enough, I'd rather accept the infintesimally small chance of a few thousand civilian deaths than incur massive encroachments upon my civil liberties. I don't especially think I'm more important than the rest of the world, just that my civil liberties are. To use a poor analogy, it would be like you putting up with the, presumably, small risk that your wife will shoot you in the face in order to exercise your 2nd Amendment right to stash handguns all over your house.
words, words, words, lemur, words, words words
if you've just come back from amsterdam with a suitcase full of sex toys then, yeah... I think you have something to hide... What is your private, personal material should remain as such... it shouldn't be openly displayed to the public because of some a-hole on a power trip who has an IQ that can be counted on your fingers.
if you truly believe the "you have nothing to hide" argument then you should go live on a nudist comune, if you aren't already.
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.