SPOT (TSA program)

SPOT (which stands for Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) is a program launched in the United States by the Transportation Security Administration to identify potential terrorists among people at an airport by a set of 94 objective criteria, all of which are signs for either stress, fear, or deception. Passengers meeting enough of the criteria are, under the program, referred for a patdown and additional screening.[1][2] The criteria were initially secret, but in March 2015, The Intercept published them after obtaining the information from an anonymous source.[3][4]

History

The TSA began training agents in the program in 2006, in response to the liquid bomb plot in Britain earlier that year,[5] and officially began the program at airports across the U.S. in 2007.[2] As of 2013, none of the few arrests that had resulted from the program had been for terrorism or related charges.[6] The program was designed by psychologist Paul Ekman[2] based on the Facial Action Coding System, which was developed in the late 1970s to allow psychologists to identify emotions via facial "microexpressions".[7]

Scale

As of 2015, there were about 2,800 TSA employees working in the SPOT program.[8] During the first six years of the program's history (2007-2013), $900 million had been spent on it.[6]

Reactions

Critics of SPOT have argued that it results in racial profiling of airport passengers, and that it has produced few results.[1][4] In 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report criticizing the TSA for deploying the program at airports throughout the country without providing scientific validation of how it could be effective.[9]

In 2012, TSA employees in Boston denounced the program and estimated that 80% of those who were pulled from security lines under it were minorities.[10]

In 2013, two reports (one by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General and one by the GAO) harshly criticized SPOT on the basis that there was little evidence the program was effective. The GAO report also recommended that the program be defunded.[6]

In response to these reports, John S. Pistole, the then-director of the TSA, told Congress that he worked on the program as part of his attempt to shift the agency toward risk-based assessment of passengers, which he developed in response to criticisms of the agency's one-size-fits-all approach to screening.[6]

In 2017, the ACLU released a report concluding that the reports and studies cited by the TSA to defend SPOT undermined the premises on which the program was based. The ACLU obtained these reports and studies after winning a lawsuit they filed against the TSA in 2015, after the agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request.[11]

References
  1. Krywko, Jacek (June 2, 2017). "The premature quest for AI-powered facial recognition to simplify screening". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on June 2, 2017.
  2. Anderson, Nate (13 November 2013). "TSA's got 94 signs to ID terrorists, but they're unproven by science". Ars Technica. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  3. Winter, Jana; Currier, Cora (2015-03-27). "Exclusive: TSA's Secret Behavior Checklist to Spot Terrorists". The Intercept. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  4. Hicks, Josh (31 March 2015). "TSA's secret list of suspicious behaviors revealed". Washington Post. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  5. Lipton, Eric (17 August 2006). "Faces, Too, Are Searched at U.S. Airports". New York Times. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  6. Halsey, Ashley (14 November 2013). "House member questions $900 million TSA 'SPOT' screening program". Washington Post. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  7. Editorial Board (17 November 2013). "Face it, TSA: Behavioral screening is failing". Denver Post. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  8. Bennett, Jay (5 November 2015). "The TSA is Frighteningly Awful at Screening Passengers". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  9. Weinberger, Sharon (26 May 2010). "Airport security: Intent to deceive?". Nature. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  10. Dickerson, Kelly (6 May 2015). "Yes, the TSA is probably profiling you and it's scientifically bogus". Business Insider. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
  11. Martin, Hugo (8 February 2017). "TSA's own files say its program to stop terrorists is unreliable, ACLU says". Los Angeles Times.
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