Profilers (en dit keer niet op TV)

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Maar we weten toch ook dat Israelische veiligheidsprogramma's slecht
zijn voor de gezondheid van sommigen onder ons?

Om dan nog niet eens van Brazilianen in Londen te spreken, of 'mooie'
jonge vrouwen in Iran, of vooraanstaande Palestijnen!

Groet / Cees

PS. Overigens zijn dit soort programma's ook gepromoot door KLM-figuren.
PPS. 'remotely monitor certain bodily functions' betekent volgens mij
het in de gaten houden van de infra-rood uitstraling van personen. Niet
te verwarren met de "aura's".
Het kan dan voorkomen dat een TSA-er je ongevraagd benadert in de
wachtrij met de mededeling dat het toilet 'die kant' op is ;).

http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/10751/149/
TSA Behavior
Detection Efforts



by Anthony L. Kimery
Thursday, 22 October 2009

Statistics show SPOT program works, regardless of whether it has yet to
disrupt a terrorist plot

Undercover Government Accountability Office investigators in recent
years have gotten past Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
screeners with components to make unconventional explosives at airports
that do not have the technology to detect such materials. Meanwhile,
highly motivated, well-resourced terrorists continue to experiment with
novel new ways to destroy passenger planes.

Taking all that into consideration, TSA and counterterror officials
believe it makes perfect sense to continue to use – and expand - TSA's
airport behavior detection program, which statistics indicate works,
regardless of whether it has yet to disrupt a terrorist plot to blow up
aircraft.

In the United States since January 2006, there have been more than 1,575
arrests resulting from TSA’s Screening Passengers by Observation
Techniques (SPOT) referrals, TSA told HToday.us.

“These passengers met a threshold and our highly trained Behavior
Detection Officers [BDOs] referred them for either additional screening
or to law enforcement,” TSA spokesman Greg Soule told HSToday.us
Wednesday.

But security expert Bruce Schneier has questioned whether the “social
costs, including loss of liberty, restriction of fundamental freedoms,
and the creation of a thoughtcrime,” is worth the effort, adding, “Is
this the sort of power we want to give a police force in a
constitutional democracy, or does it feel more like a police-state sort
of thing?”

Homeland Security Today reported in the May 2008 feature, “Keep Your
Shoes On and Tell the Truth,” that Israel’s decades-old behavior
detection program - specifically at Ben Gurion International Airport
near Tel Aviv – that focuses on people and not things has been
phenomenally successful. But, then, the Israeli’s pioneered this sort of
airport security.

Meanwhile, though, despite intelligence that terrorists continue to be
interested in penetrating aviation security measures to take down
passenger planes, some US legislators, members of the Obama
administration, and civil rights proponents would like to weaken, if not
outright cripple, TSA’s SPOT and other behavior detection-based
initiatives.

For one thing, critics argue that it’s an intrusion of civil rights and
that the expense of running the SPOT program, given the non-terrorists
it so far has caught, isn’t worth it. Counterterror officials in turn
argue that if SPOT is responsible for catching just one terrorist who
might otherwise have killed hundreds, then it is worth it.

Former CIA officer and Georgia Republican Rep. Bob Barr renewed ruckus
over TSA’s behavior detection efforts in an op-ed earlier this week.
Barr wrote “two years ago … I wrote that [TSA] was deploying ‘Behavior
Detection Officers” (BDOs) at America’s airports to watch for
“suspicious’ behavior exhibited by people at those facilities. The
program purported to teach undercover TSA employees to scan people at
airports – not just passengers waiting to pass through security, but
everyone – for tell-tale signs of nervousness, which could then lead to
their being interrogated and possibly arrested.”

“I complained at the time of this significant expansion of TSA’s
jurisdiction (the ‘mission creep’ that seems to bedevil virtually every
government agency), and reminded readers of the evils of attempting to
‘profile’ people based on behavior characteristics,” Barr stated.

Continuing, Barr said “earlier this year, I wrote again about TSA’s
fixation with technology, as evidenced by its plan to greatly expand the
number of full-body x-ray machines at airports. Well, those loveable
folks at TSA (and their bosses at the parent agency, the Department of
Homeland Security) have taken yet another step in their relentless drive
to bring ‘1984’ front and center to America’s airports. Eager always to
take advantage of the willingness of passengers to surrender all sense
of privacy if made to feel safe, DHS is spending millions of our tax
dollars to develop technology that would remotely monitor certain bodily
functions and alert TSA employees whenever someone is exuding signs of
nervousness.”

Barr was referring to potential behavior detection-related technologies
that are being studied at DHS’s science and technology directorate that
could detect suspicious behavior. It’s known as the Future Attribute
Screening Technology, or FAST, program. Similar initiatives are underway
in Israel.

Yet despite all the fear mongering that has erupted over reporting about
the FAST initiative, FAST technology is not currently under
consideration by TSA at this time, HSToday.us learned.

Meanwhile, SPOT trained BDOs continue to be trained and deployed to many
more airports – a decision Israeli airport security authorities have
applauded given the demonstrated value of suspicious behavior efforts in
Israel and now in the United States.

As for the deployment of whole-body scanners that can detect materials
concealed underneath a person’s clothing, counterterror authorities say
increased use of the technology “is absolutely justified,” as one said,
in light of Islamist jihadists’ efforts to develop new and novel ways to
carry explosives materials past TSA security and onto a plane. See the
recent HSToday.us report, “The Threat of Body Bombs and Surgical
Implants.”

The people-focused security at Ben Gurion involves singling suspicious
people out of airport crowds based on specific facial expressions, body
language, behavior, speech—even attire—and then asking them questions.
It’s all been methodically designed to identify suspicious conduct that
even TSA acknowledges can be related to surveillance or pre-attack
behavior traits.

They are questions specially designed to identify “anything out of the
ordinary, anything that does not fit,” a Ben Gurion undercover screener
told HSToday.us during a briefing of the behavior detection program at
the airport.

All of Ben Gurion’s security personnel, overt and covert, are trained in
“security profiling,” or behavior pattern recognition, said Nahun Liss,
head of the Planning, Control and Projects Department of the Ben Gurion
Security Division.

Raphael “Rafi” Ron, Ben Gurion’s security director for five years, has
said Israel’s advantage is that it long ago came to terms with the human
component of terrorism. In other words, terrorism is carried out by
people. He has said that Ben Gurion’s security has clearly demonstrated
that miscreants can be found and stopped by an effectively robust
security methodology that is focused on … people!

Similarly, in responding to complaints by civil libertarians in the
United States that TSA’s SPOT program is prima facie racial profiling,
former TSA Secretary Kip Hawley strongly disagreed, noting, “If you rely
on what you think a terrorist looks like, you’re going to miss them …
terrorists are very smart …”

Asked about Hawley’s remark, Liss shrugged his shoulders as if to say,
“No duh,” and said, “That’s exactly right.”

Using a common sense approach, Ron said, “We assumed that before an
attack could take place, there had to be a person with the intention of
carrying out an attack and second, there had to be a weapon. But on
Sept. 11, we learned that a weapon is not necessary. What remains is the
human factor. Without a person who intends to do harm, an attack will
not take place.”

Consequently, Ron said TSA’s obsession with “things” is “unintelligent …
everybody understands—including the passengers—that the relevance of
your nail file to the security of the flight is nil. It doesn’t exist. …
By wasting your time and attention on [such things] … you are simply not
aiming in the right direction.”

Liss echoed Ron. “Your TSA focuses on things and not people, and we have
found that’s not a very effective approach to identifying and isolating
terrorists.”

TSA’s SPOT program pretty much is based on the same principles of
questioning that Israeli airport security behavior detection officers
are trained to conduct to detect lying, deception, etc. which might
require additional questioning and/or screening of the person and his or
her baggage, which never leaves the person until Israeli security
officials have cleared the person to be allowed on the plane.

Just like in Israel, in the United States authorities say the focus has
begun to shift away from analyzing the content of carry-on luggage to
analyzing passengers' intentions, emotions, demeanor, etc.

Nevertheless, Barr wrote that “people should not be subject to having
their eye movements, their skin temperature, their heartbeat, their
perspiration, their breathing patterns, or any other bodily functions
remotely scanned and analyzed by some government employee,” like the
FAST initiative now being studied would do.

But the suitability of such technology as a future component of airport
security is not now officially under consideration by TSA.

“But there could be a call for it should some terrorist plot involving,
say, multiple planes, successfully be pulled off killing hundreds that
all the existing security measures – including the use of BDOs – didn’t
detect,” said a veteran government counterterror official.

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********