Jaunted

TSA

Police State Travel: The TSA's Still Watching

March 3, 2008 at 10:10 AM | 2 Comments

We've told you before about the passenger surveillance programs that the TSA has implemented. Now the agency is talking up the technique on its official blog.

"Behavior detection officer" Bob says he and other fingermen can spot suspicious people by looking for

Signs of stress through involuntary physical and physiological behaviors.

Bob clearly can't divulge any specifics on how passengers get picked out of the crowd for further screening, but if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear, right? Out of millions of fliers since July 2007, Bob and other officers have snared a few hundred sort-of dangerous unsavories, none of whom were terrorists.

In an attempt to scare us even more, Bob includes a fear-mongering report from a local TV station in his post. Nevermind that the TV news interviewee--a gate agent who checked in Mohamed Atta and an accomplice on September 11--had no substantive security training. He had a bad feeling about the two hijackers, he says. If that's not evidence behavior detection works, we don't know what is!

Related Stories:
· The Truth Behind the Title: Behavior Detection Officer [TSA Blog]
· TSA Fingermen Patrolling Airports [Jaunted]
· TSA Moving Beyond Myspace Stalker Stage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Mark Demeny]