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.

Comments

Re:I don't know if that's good or bad...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

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.

If there haven't been any tiger attacks in the whole time the net has been up then there's no basis to say that it has been a success or a failure. You might even claim that the absence of attacks is a result of the nets being put up and therefore they have been a success.

Now, I ask you: How many terrorist attacks have there been on planes since this system was put in place?

Note that I'm not saying it actually has been a success, I'm saying I see no example of it having failed and I don't see how some random arrest figure with no context whatsoever proves anything one way or they other.