You can’t spot a terrorist through winks and frowns, not even for a billion dollars.
A harsh new report released by the Government Accountability Office slammed the Department of Homeland Security’s Screening of Passengers by Technique, or SPOT program, saying there’s no scientific evidence to suggest that subtle facial expressions can signal nefarious intent.
“SPOT officials told us that it is not known if the SPOT program has ever resulted in the arrest of anyone who is a terrorist,” the GAO report states, “or who was planning to engage in terrorist-related activity.”
The new report was released as Homeland Security prepared to spend another $254 million on SPOT — even though it has yet to nab a single known terrorist since being implemented seven years ago. The federal government has already shelled out $750 million training Transportation Security Administration employees in the art of spotting.
Adopted by the administration back in 2004, SPOT was largely based on the work of retired University of California psychology professor Paul Ekman, and has been touted as a tool that can help identify potential suicide bombers and terrorist hijackers.
But the program has routinely been knocked for having no scientific basis. A 2008 report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, for instance, cast doubt on whether behavioral monitoring was effective.
An earlier Government Accountability Office report also found that 17 known terrorists eluded SPOT screeners in 23 U.S. airports.
SPOT has been used to identify criminals. From May 2004 to August 2008, the SPOT program referred 14,000 passengers to law enforcement. Of those, 1,003 were arrested, but none for terrorism-related charges. Thirty-nine percent of the passengers arrested were found to be illegal immigrants, while 19 percent had outstanding warrants.
Testifying before Congress in April, Larry Wills, the program manager for the Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate, said the “SPOT program is significantly more effective than random screening.”
Whether the billion-dollar dragnet is justified is an open question. Homeland Security reported that it pulled 50,000 passengers from airport lines for further screening based on SPOT techniques in 2010. Three hundred eventually were arrested — none on terror charges. It remains unclear how many arrests may have resulted if a similar sampling of passengers randomly were pulled for re-screening.
Thousands of breaches at America’s airports
U.S. airports are still vulnerable to terror attacks, despite billions of dollars invested in security enhancements since Sept. 11, 2001, a Republican congressman said yesterday.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah led an inquiry into what he described as the Transportation Security Administration’s security deficiencies. He cited government statistics of more than 25,000 security breaches at U.S. airports since November 2001 — an average of slightly more than five security breaches a year at each of the 457 commercial airports.
The TSA has said that number is misleading and represents a small fraction of 1 percent of the 5.5. billion people screened since the 2001 terror attacks.
A security breach is broadly defined to include instances ranging from a checked bag being misplaced after it went through security screening to a person who was caught in the act of breaching security and immediately apprehended, the TSA said.
Testifying before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, the director of aviation at Charlotte Douglas Airport, T.J. Orr, said the TSA is compromised by a “rigid attitude of arrogance and bureaucracy.”
Among the breaches since November 2001 are more than 14,000 people who have found their way into sensitive areas and about 6,000 travelers who have made it past screeners without proper scrutiny, Chaffetz said.
Just this Tuesday, a wet, naked man scaled an 8-foot-high fence at New York’s Kennedy Airport and was a “stone’s throw” away from a storage facility holding thousands of gallons of fuel, a Port Authority spokeswoman said yesterday. — Associated Press
A harsh new report released by the Government Accountability Office slammed the Department of Homeland Security’s Screening of Passengers by Technique, or SPOT program, saying there’s no scientific evidence to suggest that subtle facial expressions can signal nefarious intent.
“SPOT officials told us that it is not known if the SPOT program has ever resulted in the arrest of anyone who is a terrorist,” the GAO report states, “or who was planning to engage in terrorist-related activity.”
The new report was released as Homeland Security prepared to spend another $254 million on SPOT — even though it has yet to nab a single known terrorist since being implemented seven years ago. The federal government has already shelled out $750 million training Transportation Security Administration employees in the art of spotting.
Adopted by the administration back in 2004, SPOT was largely based on the work of retired University of California psychology professor Paul Ekman, and has been touted as a tool that can help identify potential suicide bombers and terrorist hijackers.
But the program has routinely been knocked for having no scientific basis. A 2008 report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, for instance, cast doubt on whether behavioral monitoring was effective.
An earlier Government Accountability Office report also found that 17 known terrorists eluded SPOT screeners in 23 U.S. airports.
SPOT has been used to identify criminals. From May 2004 to August 2008, the SPOT program referred 14,000 passengers to law enforcement. Of those, 1,003 were arrested, but none for terrorism-related charges. Thirty-nine percent of the passengers arrested were found to be illegal immigrants, while 19 percent had outstanding warrants.
Testifying before Congress in April, Larry Wills, the program manager for the Homeland Security’s science and technology directorate, said the “SPOT program is significantly more effective than random screening.”
Whether the billion-dollar dragnet is justified is an open question. Homeland Security reported that it pulled 50,000 passengers from airport lines for further screening based on SPOT techniques in 2010. Three hundred eventually were arrested — none on terror charges. It remains unclear how many arrests may have resulted if a similar sampling of passengers randomly were pulled for re-screening.
Thousands of breaches at America’s airports
U.S. airports are still vulnerable to terror attacks, despite billions of dollars invested in security enhancements since Sept. 11, 2001, a Republican congressman said yesterday.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah led an inquiry into what he described as the Transportation Security Administration’s security deficiencies. He cited government statistics of more than 25,000 security breaches at U.S. airports since November 2001 — an average of slightly more than five security breaches a year at each of the 457 commercial airports.
The TSA has said that number is misleading and represents a small fraction of 1 percent of the 5.5. billion people screened since the 2001 terror attacks.
A security breach is broadly defined to include instances ranging from a checked bag being misplaced after it went through security screening to a person who was caught in the act of breaching security and immediately apprehended, the TSA said.
Testifying before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, the director of aviation at Charlotte Douglas Airport, T.J. Orr, said the TSA is compromised by a “rigid attitude of arrogance and bureaucracy.”
Among the breaches since November 2001 are more than 14,000 people who have found their way into sensitive areas and about 6,000 travelers who have made it past screeners without proper scrutiny, Chaffetz said.
Just this Tuesday, a wet, naked man scaled an 8-foot-high fence at New York’s Kennedy Airport and was a “stone’s throw” away from a storage facility holding thousands of gallons of fuel, a Port Authority spokeswoman said yesterday. — Associated Press
