Responding to criticism like ours over the failure of TSA agents to stop a loaded gun from being checked onto an LAX flight, the security agency leaped into action this week and declared that they will make absolutely no changes to airport security procedures at the airport.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez explained that there's no danger of having loaded guns in checked baggage, because "no one has access to them." So as long as it's true that loaded guns never ever fire accidentally, you can all go back to feeling safe now.
Speaking of which. A day before we posted about how loaded guns on airplanes make us uncomfortable, we discussed our deep skepticism about the training that TSA agents in charge of "chat-downs" were getting. Chat-downs, remember, are the Israeli-style security line interviews that TSA has been testing out in Boston-Logan and now in Detroit-Metro Airports. Agents ask you personal questions, you give personal answers, and then they read your body language to see if you're lying. In theory.]]>
We really don't want to be those travel bloggers. The ones who reflexively complain about everything TSA does just because it's really easy to pick on TSA. We try to be fair about moron passengers, we take pains to explain why TSA agents sometimes have to conduct intrusive inspections, and we give the agency credit when they improve their security protocols.
But the more we read about TSA's shift to Israel-style airport security inspections—which are now being called "chat-downs" by journalists and politicians, because naming things is fun—the more worried we get. This is the agency's new SPOT program, where agents ask you personal questions while you wait in line, and then they try to read your body language to determine whether you're making things up. We haven't quite figured out what's wrong but we're pretty sure we don't like it.]]>
It's been known for years that print-at-home boarding passes are a huge problem for airline security. The TSA restricts access to airside areas by checking the name on your boarding pass against the name on your government-issued ID against your face. If all three match, you get through. So if you're Bomby McNoflylist, all you have to do is buy a ticket on someone else's name, use a PDF editor to create a "fake" boarding pass with your real name for the checkpoint, and then use the "real" boarding pass to get on the plane. And that's before we even get to the problem of fake IDs, which are constantly improving.
Back in 2006, Christopher Soghoian showed how easy it was to create a valid pass with whatever name you wanted. He posted a web-based "Boarding Pass Generator" as part of an academic project on security vulnerabilities (to which the FBI responded to by confiscating all his stuff, because why not?)
The point is, as long as the "identity check" at checkpoints is just visual, there's nothing to make sure that IDs or boarding pass are authentic except TSA agents, who are... imperfect.
TSA officials, having realized as much, seem to be moving in the direction of making the identity checks more than visual. Elegant solution!]]>
TSA has very slowly been moving toward Israeli-style behavior profiling since at least March, which was when we first covered this story. The news this morning is that the agency has finally launched a one billion dollar pilot program at BOS under the too-cute name "Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques"—SPOT—with the intention perhaps of eventually deploying it elsewhere. It seems to be modeled very closely on how the Israelis do things, which immediately raises the question of how exactly the agency intends to pull all this off.
"Behavior profiling" can actually mean at least two things. In the most basic sense behavior profiling it's just about passively watching people. This is the Las Vegas "eye in the sky" kind of profiling, where body language experts monitor the casino floor and can detect cheaters just by the way they walk around nervously. Setting up this kind of passive program is just a matter of having enough resources to train and employ people, and TSA already has so-called "behavior detection officers" in 161 airports (you can check out our background on that program here). But that's not really what people mean when they say "Israeli-style behavior profiling."]]>
If we have one overarching criticism of the TSA, it's that the agency is perennially trying to defend us tomorrow from yesterday's threats. Their rules are designed with an eye toward the last attack rather than in anticipation of the next one. That was the problem with the almost inexplicably stupid anti-pillow, anti-GPS, anti-walking around regulations that TSA tried enforcing after the Christmas Day bomber used a pillow, looked at a GPS, and walked around.
If we have a second overarching criticism of the TSA, it's that they're perennially trying to defend us tomorrow from yesterday's attacks in the most obnoxious, intrusive, privacy-invading, citizen-degrading, and flat out expensive way imaginable.
This brings us to the full-body scanners that the agency purchased by the thousands after DC-based machine lobbies doubled in size, and which experts said 100 percent wouldn't catch anybody because terrorists would adapt. It also brings us to the story from this week, wherein TSA announced that terrorists were planning to adapt by implanting themselves with bombs in a way that full-body scanners couldn't detect. The hell you say.]]>
Consider this your obligatory post about the surreal spectacle of a cancer-stricken 95-year-old woman being forced by TSA to remove her adult diaper while going through airport security. Totally absurd. But if you're looking for us to get outraged at the TSA agents on the ground—something we've been known to do on more than one occassion—you're going to be disappointed.
This dustup is just like the now-infamous baby patdown from a few weeks ago, which happened after the baby's stroller set off an explosives detector. What did you expect TSA agents to do? Not follow up? This time it wasn't a stroller but something suspicious on the woman's leg.]]>
Earlier this week the TSA changed their airport security guidelines on patting down children. Videos and pictures of toddlers getting patdowns have been going viral pretty regularly —triggering outrageously outraged outrage from parents groups, conspiracy theorists, and other demographics disproportionately unlikely to fly—and the agency decided that a change needed to be made. More changes are promised. From now on common sense will rule the day.
For instance, in this week's change, children who move too much while walking through scanning machines will be instructed to try again and again, until they get it right. Until now, kids who produced blurry images would be pulled aside and patted down just like everybody else. That was so the security line would keep moving. Now cherubic little boys and girls who wave their hands around and bump into machines will bring entire lines to a grinding halt, until they can contain their adorable selves. Oh. That should fix things.]]>