The U.S passenger screening program UNDER FIRE

The U.S passenger screening program UNDER FIRE

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

16600347_sThe Transportation Security Administration has little evidence that an airport passenger screening program, which some employees believe is a magnet for racial profiling and has cost taxpayers nearly one billion dollars, screens passengers objectively, according to a report by the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department.

According to the New York Times the T.S.A.’s “behavioral detection program” is supposed to rely on security officers who pull aside passengers who exhibit what are considered telltale signs of terrorists for additional screening and questioning. It is illegal to screen passengers because of their nationality, race, ethnicity or religion.

According to the report, the T.S.A. has not assessed the effectiveness of the program, which has 2,800 employees and does not have a comprehensive training program. The T.S.A. cannot “show that the program is cost-effective, or reasonably justify the program’s expansion,” the report said.

As a result of the T.S.A.’s ineffective oversight of the program, it “cannot ensure that passengers at U.S. airports are screened objectively,” the report said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the T.S.A. said it had accepted six recommendations from the report about its strategic planning.

“Behavior analyses techniques add an additional layer of unseen security measures for the safety of all passengers that begins prior to arriving at the checkpoint,” the statement said.

i-HLS Israel Homeland Security

The report, scheduled for release this week, was provided to The New York Times by a senior government official. The official did so on the condition of anonymity because it had not yet been made public.

The program has been under scrutiny for years. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said that the program, which began in 2003, was started without first determining its potential effectiveness.

As recently as 2011, reports emerged that the program was being used to profile passengers at airports in Newark and Hawaii.

In August, The Times reported that more than 30 officers at Logan International Airport in Boston had said that the program was being used to profile passengers like Hispanics traveling to Florida or blacks wearing baseball caps backward.

The officers said that such passengers were being profiled by the officers in response to demands from managers who believed that stopping and questioning them would turn up drugs, outstanding arrest warrants or immigration problems.

The managers wanted to generate arrests so they could justify the program, the officers said, adding that officers who made arrests were more likely to be promoted. The Homeland Security Department said then that its inspector general was investigating the matter, although the coming report does not address the program at Logan Airport.