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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.
If you were convinced that you were morally right and upholding 'God's Law' would you really act suspiciously? Those who act suspicious know what they are doing is wrong.
Terrorism is a different animal all together from faking IDs and drug carrying.
"Harassed"? Harassed how exactly? They were searched. Everyone gets searched every time they get on a plane. My hand luggage goes through a scanner, I walk through a metal detector, have I been harassed? Several times I've been taken aside and patted down too, was that harassment?
I'm wondering where valid searches stop and this "harassment" you speak of starts. Is it being taken into a room? A finger down my throat? A finger up my arse? I might agree with you when we get to those last couple, but are those things even happening in these searches we're talking about? I see nothing to suggest that, so I'd like to know just what you think is going on that is harassment and what reason you have for believing it.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Really, You're really going to try to claim you weren't trying to insinuate anything with this line?
And when I call you out on your dishonesty, I'm the "troll". Brilliant.
As I made clear above, the lack of arrests for terrorism do not prove anything about the success or failure of the program.
They prove that the program (as far as its stated goals go) is either a failure or pointless. Take your pick.
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So you think performing questionable searches of 160 000 people at the airport is perfectly fine? And arresting people for infractions not related to the search based on the results? I hope not many people share your views. That kind of reasoning ends up with some very depressing scenarios very fast.
If you'd pulled over 160 000 cars and searched them on the highway on "suspicions of terrorism" you'd probably get 1200 arrests for various minor infractions as well. Or if you searched 160 000 houses, or random people on the street....
With a accuracy of less than 1% for any crime it obviously doesn't work. It can't be that much better than a random search.
---- Sig. gone.
"If it gets higher arrests than random searches what's the problem?"
Exactly. So, a deeper question is: why didn't they release statistics on "random" versus these "behavior targeted" searches? Is that because they haven't done such a study (stupid) or because they are afraid of the results and don't want to (irresponsible)?
the example shows how that even a reasonably accurate system can look unreliable when searching for a needle in a haystack.
I went ahead and read TFA to get the actual numbers: 160,000 flags, 1,266 arrests for a 0.79125% "success" rate.
Your example illustrates your point well, however there is another possible conclusion. Imagine that 0.79125% of people at airports have drugs or fake IDs (or whatever else people can be arrested for) and the system is a scam and is just randomly selecting people. Then of a random sample of 160,000 people at airports, we would expect 1,266 arrests.
The reason there haven't been any terrorist attacks is because of the terrorist repelling rock every TSA employee keeps in their pocket.
problem: your solution gets very very heavy over time.
How about this: 1 year after a law comes in it has to be reviewed, then 2 years after that, then 4 years after that, then 8 years after that etc etc etc.
a law which has stood for 100 years without being repealed or edited is probably pretty solid.
A law which was passed in the heat of the moment is probably useless.
this has the advantage that even with a lot of laws the weight of re-testing them gets less over time.
I have argue this for some time. If you want to prove to someone that our laws are already impossible for average citizens to know, just have them talk about what is legal and illegal in front of lawyers. They will quickly be told that not only do they not know what they are talking about, but they will also be told that the words used in laws have different definition than the same words used by the general population.
when I'm on holiday, I don't appreciate being fingerprinted and photographed by people with guns.
I'd expect it in Libya, but not a 'free' country. I recently went on holiday to new Zealand. On the stopover in the USA I got the fingerprint treatment, and made to feel like a prisoner, despite the fact I didn't even leave the single room in the airport for transit passengers whose plane is refuelling.
That stopover was a wonderful marketing opportunity for the USA to say "Come to the USA! Spend your tourist money here! Enjoy the USA!"
Instead, it felt like a prison visit.
When i got to NZ, they didn't fingerprint me or photograph me at all.
Based on this, I'll go on holiday to NZ again to relax, but not to the US. The US just lost my tourism cash. Nice work guys.
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