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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.
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.
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.
If it gets higher arrests than random searches what's the problem?
Because this program was supposed to find terrorists, not people with fake IDs or people trying to sneak a couple of ounces through security.
If some villagers are mauled by a tiger, and I promise to catch the tigers, and I implement a system of nets and snares around the village, and I don't catch any tigers, then I have failed to keep my promise, regardless of how many snakes and wild boars I do catch.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
Now, I ask you: How many terrorist attacks have there been on planes since this system was put in place?
True, but that little or nothing to do with the TSA. You see, I have this "anti-terrorist" rock I found a few years ago, and as long as I give it a lucky pat before bed every night, it keeps the entire US safe.
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.
So if the government labeled your kids/spouse/parents as enemy of the state without proof you'd just kill them with no hesitation?