Revealed: 'Suicide bomber Barbie' and other TSA quack science that cost $1.5 billion From 2007 through 2015, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spent $1.5 billion trying to identify potentially dangerous travelers by observing their behavior through an ongoing program called SPOT. SPOT stands for "screening of passengers by observation techniques." And according to the TSA's own documents, …
"TSA's behavior detection approach is designed to identify and engage individuals who may be high-risk (eg, possess malicious intent) on the basis of an objective process using behavioral indicators and thresholds, and then route them to additional security screening,"
That word "objective". I do not think it means what you think it means.
"identify and engage individuals who may be high-risk (eg, possess malicious intent) on the basis of an objective process using behavioral indicators and thresholds"
I know it doesn't mean what they say. Those are the individuals they appear to deliberately ignore so they can focus on children and the elderly.
The TSA is a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable - people who couldn't get jobs as mall security guards or Starbucks baristas.
*Unless they started putting CCTV in the TSA luggage inspection areas.
They can't, of course, for "reasons of national security"
I have absolutely no problem with customs opening my luggage in front of me in the presence of witnesses, but uncontrolled access without supervision is not just a route for theft, it also introduces the possibility of a setup. Heck, they could even turn people unwittingly into drug mules for all we know.
TSA's behavior detection approach is designed to identify and engage individuals who may be high-risk (eg, possess malicious intent) on the basis of an objective process using behavioral indicators and thresholds, and then route them to additional security screening
Indeed. For a while, I was randomly selected for the enhanced security screening every time I would board a flight in the US. I can't be sure what was the objective process used to make the determination, but my guess is that it was a combination of three factors: at the time, I had a crew haircut and a full-face beard, making me look like a muslim to some idiots. I believe the second factor was a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit I took, where I got rerouted through Paris. The TSA guy I had to explain this to clearly took this as a fiendish attempt to evade the then-ongoing paroxism of the wars on stuff, and ended up making copious notes - which undoubtedly went on my file. The final straw was my unfortunate tendency to be polite to older helpless-looking people, which once prompted me to help a very nice old lady in a muslim dress to move her luggage in an area where TSA in their infinite wisdom has barred luggage trolleys. I also chatted to her afterwards for a while, as we were both waiting for a flight.
Bingo.
For the next two years, my every attempt to check in online will fail. Every boarding pass I will get at the airport will have the dreaded "SSSS" security flag. If I were lucky that day, I'd just get an extra security machine or two and a bit of light whole-body massage; if not, it would be into the waiting room for an interview - so after a while I started carring some extra reading material, and allocating extra two hours for clearing the security.
Then, after couple of years of this charade, it just stopped. No doubt TSA paperwork has shown that Yet Another Security Incident was prevented by the clever behaviour-science wizards at TSA.
What did people imagine would happen? The TSA was set up rapidly and to do this rapidly, they asked everyone else amongst the TLA's to send them staff: "Give us your best and brightest!" was the call
- of course what they actually got in response was the deadwood, problem people, misfits, idiots, the people we cannot fire for XXX reason and whatever else could be spared.
If one is, for example, the FBI one does not necessarily want Competition to succeed and attract more staff and more funding because of it, now, does one?
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-- to the artist Simon Tyszko’s Suicide Bomber Barbie.
"Suicide Bomber Barbie draws attention to certain kinds of moral, emotional, and political equivalence, which uncomfortably exist within the nationalistic and political systems that contain them. That these systems are dysfunctional, goes without saying."
Indeed. One may say similar things about the TSA, though I think no one doubts the need for security at airports.
Was a Brit selling dowsing rods to Iraq
Not just Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651#Investigations_and_export_ban
Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Georgia, India, Iran, Kenya, Lebanon, Niger, Pakistan, Qatar, Romania, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Vietnam, but still not the TSA, yet.
Plus, other brands of dowsing rod are available...
Absobloodylutely.
The positive sample is too small (and thanks god for that) to draw any statistical conclusions. What do we have today. 2 or 3 attempts. The shoe bomber, the pants bomber and who else?
Even if we have preflight observations of them, it is mathematically impossible to get any results out of a sample this size so trying to get them is a rank raving lunacy.
Typical sloppy job by El Reg.
" It also includes a cartoon that presents a mother and daughter wearing hijabs, arguing over the daughter's desire for a sixth "suicide bomber martyr Barbie.""
The "funny" retort from the mother is "you have six already".
Six plus the one in the little terrorist's hands makes seven. The desire is for a seventh suicide bomber martyr Barbie.
This lack of attention to arithmetical detail is rife in western society, its scientific papers and its software, the reason why space probes can't land properly, the hallmark of Fake News and bogus Global Warming Conspiracies and the main reason the terrorists are emboldened and not surrendering and laying down arms already.
Harrumph, sir! Harrumph!
$ dig thereg.ah.fuck.it
; <<>> DiG 9.10.4-P5 <<>> thereg.ah.fuck.it
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 28625
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;thereg.ah.fuck.it. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
thereg.ah.fuck.it. 3600 IN A 46.252.31.30
;; Query time: 359 msec
;; SERVER: ::munged::
;; WHEN: Thu Feb 09 01:10:53 PST 2017
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 62
::heh::
Just asking, my sons GF was pulled for drug searches EVERY time they went through a US airport last year, no one else in the rather large group was even glanced at (she speaks broad Dudley); the rest speak with slightly more refined accents (Shropshire and Worcestershire).
Me?? I have refused to visit the US since they pointed machine guns at my 7 y/o son, because he had a drawing pin stuck in the heel of one shoe; and took his Mickey mouse toy away, "because it looked like a gun"; even then, clearing security in the US took nearly as long as the flight.
You think thats bad.... wait until you set off the metal detectors .....because of the surgically implanted metal that holds your leg together...
"look out hes got a suicide leg!"
Boris
<<despising the twonk staffed agency since they cut the straps on his backpack in order to open it....... the helpful plastic clips that held it shut were 1 inch away ....
We've given up flying for this very reason. Full stop. My lady has a prosthetic leg and numerous joint replacements. She gets pulled out every freakin' time. She'll them that she can't do some things they want her to like raise her hands over her head (shoulder replacements) and then they try to force her arms to move where they can't. They'll fiddle with her prosthetic for awhile, discover the battery (it's microprocessor leg) and try to confiscate it because.. bombs.
Fucking morons running amok is what they are.
You think that's bad. Wait until you set off the plastic explosive scanner alerts with the arthritis in your joints.
"Would you mind stepping into the body scanner sir?"
"Not at all."
Buzz Buzz Whoosh Whoosh
"Er ... officer, could you inspect the passenger's knees and thighs please?"
"Wait, what? Doesn't someone have to offer me candy first?"
Maybe I haven't lost my black country accent then... (I moved away 19 years ago.)
My family managed to clock up 7 bag searches spread across 5 of us on a recent trip to Florida from the UK. (We changed flights at Washington, hence managed to clock up more bag searches than we had items of hand baggage by having bag checks there as well as in the UK...)
For the record, it gets pretty boring once you've worked out that your offspring *hasn't* put a tub of rice pudding or a large rock in their bag *this* time and it's just some strange configuration of crayons, books toys etc. that's making the staff working the scanner worry...
Have some retired KGB chaps been providing advice to the TSA?
No, judging by the cruelty on display they must be descendants of all the Nazis scientists the US took in after the war instead of convicting them as war criminals. You must be pretty deluded to think that what they do contributes in any way to security - you could achieve just as much at 1% of the cost by randomisation. Actually, I think that may actually be more effective as it takes away the profile blindness they have at present: if you know what profiles they use you can work on falling outside those parameters (which MUSt be happening already). By randomisation you strip predictability from the process and thus increate the risk of detection.
But hey, that would mean someone would have to hand in 99% of their budget. Not going to happen - troughs must be filled for that many snouts..
Funny. My brief time with a military organization far more reputable than the TSA taught that women were much harder to indoctrinate in a military situation as they are not natural team players to the extent that men are (no idea if that is true, but it is what was taught).
I was held up in Israel because I was an older female traveling with an older female and we were Just The Type to be sweet-talked by young and sexy Hamid and Abdul into taking 'presents' back to their family in my country. Because all older single female are putty in the hands of doe-eyed young Palestinians. I guess even the lesbian ones, like my partner (now missus) and myself.
"... roving officers, some undercover, who engage travelers in casual conversation while looking for telltale signs of malicious intent, whatever those might be. Ostensibly, these conversations were voluntary, but seeking to avoid them or being insufficiently forthcoming was treated as an "indicator" that might prompt referral to additional screening."
Being accosted by strangers who try to lure me into converstion is guarenteed to make me tense and glower. Repeated experience has shown me that those sorts of people are usually up to no good.
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