Our only concerns with peeping TSA folk are not at the full-body screening machines, they are also with secret personnel whose job it is to simply sit and watch passengers. These detection officers have the power to command that passengers go through additional screening just because they don’t like the way the travelers are acting.
This is not a new, secret program. It has been going on for almost six years following the lead of the Israeli security services who scan their airports for suspicious characters. It started in Boston back in 2003 and expanded dramatically in 2006. TSA calls this the Behavior Detection Officer (BDO) program.
If you have been watching the TV series, Lie to Me, you have the idea. These officers are not looking for liars (well, maybe they are) but for antsy folk who are nervous because they are planning to blow up a plane (or perhaps because they have $2.5 million dollars of drugs in their hand luggage).
TSA’s BDO-trained security officers are screening travelers for involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered. TSA recognizes that an individual exhibiting some of these behaviors does not automatically mean a person has terrorist or criminal intent. BDOs do, however, help our security officers focus appropriate resources on determining if an individual presents a higher risk or if his/her behavior has a non-threatening origin. Individuals exhibiting specific observable behaviors may be referred for additional screening at the checkpoint to include a handwanding, limited pat down and physical inspection of one’s carry-on baggage. Referrals are based on specific observed behaviors only, not on one’s appearance, race, ethnicity or religion.
The program is considered phenomenally successful with something like a 10 percent success rate at discovering illegal goods, weapons, stashed bottles of liquids, corkscrews, drugs, folk traveling on someone else’s ticket, false IDs and other contraband (but no terrorists yet) passing through security checkpoints.
…the government’s leading behavior-detection advocate, says automated detection “is in the far distant future.” The TSA’s present system, he says, “is phenomenally successful” — even if more than 90 percent of questionable people turn out innocent.
And don’t think that striking up a conversation with a TSA officer may be the friendly thing to do. Or, that the officer is actually trying to be friendly. You may be in the midst of a behavioral search. That nice friendly TSA guy or gal may be assessing your every twitch and shrug to see if you are uncomfortable.
“We’re looking to see if there’s any cognitive overload in responses to simple questions like, How are you today? Where are you headed?” says Carl Maccario, a TSA program analyst in Boston who helped launch the agency program at Logan International Airport in 2003. “If you’re trying to be deceptive or up to some malfeasance, people can pick up cues the body will display when that conflict is going on.”
The Washington Post reported that “… 98,805 passengers [were asked] to undergo additional screenings. Police questioned 9,854 of them and arrested 813.”
Simply making it through the gauntlet of security at an airport may not be enough to get TSA off your case.
The observation of passengers does not end at the airport.
On an undisclosed number of domestic and international flights, federal air marshals pick up where the behavior detection officers leave off.
The marshals blend in with passengers and work covertly to spot suspicious behavior, said Nelson Minerly, spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, which also falls under the TSA.
Though the justification for these searches is terrorism, no terrorists seem to have been apprehended. It seems like a major invasion of personal privacy just to get on a plane.
One reader responding to a bulletin board thread noted: “We would not tolerate border checks on highways between states, and we do not find it legal to stop all patrons leaving a bar to see if they are drinking and driving… why is wholesale TSA screening tolerated if it does not fulfill its real purpose?”
In the meantime, just as in scenes scarily like some from the riveting film, Lives of Others, faceless bureaucrats in more than 160 airports are secretly watching us as we jostle through security procedures minding our own business, simply trying to get from Point A to Point B.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
