July 25, 2011
Stop That Stick Figure
The Transportation Security Administration has finally faced the naked truth. After the agency’s advanced imaging technology (AIT) airport scanners stirred controversy by exposing too much of a passenger’s human form, the TSA will switch to new software that makes the images less realistic.
Screening agents—who had been isolated in a remote closet to view the revealing images but will now return to face the public—will see a simplified stick figure, or what the TSA prefers to call “a generic outline.” New automated target recognition software also will show a generalized outline of any suspicious objects. Passengers will earn a simple OK and walk on, or be set aside for an invasive search.
Sample image from the ProVision automated target detection system. Photo: L3 Communications
If the new software is a success, the TSA says it will also convert its backscatter machines, although it’s not clear whether “success” is defined as catching more bad guys or cutting the number of complaints about privacy.
The TSA is still reeling from revelations in a Government Accountability Office report this spring that it repeatedly failed to SPOT terrorists—its acronym for “Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques.” At least six suspected terrorists strolled by airport agents using SPOT to flag potential threats by watching for certain behaviors. The GAO concluded that TSA behavior detection officers (BDOs, of course) had been placed nationwide with no “scientifically valid basis” for the SPOT method.
In recent weeks the TSA has added training and a new database. Part of BDO training now is to watch video of real subjects who slipped through screening and were later charged or pleaded guilty to an offense.
“Such recordings could provide insights about behaviors that may be common among terrorists or could demonstrate that terrorists do not generally display any identifying behaviors,” said the GAO.
The short delay to save lives via scanning or physical search is more than worth it. Especially if one of those lives is your own. There are people who still want to destroy passengers in the air.
TSA is currently taking another good step towards showing us that they are trying to protect us (not take away our dignity). If ‘only’ a few destrutive passengers have been kept off of passenger flights the efforts that have been made, and are still being made, are praise-worthy.
So I say, “Thank you TSA for trying to safeguard our airways. Your job isn’t easy (searching for travelers that are potential terrorists). The ‘bad guy’ could be anyone. So, job well done guys and gals! Thank you.”
Comment by E. A. Phillips — July 25, 2011 @ 1:33 pm