Behavior Detection as Interrogation
With the Department of Homeland Security constantly spinning out new projects and programs (plus re-branded old ones) to investigate you, me, and the kitchen sink, it’s sometimes hard to keep up. But I was intrigued with a report that behvaior detection officers are getting another look from the Transportation Security Administration. Behavior detection is the unproven, and so far highly unsuccessful (Rittgers, Harper), program premised on the idea that telltale cues can reliably and cost-effectively indicate intent to do harm at airports.
But there’s a new behavior detection program already underway. Or is it interrogation?
Due to a bottleneck at the magnetometers in one concourse of the San Francisco airport (no strip-search machines!), I recently had the chance to briefly interview a Transportation Security Administration agent about a new security technique he was implementing. As each passenger reached him, he would begin to examine the traveler’s documentation and simultaneously ask the person’s last name. He confirmed to me that the purpose was to detect people who did not immediately, easily, and accurately respond. In thousands of interactions, he would quickly and naturally learn to detect obfuscation on the part of anyone carrying an ID that does not have the last name they usually use.
As a way of helping to confirm identity, it’s a straightforward and sensible technique. Almost everyone knows his or her last name, and quickly and easily repeats it. The average TSA agent with some level of experience will fluently detect people who do not quickly and easily repeat the name on the identity card they carry. The examination is done quickly. This epistemetric check (of a “something-you-know” identifier—see my book, Identity Crisis) occurs during the brief time that the documents are already getting visual examination.
Some people will not repeat their name consistent with custom, of course. The hard of hearing, speakers of foreign languages, people who are very nervous, people who have speech or other communication impediments, and another group of sufferers—recently married women—may exhibit “suspicious” failure to recite their recently changed surnames. Some of these anomalies TSA agents will quickly and easily dismiss as non-suspicious. Others they won’t, and in marginal cases they might use non-suspicious indicia like ethnicity or rudeness to adjudge someone “suspicious.”
The question whether these false positives are a problem depends on the sanction that attaches to suspicion. If a stutterer gets a gauntlet at the airport each time he or she fails to rattle off a name, the cost of the technique grows compared to the value of catching … not the small number of people who travel on false identification—the extremely small number of people who travel on false identification so as to menace air transportation.
Strip-Search Machines: A Loss Seeds the Win
Last week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge to the Transportation Security Administration’s strip-search machine policies, but it found that the TSA violated the Administrative Procedure Act in rolling them out. Too bad that the court arrived at the Fourth Amendment issues before they were ripe.
The bulk of the decision was devoted to the TSA’s law violation in creating strip-search machine policies without doing a notice-and-comment rulemaking. That’s the procedure federal agencies are required to carry out when Congress has delegated them legislative authority. Congress did delegate such authority when it told the Department of Homeland Security to develop technologies that detect nonmetallic, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons in 2004′s Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.
“[T]he TSA has advanced no justification for having failed to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking,” the court wrote, adding that it expects the agency “to act promptly on remand to cure the defect in its promulgation.”
The TSA will likely spout “constantly changing threat environment” boilerplate to try and argue that it can avoid notice and comment under the APA’s “good cause” exception. An agency can skip notice and comment “when the agency for good cause finds . . . that notice and public procedure thereon are impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.”
But the threat environment is not “constantly changing” at the level of abstraction relevant for the strip-search machine policy—some people are out there who might try to get dangerous articles onto planes—and these machines will be in place for decades, if not permanently, under the TSA policy. They will affect the privacy and security of billions of air passenger journeys. Even if there were need for haste in rolling out the machines, nothing makes it uniquely difficult, or anything other than appropriate, for the TSA to engage in a public process to substantiate its actions.
State Officials Needn’t Heed Feds’ Threats
Federal officials blitzed Texas this week to fight a bill pending in Austin that would control TSA groping of air travelers in that state, reports Forbes’ “Not-So-Private Parts” blogger Kashmir Hill.
Federal government officials descended on the Capitol to hand out a letter … from the Texas U.S. Attorney letting senators know that if they passed the bill, the TSA would probably have to cancel all flights out of Texas. As much as they love their state, the idea of shutting down airports and trapping people in Texas was scary enough to get legislators to reconsider their support for the groping bill…
The federal government’s threat to shut down air travel is serious, but empty. As we’ve seen time and again with the REAL ID Act, the federal government does not have the political will to attack passenger air travel in the name of increasing surveillance and intrusion.
In fact, earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security didn’t even bother to threaten any repurcussions for states before it once again pushed back a May 2011 (false) deadline for REAL ID compliance. (Previous instances noted here and here.) The REAL ID Act allows the federal government to refuse licenses and ID cards from non-complying states at airport checkpoints, but it’s just not going to happen.
The DHS announcement notes $175 million in spending on REAL ID so far. That waste continues to accrue so long as Congress appropriates money for the national ID program, which will never be implemented.
While we’re on the subject of empty threats from federal officials—and do see Julian Sanchez’s post hitting the same subject—it has been more than four years since then-Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said about the REAL ID Act:
If we don’t get it done now, someone is going to be sitting around in three or four years explaining to the next 9/11 Commission why we didn’t do it.
Secretary Chertoff was wrong—factually wrong on the imminence and nature of the terror threat, and ethically wrong to tout terror threats in an attempt to defeat the will of our free people.
With our stubborn insistence on freedom, the American people and state leaders have done a better job of assessing the threat environment than the Secretary of Homeland Security. As I said when I testified on this topic to the Pennsylvania legislature, state leaders should continue to recognize that they are as equipped, if not better equipped, than federal officials to judge what is right for their people. Counterterrorism and airport security are not an exception to that, though federal imperiousness in these areas remains at a high.
House Approps Strips TSA of Strip-Search Funds
The fiscal 2012 Department of Homeland Security spending bill is starting to make its way through the process, and the House Appropriations Committee said in a release today that “the bill does not provide $76 million requested by the President for 275 additional advanced inspection technology (AIT) scanners nor the 535 staff requested to operate them.”
If the House committee’s approach carries the day, there won’t be 275 more strip-search machines in our nation’s airports. No word on whether the committee will defund the operations of existing strip-search machines.
Saving money and reducing privacy invasion? Sounds like a win-win.
Can I Have My Airport Back Please?
Even while it was a rumor that President Obama would announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed, Americans began to digest the ramifications, asking, for example, “can I have my airport back please?”
Pleasing though it is to have in contemplation, the question is premature. Students of terrorism, such as those who attended our 2009 and 2010 counterterrorism conferences, know that the killing of bin Laden will have little direct effect on the network he spawned. Its indirect, discouraging effect on terrorism is something I mused about in an earlier post.
What about the effects on the rest of us, the people and actors in our great counterterrorism policymaking apparatus?
Osama bin Laden’s survival helped shore up the mystique of the terrorist supervillain, which has fed counterterrorism excess such as the Transportation Security Administration’s domestic airport security gauntlet. Now that bin Laden is gone, the public will be more willing to carefully balance security and privacy in our free country. By a small, but important margin, courts will be less willing to indulge extravagant government claims about threat and risk.
My friends in the national security bureaucracy may honestly perceive the contraction in their power as carelessness about a threat that they have dedicated their professional lives to combating, but the Declaration of Independence touts security only once, and freedom twice, in the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The counterterrorism debate continues.
TSA’s Pistole Says ‘Risk-Based,’ Means ‘Privacy Invasive’
There is one thing you can take to the bank from TSA administrator John Pistole’s statement that he wants to shift to “risk-based” screening at airports: it hasn’t been risk-based up to now. That’s a welcome concession because, as I’ve said before, the DHS and its officials routinely mouth risk terminology, but rarely subject themselves to the rigor of actual risk analysis.
What Administrator Pistole envisions is nothing new. It’s the idea of checking the backgrounds of air travelers more deeply, attempting to determine which of them present less of a threat and which prevent more. That opens security holes that the risk-averse TSA is unlikely to actually tolerate, and it has significant privacy and Due Process consequences, including migration toward a national ID system.
I wrote about one plan for a “trusted traveler”-type system recently. As the details of what Pistole envisions emerge, I’ll look forward to reviewing it.
The DHS Privacy Committee published a document several years ago that can help Pistole with developing an actual risk-based system and with managing its privacy consequences. The Privacy Committee itself exists to review programs like these, but has not been used for this purpose recently despite claims that it has.
If Pistole wants to shift to risk-based screening, he should require a full risk-based study of airport screening and publish it so that the public, commentators, and courts can compare the actual security benefits of the TSA’s policies with their costs in dollars, risk transfer, privacy, and constitutional values.
Man Acquitted of Crimes Associated with Asserting His Rights
(HT: Techdirt) It is infuriating to watch the video Phil Mocek made while attempting to assert his legal rights at the airport. The good news is that he has been acquitted of the bogus charges brought against him, including disorderly conduct, concealing his identity, refusing to obey a police officer, and criminal trespass.
The video illustrates the knowledge, fortitude, and cool it takes to assert one’s rights. We owe our thanks to Mr. Mocek, who has helped to educate the TSA and society in general about the law that applies at the airport.
Perhaps he can further the educational process by bringing an action under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for violation of his civil rights under color of law. The Transporation Security Administration’s training programs might improve, or Congress might pay attention to the constitutional black hole they have created in airports—if it costs enough to threaten their earmark money.
Rep. Clyburn Wants Special Treatment at Airports
It’s fascinating to watch a member of Congress use a tragedy like Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting to seek advantage over us common folk. On Fox News Sunday this week, Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) suggested that Members of Congress should get special treatment at airports.
Airports are some of the safest places anyone can be. Don’t use your imagination—think about it: Airports teem with security personnel and security-conscious citizens. Because their travel schedules are generally unannounced, members of Congress are not any more exposed while traveling than during their other public movements. There is some risk—we know too well because of this weekend’s tragedy—when elected officials make announced public appearances, but that small risk is something they should generally continue to accept lest they fall even further out of touch with constituents.
It is vitally important that members of Congress experience air travel as the rest of us do. If they don’t, they will continue to impose its burdens on us without getting the valuable feedback of first-hand experience.
Prediction: DHS Programs Will Create Privacy Concerns in 2011
The holiday travel season this year revealed some of the real defects in the Transportation Security Administration’s new policy of subjecting select travelers to the “option” of going through airport strip-search machines or being subjected to an intrusive pat-down more akin to a groping. Anecdotes continue to come forth, including the recent story of a rape victim who was arrested at an airport in Austin, TX after refusing to let a TSA agent feel her breasts.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is working on the “next big thing”: body-scanning everywhere. This “privacy impact assessment” from DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate details a plan to use millimeter wave—a technology in strip-search machines—along with other techniques, to examine people from a distance, not just at the airport but anywhere DHS wants.
With time to observe TSA procedures this holiday season, I’ve noticed that it takes a very long time to get people through strip-search machines. In Milwaukee, the machines were cordoned off and out of use the Monday after Christmas Day because they needed to get people through. Watch for privacy concerns and sheer inefficiency to join up when TSA pushes forward with universal strip/grope requirements.
And the issue looks poised to grow in the new year. Republican ascendancy in the House coincides with their increasing agitation about this government security excess.
I’ll be speaking at an event next Thursday, January 6th, called ”The Stripping of Freedom: A Careful Scan of TSA Security Procedures.” It’s hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, DC.
EPIC recently wrote a letter asking Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to task the DHS Privacy Committee (or “DPIAC,” on which I serve) with studying the impact of the body scanner program on individuals’ constitutional and statutory rights:
The TSA’s deployment of body scanners as the primary screening technique in American airports has raised widespread public concerns about the protection of privacy. It is difficult to imagine that there is a higher priority issue for the DPIAC in 2011 than a comprehensive review of the TSA airport body scanner program.
Will the Secretary ask her expert panel for a thorough documented review? Wait and see.
Whatever happens there, privacy concerns with DHS programs will be big in 2011.
The Appeal of Trusted Traveler
There is a natural appeal to “trusted traveler” programs. We all see ourselves as trustworthy, and getting into such a program might improve our experience at the airport. This video captures the notion—and some of the difficulties—entertainingly.
I would fly on a plane even knowing that Jimmy Johnson had brought a machete on board. But what level of trust should attach to a Super Bowl ring?
Dave Meggett helped the New York Giants win Super Bowl XXV. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison last month after being convicted of criminal sexual misconduct and burglary. Super Bowl MVP Ray Lewis was charged with murder in 2000, avoiding trial by agreeing to testify against others. The point is not to beat up on the NFL, but to beat up on the idea that you can trust a large-scale “trusted traveler” program.
Having some weakness is not fatal to the trusted traveler idea. A trusted traveler program might reduce costs and inconveniences without reducing risks by a greater amount. Indeed, it might make sense to trust all travelers more than the TSA does under its strip/grope policy.
In a recent, less entertaining post, I argued that the TSA shouldn’t do “trusted traveler.” Airlines should be free to implement trusted traveler systems, winning the rewards for getting it right and paying the costs for getting it wrong.
Conservatives, Liberals, and the TSA
Libertarians often debate whether conservatives or liberals are more friendly to liberty. We often fall back on the idea that conservatives tend to support economic liberties but not civil liberties, while liberals support civil liberties but not economic liberties — though this old bromide hardly accounts for the economic policies of President Bush or the war-on-drugs-and-terror-and-Iraq policies of President Obama.
Score one for the conservatives in the surging outrage over the Transportation Security Administration’s new policy of body scanners and intimate pat-downs. You gotta figure you’ve gone too far in the violation of civil liberties when you’ve lost Rick Santorum, George Will, Kathleen Parker, and Charles Krauthammer. (Gene Healy points out that conservatives are reaping what they sowed.)
Meanwhile, where are the liberals outraged at this government intrusiveness? Where is Paul Krugman? Where is Arianna? Where is Frank Rich? Where is the New Republic? Oh sure, civil libertarians like Glenn Greenwald have criticized TSA excesses. But mainstream liberals have rallied around the Department of Homeland Security and its naked pictures: Dana Milbank channels John (“phantoms of lost liberty”) Ashcroft: “Republicans are providing the comfort [to our enemies]. They are objecting loudly to new airport security measures.” Ruth Marcus: “Don’t touch my junk? Grow up, America.” Eugene Robinson: “Be patient with the TSA.” Amitai Etzioni in the New Republic: “In defense of the ‘virtual strip-search.’” And finally, the editors of the New York Times: ”attacks are purely partisan and ideological.”
Could this just be a matter of viewing everything through a partisan lens? Liberals rally around the DHS of President Obama and Secretary Napolitano, while conservatives criticize it? Maybe. And although Slate refers to the opponents of body-scanning as “paranoid zealots,” that term would certainly seem to apply to apply to Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of the Nation, who stomp their feet, get red in the face, and declare every privacy advocate from John Tyner (“don’t touch my junk”) on to be “astroturf” tools of “Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians.” (Glenn Greenwald took the article apart line by line.)
Most Americans want to be protected from terrorism and also to avoid unnecessary intrusions on liberty, privacy, and commerce. Security issues can be complex. A case can be made for the TSA’s new procedures. But it’s striking to see how many conservatives think the TSA has gone too far, and how dismissive — even contemptuous — liberals are of rising concerns about liberty and privacy.
Why I Took an Anti-Depressant
Musing on the latest abuses of the Transportation Security Administration, George F. Will recalls a column by the late William F. Buckley Jr. Faced with disastrous service on a commuter railroad, Buckley wrote, “In a more virile age, I thought, the passengers would have seized the conductor and strapped him down on a seat over the radiator to share the fate of his patrons.” But he had “nonchalantly walked down the gauntlet of eighty sweating American freemen, and not one of them had asked him to explain why the passengers in that car had been consigned to suffer.”
Buckley went on:
Every year, whether the Republican or the Democratic Party is in office, more and more power drains away from the individual to feed vast reservoirs in far-off places; and we have less and less say about the shape of events which shape our future. From this alienation of personal power comes the sense of resignation with which we accept the political dispensations of a powerful government whose hold upon us continues to increase.
And here’s the part that sent me looking for the anti-depressants: Buckley wrote this jeremiad in 1961.
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