Wednesday, August 17, 2011

"Chat Downs" Instead of "Pat Downs"?

So after balking at the Israeli-style airport security method (it's too difficult and/or too much like profiling, critics claim) the TSA appears to be going the Israeli route after all. However, some are "deriding" the move:
Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee dubbed a new Transportation Security Administration behavior-detection program set to begin Monday as "chat downs."
The lawmakers renewed their criticism of the TSA tactic, drawing an obvious comparison to the agency's controversial pat-downs and hand searches.

The TSA was expected to begin testing the program for 60 days at Boston's Logan Airport. Under the proposal, travelers will be interviewed to assess suspicious behavior by their reactions to certain questions.

The information would then be used as the basis of a known-traveler program which advocates say could reduce wait times at airport security checkpoints for frequent fliers because every passenger would not have to be checked exactly the same way. 
But Democrats on the committee, which oversees the TSA, say they have concerns about the program. Among them is how representative the information gathered during the pilot program in Boston will be...
Done properly, "chat downs" are infinitely preferable to—and more effective than—having one's orifices probed by a TSA official. The question, though, is not whether the information gathered in Boston will be "representative" (and I suspect that what Dems are really worried about is profiling—but don't want to use the "p" word) but whether the TSA is even capable of providing workers with the proper "chat down" training. At the moment, there's no indication it can, which points to this becoming merely one more pointless and irksome manoeuver in the security theatre repertoire.

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