Nobody Frightens Kids Like The TSA

Source: Examiner

If there is a special place in Hell for officious government employees, I'm sure there's a spot all warmed up for the Transportation Security Administration officer at Baltimore/Washington International Airport who scared my kid out of his wits.

Last week, I solicited stories from readers about their unpleasant experiences with post-9/11 travel security. Little did I know I'd be my own best correspondent. On my family's flight back east, we witnessed random shakedowns at the gate after we'd already passed through security. But that didn't begin to compare to the brief but telling experience we had at BWI on the return leg of our journey.

My wife and I checked in without incident, then headed to the security checkpoint with our 3 1/2-year-old son in tow. The very first TSA officer we encountered glanced at our ID and our boarding passes, and then proceeded to interrogate ... my kid.

"What's your name, son? Can you tell me your name?"

He shuffled through our boarding passes and then started again.

"What's your name? Can you tell me?"

He barely acknowledged the presence of the adults, saying only, "This will just take a minute."

I seethed. But we were 3,000 miles from home, at airport security in a strange city. We all needed to get back to Arizona, and getting booted from the airport -- or worse, arrested -- wouldn't accomplish that goal.

"Tell the nice man your name, Tony," I suggested.

"Tell me your name," the uniformed officer insisted.

Through all oft his, Tony remained tongue-tied, with a look of growing confusion mixed with terror on his face. That's no surprise. Like most parents, we warn our son against chatting with strange adults. And, like most young children, Tony isn't inclined to react favorably to sharp questions from random people.

Tony's silence may even have been a blessing. On any given day, under good circumstances, he's as likely to tell you that he's a monster or a "sharptooth" or Christopher Robin as he is to volunteer the name his mother and I gave him. I mean, he's 3 1/2 for crying out loud.

About which I gently reminded the officer. The muttered, "he's just three, you know," may or may not have helped.

"I bet I know your name," the TSA agent finally said. "I bet it's Anthony. Do they call you Tony?"

Tony tearfully surrendered a slight nod, allowing the agent of the security state to claim a victory over the forces of evil, and we were on our way. Of course, at this point, the kid would have nodded if you'd asked him if he was Mickey Mouse.

Which makes this whole routine garbage. What was the point? To see if we were terrorists using a kidnapped kid as a beard? We could have been terrorists using our own kid. Or we could have been smuggling the kid from a clone farm to be broken up for parts by a Colombian criminal kingpin. Young children don't carry photo ID, and we don't implant chips in them like we do with our dogs (oh, I hope I'm not giving anybody ideas), so there's really no way around taking an adult's word for a child's identity. That conversation proved nothing except that really young kids choke under pressure.

Was the TSA goon really going to deny us passage or even haul us in if my kid insisted that he was a character from Winnie the Pooh?

After that encounter, piling our wordly possessions on the conveyor belt and passing through the metal detectors was relatively painless. As we pulled our shoes back on, though, my kid pointed back toward security and said, in a soft voice while looking at the floor, "those people scare me."

Well, they scare me, too. And now they've really ticked me off. Way to go folks. You know our country is just a little bit safer when we make toddlers pee their pants.

Except that, as a paper published just a year ago in the British Medical Journal made clear, the TSA has never bothered to study its procedures to determine if they actually accomplish anything. We don't know that any of this really makes us safer, because nobody has ever checked. Which suggests that putting tots in the hot seat is a tactic the security honchos dreamed up based on their instincts that it would make us all safer. I'll bet their home lives are charming.

I don't know what the penalty is for slugging a federal law-enforcement officer, but we almost found out at BWI. I feel guilty that I let my son be subjected to the third degree the way I did so that we could continue on our way home. Maybe I'd be a better father if I'd actually taken a swing at the officer harassing my kid.

One way or another, I guarantee that it won't happen again.

TSA's 'behavior detection' draws scrutiny in light of few arrests

By Thomas Frank
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports for suspicious behavior are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show, raising complaints that too many innocent people are stopped.

A TSA program launched in early 2006 that looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. That has resulted in 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said.

The TSA program trains screeners to become "behavior detection officers" who patrol terminals and checkpoints looking for travelers who act oddly or appear to answer questions suspiciously.

Critics say the number of arrests is small and indicates the program is flawed.

"That's an awful lot of people being pulled aside and inconvenienced," said Carnegie Mellon scientist Stephen Fienberg, who studied the TSA program and other counterterrorism efforts. "I think it's a sham. We have no evidence it works."

TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said the program has been "incredibly effective" at catching criminals at airports. "It definitely gets at things that other layers of security might miss," Howe said.

In many cases, the extra scrutiny is a casual conversation with a TSA behavior officer that shows someone is innocent, Howe said. Studies are underway that analyze the program's effectiveness, she added.

The program has grown from 43 major airports last year to more than 150 airports, including some with just 20 flights a day. The number of behavior officers will jump from 2,470 to 3,400 by October.

The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program. The agency says that some who are arrested, particularly on fake ID charges, may be scouting for a possible attack.

Some scientists say the TSA effort is just as likely to flag a nervous traveler as a terrorist.

"The use of these technologies for the purpose that the TSA is interested in moves into an area where we don't have proven science," said Robert Levenson, a psychologist at the University of California-Berkeley.

Although observers can perceive whether someone appears anxious or is acting deceptively, they can't tell whether that person is planning an attack or something such as an extramarital affair, Levenson said.

Levenson and Fienberg were part of a National Academy of Sciences team whose report last month said "behavioral surveillance" has "enormous potential for violating" privacy.

The report calls for more research and says surveillance should be used only as "preliminary screening" to find people who merit "follow-up investigation." That is how the TSA uses the program, Howe said.

Paul Ekman, a San Francisco psychologist who helped design the TSA program, said it can be effective, but it needs more study.

"The shortcoming is, we don't know how many people are showing suspicious behaviors and aren't being noticed," Ekman said.