A validation report has identified an area where the U.S. government is possibly hemorrhaging money: the Transportation Security Administration. For the past 10 years, more than $900 million has funded a special security program to identify possible human threats in airports. The report has been unable to identify if the costly program is effective, and the Government Accountability Office is calling to defund it until it is proven useful.
The GAO published a 99-page on Friday recommending the TSA limit funding training and deploying behavior detection officers, or BDOs. In 2011, 3,000 officers were deployed to 176 airports across the United States and observed more than a billion travelers in security checkpoints.
Part of their training is to identify a possible suspect waiting to go through security. By striking up a conversation in line, BDOs can recommend pat downs to law enforcement officers. Throughout the conversation, the BDO must identify certain behaviors. Suspicious actions and emotions are assigned a point value, and if a traveler surpasses a “threshold” point value, they are recommended for a pat down.
Out of 61,000 suspicious travelers in 49 airports in 2011, 13 percent were relayed to law enforcement. Of those people that were suspected to be threatening, 0.6 percent of them were actually arrested.
The validation study found in 17 different airports that “BDOs deviated from the random selection protocol in ways that did not meet the criteria for systematic random selection.”
The people qualified to detect suspicious body language were not exercising their training properly. Analysts found BDOs were not respecting the guidelines that they are supposed to follow to deem someone a flight risk.
The study found that bias is overriding special BDO training, and for almost $100 million a year, taxpayers should not be paying “professionals” to screen “randomly.” The report calls to defund this program until further research proves whether or not BDOs are necessary and keep airports safer.
Thank goodness someone is finding out where to trim the inflating U.S. deficit.
It makes sense to cut the funding if there is scientific research that proves it is not efficient. There is no point in keeping training exercises open to hire more BDOs if their training is just costly and ineffective.
There is no point in keeping a program just because there is no other alternative, especially when safety and scanning technologies have gotten significantly better over the past decade.
Look at body scanners. Yes, they are invasive, but they surely identify that knife or loaded weapon in the suspect’s pocket. For the week of Nov. 1, the TSA confiscated 29 guns, some of which were “artfully” concealed according to their blog. Although the TSA gropes you where you rather they won’t, they have been successful in confiscating loaded weapons, knives and even bombs in a man’s shoes.
Airport security has gotten incredibly restrictive considering people used to be able to wait at the gate for their families. Lines through security have gotten longer and more people are getting pat down, but in the end our safety is worth the extra hassle. Our safety isn’t worth unnecessary profiling, though. BDOs are trained and hired to objectively monitor security checkpoints, but if this study finds that these professionals profile more than exercise their training, then the TSA needs to reevaluate the program.
But in a world where the media and government constantly talk about terrorist threats, it’s tricky to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. What if we get rid of it and then something terrible happens? From a political standpoint, airport security is always a hot issue, and any program that claims it will keep Americans safe will not be turned down. In earlier times, airport security was a non-issue and the TSA trusted most travelers, but after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, several programs and innovations added warranted safety precautions.
But we cannot keep adding security measures if they are proven to be ineffective. There must be a cap on spending somewhere.
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