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Fewer Than 1% Arrested From TSA's "Behavior Detection"
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Nov 19, 2008 08:01 AM
from the department-of-funny-walks dept.
from the department-of-funny-walks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports using the much vaunted 'suspicious behavior detection' techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. It has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program." In related news, the odds of sanity coming to the TSA plummeted today when Schneier said he's not interested in the top job there.
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Submission: TSA's 'Behavior Detection' Less Than 1% Efffective by Anonymous Coward
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In other news: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, how wrong you are...
http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/ToasterClone-Download-54367.html [softpedia.com]
seems to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary used a lot of words to say it doesn't work. Not that they'll stop using it unless they are made to. Honestly, all this 'using a Buick to swat a fly nonsense has to end sometime.
The thing is, if you know your entering a country that starts off on the assumption your probably a terrorist, that doesn't make people relax.
Personally I find airports immensely stressful, seriously so, to the point that I take the train if at all possible. Flying is bearable, but all that waiting around in the airport buying overpriced coffee and getting 'approved as terror free' is a deeply unpleasant experience.
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Re:seems to me (Score:5, Funny)
Honestly, all this 'using a Buick to swat a fly nonsense has to end sometime.
Why end it? It's likely helping keep GM afloat.
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the USA should market itself better (Score:5, Interesting)
when I'm on holiday, I don't appreciate being fingerprinted and photographed by people with guns.
I'd expect it in Libya, but not a 'free' country. I recently went on holiday to new Zealand. On the stopover in the USA I got the fingerprint treatment, and made to feel like a prisoner, despite the fact I didn't even leave the single room in the airport for transit passengers whose plane is refuelling.
That stopover was a wonderful marketing opportunity for the USA to say "Come to the USA! Spend your tourist money here! Enjoy the USA!"
Instead, it felt like a prison visit.
When i got to NZ, they didn't fingerprint me or photograph me at all.
Based on this, I'll go on holiday to NZ again to relax, but not to the US. The US just lost my tourism cash. Nice work guys.
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Terrorists act suspiciously? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you were convinced that you were morally right and upholding 'God's Law' would you really act suspiciously? Those who act suspicious know what they are doing is wrong.
Terrorism is a different animal all together from faking IDs and drug carrying.
Re:Terrorists act suspiciously? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if the government labeled your kids/spouse/parents as enemy of the state without proof you'd just kill them with no hesitation?
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I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
How does that figure compare to random searches? Without that figure for comparison it's completely pointless saying "OMGZ TSA FAIL" because nobody ever claimed that everyone stopped would be arrested. If it gets higher arrests than random searches what's the problem?
Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it gets higher arrests than random searches what's the problem?
Because this program was supposed to find terrorists, not people with fake IDs or people trying to sneak a couple of ounces through security.
If some villagers are mauled by a tiger, and I promise to catch the tigers, and I implement a system of nets and snares around the village, and I don't catch any tigers, then I have failed to keep my promise, regardless of how many snakes and wild boars I do catch.
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Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Informative)
Right, the true numbers should be:
160,000 people searched under the new anti-terrorist behaviour screening, 0 terrorists found. 1,200 arrests made for completely non-terrorist activity.
This doesn't indicate a ~1% success rate, it indicates a 100% failure rate; no terrorists were found.
Perhaps there are no terrorists to find, perhaps there are; but in either case, this method has found to be a complete failure over a sample size of 160,000 individuals.
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Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there haven't been any tiger attacks in the whole time the net has been up then there's no basis to say that it has been a success or a failure.
Well, that's a relief. I thought you were going to point to the absence of attacks as some sort of proof that this system is working, despite the complete lack of any definitive evidence, like arrests.
You might even claim that the absence of attacks is a result of the nets being put up and therefore they have been a success.
Now, I ask you: How many terrorist attacks have there been on planes since this system was put in place?
Oh my...looks like I spoke too soon.
On a related note, if you're worried about tiger attacks, you can borrow my tiger repelling rock. It, like the snares, doesn't actually catch tigers, but it's guaranteed to keep them away. I myself haven't so much as seen a tiger since I began carrying it.
Note that I'm not saying it actually has been a success,
No, but you're certainly insinuating it rather loudly...
I'm saying I see no example of it having failed
As I made clear above, the complete lack of any terrorism related arrests clearly spell out the failure of this program. Either the terrorists are there, and are not being caught, or they aren't there at all, in which case the program is pointless...assuming, of course, that "capture of terrorists" was its actual goal...
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, You're really going to try to claim you weren't trying to insinuate anything with this line?
And when I call you out on your dishonesty, I'm the "troll". Brilliant.
As I made clear above, the lack of arrests for terrorism do not prove anything about the success or failure of the program.
They prove that the program (as far as its stated goals go) is either a failure or pointless. Take your pick.
Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but that little or nothing to do with the TSA. You see, I have this "anti-terrorist" rock I found a few years ago, and as long as I give it a lucky pat before bed every night, it keeps the entire US safe.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Harassed"? Harassed how exactly? They were searched. Everyone gets searched every time they get on a plane. My hand luggage goes through a scanner, I walk through a metal detector, have I been harassed? Several times I've been taken aside and patted down too, was that harassment?
I'm wondering where valid searches stop and this "harassment" you speak of starts. Is it being taken into a room? A finger down my throat? A finger up my arse? I might agree with you when we get to those last couple, but are those
Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you wouldn't mind if police pulled up to you every now and then on the street to pat you down, pass a metal detector over you, let the sniffer dog check you.
And if every few months they knocked on your door and searched your home in a similar manner?
If 1% of such searches turn something up it's fine right?
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Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I don't know if that's good or bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Harassed"? Harassed how exactly? They were searched. Everyone gets searched every time they get on a plane. My hand luggage goes through a scanner, I walk through a metal detector, have I been harassed? Several times I've been taken aside and patted down too, was that harassment?
Inconvenienced, insulted, accused, annoyed. Take your pick. I do find being searched demeaning. It's all harassment. Therefore, I would like as little of it as possible. As a feeling animal, I seek pleasure and avoid pain. Clearly, not everyone is equally annoyed by these things. Perhaps some are just Authoritarian Personality Types. Perhaps some feel the tradeoff is "worth it".
I don't agree that the tradeoff is worth it, so I feel harassed every time I fly. I'm not the only one. So before anyone asks, yes, I'd rather see hundreds of planes in flames and the establishment of a Caliphate and I'm gonna marry a carrot.
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A rose by any other name still has thorns (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not - That would presume the TSA (and DHS in general) actually has the goal of stopping terrorists.
Don't make the mistake of taking their name and stated goals literally. The DHS exists solely for the purpose of keeping the US populace in fear, making us easier to control and more tolerant of increasingly draconian laws relating to "security". For proof, you need look no further than how well FEMA (once an actually useful agency) has handled various disasters since they got sucked into the DHS... Or for that matter, the TSA's record at catching weapons carried by various reporters.
The second amendment grows increasingly relevant to our society every day... And not for protection from dark-skinned foreigners, but the real "terrorists" running our country and our world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I heard, they had -not- ever caught a terrorist with these methods or even random searches. It is only an inconvenience to the customer.
This is partly because there just aren't that many terrorists out there, but mainly because the tactics are useless against people that know the tactics... And you know the tactics if you've ever flown. Or talked to someone who has.
Instead of harassing the customers, they could pay a couple armed guards to sit on every flight and things would go smoother all around.
Re:A rose by any other name still has thorns (Score:4, Insightful)
The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program
That actually speaks volumes. You can bet your last penny that if they had caught anyone they could paint as a "terrorist", it'd be like their poster child and would be all over the media, "see, THIS is why you need us! This is why we NEED to make flying total hell and have you take off your shoes and strip down at the airport every time!"
Since we haven't seen any examples, it's very safe to assume there are none.
I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Either they''ll genuinely identify a terrorist, or will get lucky. Then the media will have a field day and we'll really be stuck with it. Here's to hoping they don't get lucky in time before enough public inertia gathers to dump them on the curb.
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Same as other security (Score:3, Insightful)
But what's the background rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just another case of statistics being used to try to manipulate the story. Saying that this detection method only managed about a 1% arrest rate is meaningless unless we also know what the arrest rate was with previous / other methods. If other methods were only achieving 0.1% then this is fantastic improvement.
On a more personal note though I think any technique that can only manage a 1% success rate probably needs scrapping. There are obviously far to many false positives for the system to be trusted and of course you can't count the number of false negatives. The fact that it was specifically brought into catch terrorists and it would seem it hasn't succeeded speaks even worse of it (I imagine if they had caught a terrorist they would be shouting it from the roof tops).
Yeah well (Score:3, Insightful)
McCarthyism resulted in less than 1% of the citizens of Hollywood being blacklisted from the movie industry (on hearsay and specious evidence). So that was OK, then?
Numbers don't matter. Justice matters. What ever happened to "probable cause?"
statistical anomaly (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that less than 1% of the people caught were doing something illegal would make sense if we can assume that the vast majority of the people flying are not criminals.
Let say that the detector was accurate 90% of the time, and 5% of the people who passed through the airport were doing something illegal. If one million people came through that airport, we could assume that:
1,000,000 people
50,000 criminals
- 45,000 detected
- 5,000 not detected
950,000 innocent people
-855,000 not flagged
- 95,000 falsely accused
140,000 people accused
- 67.8% are innocent
- 32.1% are guilty
Granted this is just a hypothetical situation, not based on actual statistics, but the example shows how that even a reasonably accurate system can look unreliable when searching for a needle in a haystack.
Of course issues of fairness and privacy are something else entirely is another issue entirely.
Re:statistical anomaly (Score:4, Interesting)
I went ahead and read TFA to get the actual numbers: 160,000 flags, 1,266 arrests for a 0.79125% "success" rate.
Your example illustrates your point well, however there is another possible conclusion. Imagine that 0.79125% of people at airports have drugs or fake IDs (or whatever else people can be arrested for) and the system is a scam and is just randomly selecting people. Then of a random sample of 160,000 people at airports, we would expect 1,266 arrests.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right! We should extend this outside of airports, so that any jumped up minimum wage gomer with a tin badge can stop anyone they like, declare Facecrime, and use that as probable cause for an invasive search up to and including internal! I'm sure that the 99% of innocents who get Probed would also agree that the payoff is worth it, whatever the cost!
Let's start with you, shall we?
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm betting if the police just randomly grabed people off the street and subjected them to everything up to cavity searches more than 1% would be found to be carrying drugs,knives longer than the legal length, fake ID's or be found to be violating some other pisant little law.
Hell if a police officers followed any random person for a single day as they went about their blameless buisness there's close to a 100% chancethat person could be caught commiting enough "crimes" to put them away for life.
It boils down to the fact that if a law enforcement official doesn't like your face he can find some ancient law you've been violating and put you away.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646&hl=en [google.com]
Why nobody in america should ever talk to the police. ever.No matter how innocent.
You can be a criminal for possesion of a lobster, opeing a packet of cigarettes without fully destroying the tax seal and for any number of lesser known laws.
Nobody in america is truely innocent. Everyone has broken the law at some point and almost everyone breaks the law many times a day without ever knowing.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think every new law should come under review every 5 years to a) judge its effectiveness in reducing whatever it is it was meant to reduce, b) re-assess its applicability in light of new developments (whether that be technological, court rulings, false positives etc) and c) gauge public opinion about whether this law is still necessary. It's a lot to ask for sure, but then again passing a new law is a big deal, or at least it should be.
Without some kind of review process like this the law books will just get thicker and thicker, until it becomes impossible to live a normal life without breaking some law every day. I'd argue we've already reached that point.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Interesting)
problem: your solution gets very very heavy over time.
How about this: 1 year after a law comes in it has to be reviewed, then 2 years after that, then 4 years after that, then 8 years after that etc etc etc.
a law which has stood for 100 years without being repealed or edited is probably pretty solid.
A law which was passed in the heat of the moment is probably useless.
this has the advantage that even with a lot of laws the weight of re-testing them gets less over time.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to the lazy.
Is this what your father used to do?
Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you kill someone in a drunken rage or kill someone drunk driving is that the barmans fault or your own since you chose to drink?
It's your fault no matter what you're on.
The drugs are not killing your victim, you are and it's your fault if you chose to take the drugs.
So no, this is an entirely invalid point.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Insightful)
That idea is an extremely slippery slope, that is all too often used to extend ever more control over people. For example, one of the fundamental principles of law, is someone is innocent, until proven guilty. But by applying the idea, "you have nothing to hide", it means anyone suspected (in this case, by automated profiling) of being a criminal, now needs to prove they are innocent. It means if you are a false positive, then you will be stopped from what you are doing and interrogated and even your house and belongings can be searched, until you can prove you are innocent. While all this is happening, you will also have no privacy at all and your freedom is removed from you while you prove you are innocent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_guilty [wikipedia.org]
So over time, as they add ever more automated profiling, they get ever more ways to get more people caught up as false positives. That's ever more people, being deprived of freedom, until they can prove their innocence.
The route to a totalitarian society, is via people using the idea of, "you have nothing to hide". Yet ironically, all too often, its the minority of people who have power in (ever more) totalitarian style societies, that are able to cause the greatest injustices to their powerless minions. They cause their harm through multiple means. Some are self-righteously ignorant of the harm they cause. Others deliberately seek to exploit their position of power, for their own gain.
The real danger is this minority of people (in ever country) who seek to dominate and control others. This applies to people who seek political or business power over people and ironically terrorists also seek to dominate and control others, into their twisted points of view, for their groups gain. In the case of the terrorists the gain they seek is for their own side, (even if their lower foot soldiers don't gain) as they see it as a battle for their point of view. In the case of political or business power, the gain is directly for them.
The majority of us who don't seek power over others, are simply caught up in an endless power struggle, throughout history between different minority groups, who do seek power and so seek to get others on their side, to boost their own power and to overthrow the other power seeking groups.
Therefore, "you have nothing to hide", is wrong. Everyone has something to hind from some of these groups, who seek power. Because some of the groups will use anything they learn to gain power over people and the more extreme they push towards a totalitarian controlled society, the more they can exploit, stop, search, detain or interrogate, you and your family. That's not the kind of world I want to live in. Plus once these laws are passed, they can be used by any new party getting into power later on. Imagine what power some more extreme groups would do, if they gained access to this kind of power in the future.
For example, in the UK, http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00065/cartoon291008_65504a.jpg [independent.co.uk] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Smith [wikipedia.org] "As the UK Home Secretary, she has been noted for advocating strongly authoritarian policies."
"Authoritarian", in her case, as in extremely arrogant, self-righteous, self-serving, power seeking, contempt for the views of others. She is a great example of how power corrupts and she is dragging the whole UK into her own total police state hell.
For example, in the UK, even some companies can legally break into peoples homes.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/bills/article.html?in_article_id=427634&in_page_id=510 [thisismoney.co.uk]
That
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Insightful)
150k+ more people were wrongly harassed for those 1.2k arrests. Doesn't sound so good when you look at all the numebers involved.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
Arrested != convicted. Oooh - someone smuggling drugs. Big national security risk there.
If this were a medical test, it would have been tossed out well before implementation based on both the false positive rate and the admission of questionable sensitivity.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't know how well a detector works unless you know how many cases it failed to detect a true positive (what's called a false negative in the biz). Let's say if you searched everyone in line you'd arrest 0.2% of them for some suspected crime. In that case, the 1200 in 600k means your detector is worthless. It works no better than a random sample.
Most of us want to catch people doing illegal things. Fewer and fewer of us want to prevent a police state that asks people for their papers at every turn, and performs strip searches because they smiled at the camera a little funny.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Insightful)
1.2K arrest for 160K control.
How many would have been arrested if 160K person had been randomly controlled instead of using that technology ?
Also how many of those person with fake id would have been catched later-on at passport control ?
Police Officer are already very good at behavior detection. Can this system be replaced by simply adding more cops in critical area ?
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Insightful)
160.000 people were frisked and only 1.266 were found posses something they shouldn't*. That's a hit ratio of fewer than 1%.
According to Wikipedia, by the beginning of 2008, more than 1 in 100 Americans were incarcerated, so that's more than 1% "hit ratio" if you simply searched every American for illegal drugs, fake IDs or similar. Still a decent tradeoff?
*I don't see how a person carrying pot can bring down a plane, but apprently it's already possible with nail scissors, so who knows.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:5, Funny)
By sharing it with the pilot.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Funny)
Nah, he'd just fly really slow with the windows down.
Oh, I see your point.
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Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Interesting)
So you think performing questionable searches of 160 000 people at the airport is perfectly fine? And arresting people for infractions not related to the search based on the results? I hope not many people share your views. That kind of reasoning ends up with some very depressing scenarios very fast.
If you'd pulled over 160 000 cars and searched them on the highway on "suspicions of terrorism" you'd probably get 1200 arrests for various minor infractions as well. Or if you searched 160 000 houses, or random people on the street....
With a accuracy of less than 1% for any crime it obviously doesn't work. It can't be that much better than a random search.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Picking out 160.000 people at random, or based on a border guard's hunch would likely have gotten as many hits.
Sounds like a waste of money to me.
Re:Only 1.2k Arrests! (Score:4, Insightful)
Picking out 160.000 people at random, or based on a border guard's hunch would likely have gotten as many hits.
Sounds like a waste of money to me.
Sounds like a serious threat to civil liberties to me. The money involved is of little interest.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In that case, (Score:4, Funny)
For the actual quote:
"Blessed is the one who grabs your little children and smashes them against a rock."
Psalm 137:9
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Re:In that case, (Score:5, Informative)
(And "blessed" means "happy", not "God condones this and will bless you")
Looking into it more, though, I learned of a larger historical context (Taken from here [wels.net]):
"It is important to remember that the curses of Psalm 137 are not originally the psalmistâ(TM)s curses. They are the Lordâ(TM)s curses which the psalmist has made his own. The destruction of Edom was the fulfillment of prophecy, particularly the prophecy of Obadiah. In Isaiah 13:16, which was written about 200 years before Babylonâ(TM)s fall, the destruction of Babylon was prophesied in almost the exact terms used in Psalm 137. The destruction of the children who were too young to be transported into slavery was a common practice in ancient warfare. Since this cruelty was apparently practiced by the Babylonians during their campaigns of conquest against Israel, Babylon would receive from its Persian and Median conquerors the same treatment which it had inflicted on Israel (Jeremiah 50:29; 51:56). "
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