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The Men Who Stare At Airline Passengers, Coming To the UK
An anonymous reader writes, "The Economist's Gulliver reports on a story in Nature that questions the current airport security regimen," excerpting: "Over the past four years, some 3,000 officers in America's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been specially trained to spot potential terrorists at airports. The programme, known as SPOT, for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, is intended to allow airport security officers to use tiny facial cues to identify people who are acting suspiciously. The British government is currently launching a new screening regime modelled on the Americans' SPOT. There's just one problem with all this: there's no evidence that SPOT is actually effective. The whole thing is mostly based on pseudoscience, Sharon Weinberger reports in Nature."
Happily, Nature's original article is available in full, rather than paywalled.
Chalk it up as a boondoggle and consider it part of the economic recovery plan.
There's just one problem with all this: there's no evidence that SPOT is actually effective.
And this matters to airport security because?
Not effective? How is that different from any other aspect of the American airline security policy?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That's not a problem, it's a solution. It means there need to be more studies, and bigger contracts, to figure out which bits of SPOT do work (read: "none, but who cares if it works as long as we can keep getting funding"), until such time as the political winds shift in favor of some other crackpot in the bureaucracy who's got more money to spend than brains to care about what it's being spent on.
Meanwhile, life once again imitates art:
Without giving away a spoiler to a movie that's 28 years old, Gant's papers were in order: the KGB goon was bluffing, trying to provoke a reaction.
Every time I travel by air, I watch the first half of Firefox, and every year, the part where Clint Eastwoodfails to bluff his way through Moscow's airport seems a bit less like an American director's 1982 portrayal of the USSR, and feels a little more like home. Problem is, there's nowhere left to fly to, even if you did get your hands on a Mach-5 capable thought-controlled stealth plane.
from January 2006 through to November 2009, behaviour-detection officers referred more than 232,000 people for secondary screening, which involves closer inspection of bags and testing for explosives. 1,710 were arrested. Those arrests are overwhelmingly for criminal activities, such as outstanding warrants, completely unrelated to terrorism. The program has never resulted in the arrest of anyone who is a terrorist, or who was planning to engage in terrorist-related activity.
Shut it down!! This is an incredible waste of passenger time and taxpayer money. I wonder where they got those numbers from.. I'd love to see more numbers.. like how many actual terrorist arrests there have been for all passengers screened.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Anyone who is that good at reading people,
has a better job than TSA screener.
expandfairuse.org
From the title, I was expecting it to be psychically trained TSA agents.
coming into the airport, i had a lot of crap in my carry on, so i decided to reorganize on a bench just inside the airport on a bench by a trash can. at one point i even reached into the garbage can and retrieved something out i had just chucked that i had a second thought about. some little vials and stuff: the freebie ointments and lotions and crap you get in hotels
i was very much hung over, miserable, unshaven and unwashed. my facial expressions were grim. at long last after my strange behavior over the trash can, i decided to furtively move into a corner and twiddle under my clothes: i was applying deodorant, but if someone was looking at me through a security camera, i can imagine where their imagination might have gone
long story short, when i got the screening area, 3 guys eyeballing the whole time i was in line called me over to a special room. the other passengers looked at me like i was a osama himself. i started laughing, because i kind of figured out why i was being singled out, but i don't think sudden laughtewr helped in the suspicion department. they gave ma a thorough screening, asked a lot of questions, asked some of them again later (consistency?), and sent me on my way. they even had dogs sniffing around. i guess maybe i profiled more as drug mule?
who knows. regardless, flying sucks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The fact that there were no attempts or successes during that period is evidence that it's not needed. Terrorism is a very small threat compared with things like cancer, dieing in a non-terrorist plane crash and any number of real problems. Terrorism happens to be very flashy, but the reality is that even with the policies in place prior to 9/11 it was a very unlikely event that terrorists would have any meaningful luck.
Whereas you've got the government scaring the crap out of people without terrorist help. Of course terrorists aren't bothering to do it, the US government is doing a superb job of keeping people terrified.
Can you explain how having an officer look at you is a violation of civil liberties?
You're in public, after all. It's not like you're being observed in your home. While I don't see how the SPOT program actually accomplishes anything, I really don't see how it's going to violate our freedoms. Law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to check you out as you stand in line to check your luggage. And it might just be that having trained observers in airports would force terrorists to work a little harder.
We've got to be careful of crying wolf when we complain about intrusion into our lives. We gave away most of our liberties in the US with the PATRIOT Act and the warrantless wiretapping. For us to now say "you can't look at us" is taking our eye off the ball, which is to reverse the outrageous parts of PATRIOT and return some sanity to counter-terrorism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But catching 1710 criminals is meaningful, for the slight inconvenience the others faced. What's wrong with catching criminals?
0.5% of the people selected for secondary screening by the SPOT officers ended up getting arrested, and thus 99.5% of them did not. Is there any data that suggests that such an arrest rate is substantially higher than could be expected from any random sampling of air travelers? If not, then the SPOT officers don't appear to be doing anything worthwhile.
What you really need is a truly random selection, and figures for how many criminals were caught that way to see if what they are doing is making a statistical difference from truly random additional screening.
Agreed. Given the mere 0.5% arrest rate, I'm pretty skeptical that such figures would show that the SPOT officers earn their pay.
The point is not that an airport official will be watching passengers in an attempt to spot terrorists. The point is that there is a possibility that someone stressed, sick, distracted or socially inept- all of which could make a person seem "suspicious"- will be accosted or even held despite complete innocence of terrorism. It's "security theater" to a T: it gives the appearance of safety and security without actually providing any of the substance.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
The editor mentioned that the Nature article for this news item was not paywalled. It is worth noting that this is the case because this is a Nature news article, not a Nature research article. Had this been original research it would have still be paywalled.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Beard? You're suspicious.
Dark skin? Pulled out of line.
Head or face covering required by your religion? Come to the airport an extra hour early.
White, clean-shaven, wearing a Yankees ballcap and a Tap Out t-shirt? We're cool, keep moving.
That's why it potentially violates civil rights: it's a codification of reasons to discriminate based on outward appearance which, I absolutely guarantee, isn't limited to "flopsweat in 70 degree weather and looks like he's ready to bolt for an exit".
My debut novel AMITY now available: http://jeremydbrooks.c
When you have access to virtually unlimited budget and manpower, you have to be creative when coming up with new ways to expand your empire. I think homeland security in the U.S. and the U.K. would be much more efficient and quite possibly more effective if we cut their budget by 50%.
From the fine article:
And:
But he's opposed to anyone actually trying to test SPOT scientifically. That would be "totally bogus,"
You have got to be kidding me.
This is the new phrenology.
I'll state his real reason for avoiding peer review, it's taken from the above quote:
He says he now avoids peer-reviewed journals because they're read closely by scientists
Soon, someone is going to revive the phlogiston theory of fire.
--
BMO
The laugh is terrorist organisations know about SPOT and train what is called "clean skins" to get past all this crap. Usually they use well educated young people and dress them in designer western clothes and train them to use mental triggers so they never look nervous or out of place. The only thing SPOT will find is some poor bastard who hates flying or is worried when he gets were ever he is going will he be on time.
Fine. Observing passengers for potential cues is security theater. Then explain to me, how exactly is airplane security is going to work? You can't possibly strip search everybody, no one would fly. Having everybody fly naked is not an option either, as is having everybody be sedated and tied to their seats.
As securing all passengers with 100% failproof methods is far more intrusive than what's currently proposed, we need to look elsewhere. We know that the no-fly list is bogus because it is secret and non-appealable. We know that removing all liquids is dumb as well, because you're a) always behind the curve in what terrorists will try, and b) because most of the hare-brained ideas won't work anyway.
So what's left? We are pretty much left with SPOT: the observation of human behavior to indicate who gets special treatment. It is the only thing that can work, because it keys on the only thing common among terrorists: their plan, and the impact on human physiology of planning a suicide. Will innocent people be subjected to extra searches? They sure will. But behavioral observation - if done correctly, and yes, that's a big if - is the only real profiling technique that has any chance of not falling into obvious traps.
Finally, for an insight into how and why it works, look at the security at the Tel Aviv airport. They have some spectacular saves that would have failed with any other technique short of getting lucky with a random search.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"having everybody be sedated and tied to their seats"
Personally I think that would be the best way to fly long distance.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Fine. Observing passengers for potential cues is security theater.
No. Observing passengers for MEANINGLESS cues is security theater,
Finally, for an insight into how and why it works, look at the security at the Tel Aviv airport.
Yes, let's look at what happens at Tel Aviv - they extensively interview every passenger. SPOT does not even come close to what happens in an israeli airport. Nor do we face the threat that israeli airports face either. They have a much higher risk and a much lower number of passengers - roughly one day's worth of passengers through Kennedy is equal to a year's worth of passengers through Tel Aviv.
So basically the behavioural profiling that is applied to israeli flyers has nothing in common with SPOT- and it never will because applying the same techniques to flyers in the USA would require tens of billions of dollars.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"Note that investigation != detention"
I guess you've never had the displeasure of being pulled out of line and fully strip-searched because you've got a biomedical implant that sets off the alarm.
So much for my fucking medical privacy, and so much for not being DETAINED, as detention implies.
I think the 7th grade English teacher is calling your name. Might want to listen, yea?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I fly to and from Britain about 10 times a year and I actually lived in Scotland for 5 years. I get stopped quite often by those guys, probably on the ground that I'm quite fair skinned but have a bushy black beard and hair and look quite intellectualish-nerdish. Then I hand over my Italian passport and they start asking if I've been to Syria, Lebanon or Palestine or the Middle East. I answer with my best possible Glasgwegian accent that no, i've never been there and that I'm a software developer living on the continent catching up with my dearest mates and girlfriend back in Maryhill and that mainland europe is terrible and i'm moving back the soonest, honest. Then they laugh and let me go. On the other side, when I go through border control wearing a palestinian kefiah they never stop me. They're a leftover of the civil war in Ulster, apparently trained in remembering all the mugshots of IRA-affiliated people. Now they're a bit useless I guess.
What else should we do? All I see for it is to accept the risk an move on.
Don't get me wrong, there have been more than a few nice saves by real security, and I expect that as the technology progresses, they'll get better, but on the scale of risks including airplane hijacking or terrorism, I take a much larger personal risk every time I drink the water around here, let alone drive somewhere.
You can't make life safe. Not from accidents and certainly not from the deliberate acts of other people. If you can't accept that, then you might as well euthanize yourself, because you'll spend every waking moment in fear of what could be.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
"But behavioral observation ... is the only real profiling technique that has any chance of not falling into obvious traps."
What nonsense did you use to arrive at that conclusion?
SPOT has been proven ineffective. Searches are partially effective. How can you say that only SPOT has any chance of success?
Furthermore, you assert that having innocent passengers subject to extra search. How far are you willing to take this? Anyone that looks suspicious should be turned away from the airport? You've arbitrary drawn the line at "it's acceptable to subject innocent people to extra searches", there's no reasoning not to draw the line at any other place.
We simply have to admit that FLYING ISN'T FUCKING 100% SAFE BECAUSE NOTHING IS. It's safer than driving a car for fuck's sake, if you're willing to drive a car then you should have no problem flying in a plane. At least with a terrorist you have the chance to tackle them on the plane and beat them to a pulp before they can blow anything up. You don't even have a fighting chance against, say, a drunk driver running a light.
PROTIP: See someone trying to light their shoes or balls on fire? Tackle them.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Fine. Observing passengers for potential cues is security theater. Then explain to me, how exactly is airplane security is going to work? You can't possibly strip search everybody, no one would fly. Having everybody fly naked is not an option either, as is having everybody be sedated and tied to their seats.
Good old investigative work. A terror cell can't really blow up airplanes if their plans are known to the police beforehand, can they? Apart from that, some passive security measures are still possible. Metal detectors can find guns and so aren't security theater. Sealed cockpit doors make it uninteresting for terrorists to attempt to take over an airplane, because they can't replace the pilots.
Sure, investigative work fails to catch 100%; and there may be random lunatics that try to take over the plane anyway. So what? Real life contains a certain measure of risk, and considering the broader canvas, one is exceedingly unlikely to be on the plane that suffers such an attack - particularly after the measures above have been put in place. Besides, the terrorists are after fear. Don't show it and they lose.
I have no particular problem with the idea of observing passengers for suspicious behavior. It's security theater because it doesn't work.
Read the Nature article that was linked, and you'll see the following statistic: From January 2006 to November 2009, these SPOT officers singled out over 232,000 people for further inspection. Of these, 1,710 were arrested. Of THOSE, zero were terrorists.
Let's set aside the fact that these programs are ostensibly about stopping terrorism and instead consider it a victory if anybody was arrested for anything at all--a metric which makes it look much better. 1710/232000 is 0.74%. They have a success rate equal to grabbing one out of every 134 people who pass through the security checkpoints randomly.
Now I'm not sure what a philosophical debate on what a successful program is would turn up, but surely we can agree that 1% success rate is a failure? And this aspires to that level of failure. If these 3,000 officers make $50,000 a year each, we paid $575,000,000 in that approximately 46 month time period to catch 1,710 people of various, non-terrorism-related crimes. Or about $336,257 per arrest. Roughly two officers employed in the program per arrest made.
Now fast forward back to reality where the purpose of these programs is to make airports and air travel more safe and realize its complete and utter lack of success. Go further in understanding that while these numbers are helpful in making an evaluation, these numbers are PEOPLE who are questioned, searched, potentially delayed and detained to arrest a criminal less than one percent of the time. Take another step and consider the philosophical implications of detaining people because they look wrong to you, and the horrendous abuses--conscious or unconscious--that this permits.
Hoo boy. That's why this is ridiculous security theater, and why it needs to be stopped.
What's the solution, you ask? Honestly, I agree with another reply to you: The solution is to accept that there is a risk in flying and move on. The reality is that there is more risk of you dying in a plane crash than a terrorist activity aboard your plane, and obviously far less risk of dying related to air travel than there is simply driving to work in the mornings. And really, the best this airport security can ever hope to accomplish is to force a terrorist to detonate their bombs in crowded security lines instead of crowded airplanes.
Why we've spent hundreds of millions on this program and billions overall on the charade... well it isn't beyond me, it's politics. It's not about safety. It's about an illusion of safety. There's some value to that, but not so much as we spend.
***Fine. Observing passengers for potential cues is security theater. Then explain to me, how exactly is airplane security is going to work?***
It's going to work exactly the same way that it did on 9/11 and does today -- not very well. The ability of 19 hijackers to get past security on 9/11/2001 came as no surprise to seasoned air travelers, and there isn't much doubt that the next bunch of hijackers or bombers won't have any trouble either. What'll they use for weapons? I have no idea. They have years to work on that problem. They'll come up with something.
In point of fact, things like the US's No-Fly list have -- so far as we know -- a perfect record. They have never, to our knowledge, impeded anyone who was an actual threat.
This sort of foolishness is an example of "We must do something even if it is dead stupid" thinking.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Don't get me wrong, there have been more than a few nice saves by real security,
Really?
I try to pay attention and I haven't seen a single one in the news.
What I have seen are people getting busted for drugs and people stupid enough to forget they have a gun or knife in carry-on. They even busted a guy in florida for having bomb materials - unassembled and in his checked luggage. They even chalked that one up as a win to this SPOT program - despite the fact the guy had no intent or ability to harm the flight, my guess is that he was baked and they cued in on that, expecting another drug bust.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Israelis couple their technique with some of the most thorough background checks and heavy racial profiling. Plus they have strict measures for searching of bags, and of passengers, along with armed and obvious crew, and armed and not obvious crew. If you are concerned about being hijacked, fly El Air. If you are sort of kinda concerned, but not worried, fly any US carrier. The threat of hijacking has been blown way out of proportion in order to keep the shrill danger, danger, danger idea going, and to keep allowing the government to concentrate more and more control. Which BTW is not the lead in to a conspiracy theory. Just a fact of life that power leads to more power if unchecked, along with he human trait of trying to make your job secure. Fuck all if I know how to stop it though. Anywhoo, I am not allowed to fly on US carriers or into or from US airports, so I don't care.
This is total horseshit. There are endless examples of tribes who ran round naked and were made to cover up by European missionaries who considered it indecent. In an area of China I visited last year the men traditionally worked naked and they only covered up in the last 20 years when tourists started coming. There is no universal standard for what amount of nudity is acceptable. Don't try to pretend that your prejudice is some kind of natural law.
They should just buy a huge plate of ham sandwiches, and those who take a bite and swallow are waved through, while the rest get the royal treatment.
This might be frighteningly close to the truth. I am not claiming this is the (only) motive behind SPOT - but it does make it possible to single out all those suspicious-looking non-aryan foreigners, while ensuring the persons who do so have a vocabulary of bullshit to draw on if questioned (so we can avoid the true, but unmentionable, "he looked muslim").
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
As securing all passengers with 100% failproof methods is far more intrusive than what's currently proposed, we need to look elsewhere.
That's the problem right there. It is impossible to 100% guarantee safety. Once you accept the fact that travel is risky you are just quibbling about what level of inconvenience is acceptable for whatever level of safety is provided. For me, I'd prefer less inconvenience for a slightly higher risk, because the level of risk is actually really low anyway! More people die on the road just in the US per year than are killed worldwide by terrorism of _every_ kind, let alone just from flight-related terrorism.
Let's take it to the limit and envisage some wonder-security that could guarantee 100% safety but that takes, say, 6 hours extra per flight and costs so much that flying is no longer an option for the vast majority of people (which is at least somewhat realistic!). OK, so flying is "safe" now, but no one can afford it. That is obviously never going to happen because the airlines all go out of business.
... and Tel Aviv is a special case because the risk is higher there, and it takes hours extra to get on a flight and they themselves will tell you it doesn't 100% guarantee your safety!
So we have to accept some level of risk if we wish the convenience of air travel.
During the height of the IRA bombing campaign in London we took reasonable steps (don't leave unattended bags anywhere, etc) to reduce the risks but in general we just got on with it. That is by far the best way for society to deal with these sorts of problems.
Much like paying off hijackers/kidnappers - now we've learnt that lesson for air travel and yet the big shipping companies keep paying off the Somali pirates. That should be illegal. It is obvious, as an observer, that paying off hijackers/kidnappers is the wrong thing to do, so perhaps the UN should pass a resolution saying that no nation or organisation should ever pay them off. That will be bad for some individuals but will be good for society.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
My favorite part of TFA
We know its working, even though we can't tell you how we know it works, because if we told you, bad people would pay attention...
What's the solution, you ask?
I'll answer: The solution is for passengers to recognize that hijackers are trying to kill them, and to respond appropriately. Of course, that solution was implemented shortly after the first plane struck the first tower on 9/11.
The strengthened cockpit doors are nice, too, but the attitude change of the passengers has already made turning an airliner into a missile unworkable. All that's left for terrorists is to blow up the plane itself, which has a very limited terror payoff and even pre-9/11 security makes it a somewhat difficult target. You could kill a lot more people by setting off a bomb in a crowded shopping mall, and there's no security whatsoever there.
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