airport security

I read this morning that the TSA’s Spot program—Screening Passengers by Observation Technique—hasn’t caught a single terrorist yet, as it was designed to, but it has, indeed, accounted for hundreds of arrests of suspected criminals.

TSA officers at about one-third of U.S. airports eyeball passengers for suspicious behavior, such as excess anxiety or sweating, according to a report from BloombergBusinessweek. From 2004-08, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says Spot resulted in 1,083 non-terrorism related arrests, based upon referrals from suspicious TSA agents, who aren’t allowed to make arrests themselves. Of the 353 arrests from November 2010 to 2012, the news report said, 68 percent were for immigration offenses, drug charges or outstanding criminal warrants.

The TSA is taking another look at Spot after complaints, including racial profiling, and officers are expected to get further training in assessing passenger behavior.

Since biometrics is a major topic of discussion among security professionals, especially when it comes to its use in the public sector, I wanted to mention some news coming from Japan this week.

It seems that two major airports near Tokyo have begun testing a new biometric identification system. Immigration officials at Tokyo's Haneda airport and Narita airport in Chiba Prefecture beginning this week will take photographs and fingerprints of traveling Japanese citizens who give their approval and compare them with the biometric data stored on their electronic passports, according to The Japan Times.

The pilot is scheduled to last until Sept. 30, after which the results will be reviewed to determine how accurately machines are able to use biometric data to identify travelers.

It still feels like a movie, but it's only a matter of time until the TSA agent checking my passport will be replaced with machine taking a photo of my iris and comparing it to the binary iris code contained on my passport.

The day after I post a story about the TSA firing eight of its agents at Newark's airport for sleeping on the job (the third batch of pink slips the TSA has handed out this month), news breaks today that the TSA has fired eight federal air marshals, including a supervisor, for drinking alcohol on the job.

The eight air marshals, based in the New York office, allegedly drank alcohol at a restaurant on a training day in February. None of the air marshals were scheduled to fly that day, but rules prohibit alcohol consumption any time they're on the clock, according to the Associated Press.

In addition to the eight fired air marshals, the TSA suspended six more for not reporting the incident, which was ultimately reported via a website where TSA employees can report inappropriate behavior, according to the AP. All of the affected air marshals can appeal the decision, except one who was on probation and terminated immediately, the AP reported.

The TSA issued its now well-known "zero tolerance" statement, which it has issued in the wake of past terminations: "TSA holds all of its employees to the highest professional and ethical standards and has zero tolerance for misconduct in the workplace. ... TSA's decision to remove the individuals involved in the misconduct affirms our strong commitment to the highest standards of conduct and accountability."

John Pistole, administrator for the Transportation Security Administration, has admitted the TSA might not have been able to stop the most-recent underwear bomber with existing technology.

Following AQAP's failed plot to smuggle a new-and-improved underwear bomb aboard a U.S.-bound airplane, Jeffrey Goldberg, a columnist for Bloomberg and national correspondent for The Atlantic, asked Pistole whether the TSA's full-body scanners, now at 180 U.S. airports, would be able to detect such a device if terrorists were able to make one in the United States.

Pistole tactfully danced around the question. "The advanced imaging technology gives us the best chance to detect the underwear-type device," he told Goldberg, but admitted after a follow-up question that it "is not 100 percent guaranteed." Pistole continued:

“If it comes down to a terrorist who has a well-concealed device, and we have no intelligence about him, and he comes to an advanced-imaging technology machine, it is still our best technology. But it’s really an open question about whether the machine, or the AIT operator, would detect the device.”

What about a lo-tech, TSA pat-down? Also not a 100-percent guarantee, Pistole said.

Goldberg left the conversation "unconvinced that the TSA can keep up with advances in jihadist bomb-making."

In his column, Goldberg shares Bruce Schneier's sentiment that the recent foiled underwear-bomb plot (and Pistole's "calibrated answer") should, rather than be cited as a reason to increase airport security, be a strong argument against it. Instead, more focus and resources should be applied to discovering and dismantling plots before they reach the airport because, as Goldberg writes, "if the only thing standing between the bomber and his target is a TSA pat-down, bet on the bomber."