14 ms·

TSA is tracking regular travelers like terrorists in secret surveillance program

327 points by Anechoic 8y ago

roywiggins 8y ago
This seems mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be) but also a collosal waste of time that could be spent doing nearly anything else. Mind you, it's hard to see it as security theater (they won't admit it's happening!). It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI, but even the actual marshals doing it seem to think it's dumb. If it were the FBI just tasking FBI Surveillance Vans onto random people without a predicate, there'd potentially be hell to pay as they generally have regulations on what is a valid reason for opening an investigation.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed something. > mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be) Hmmm ... I hate to start from scratch this very common discussion (i.e., the harm in surveillance). Is there anything new to add?
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    I mean, it's obviously bad for the same reasons dragnet surveillance is always bad. But this particular instance so ham-handed (tailing an executive that went to Turkey one time?) and so manpower intensive it's kind of hard to take seriously. > What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed something. The article mentions that they first got into the business of tracking people through airports and in the sky after the FBI asked them to help on existing investigations, so I wonder if they are just trying to show that they can do investigations on their own like big boys.
thisacctforreal 8y ago
https://my.mixtape.moe/ohbnhi.jpeg https://my.mixtape.moe/ohbnhi.jpeg The website detects and blocks private browsing on iOS, but you can bypass it using Reader View.
- Macha 8y ago
  "Look how terrible it is that the TSA may track you! If you make it harder for us to track you, go away" The double standards are amusing.
goscots 8y ago
US Federal Tax dollars at work, infringing on our rights with no tangible benefits for the American people.
- bobwaycott 8y ago
  This is far more an issue of the Executive and Congress at work, than it is tax dollars at work. Let’s lay the blame where it belongs—only then do we have the slightest hope of citizens recognizing how they can play a part in stopping this. Tax dollars aren’t allocating themselves.
  - aaronbrethorst 8y ago
    Complaints about "tax dollars" or about 'tax payers' seem like stalking horses for the whole Reagan-esque 'drown government in the bathtub' thing. It's weird to me that the most jingoistic Americans are also the ones who are most hostile to the concrete manifestations of America. Back to the topic at hand: I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here votes in their primary and general elections. Headcount is a good, nonpartisan resource for finding out more about this: https://www.headcount.org https://www.headcount.org
    - u801e 8y ago
      > I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here votes in their primary and general elections. I doubt that either major party plans to reform the TSA or the Department of Homeland Security.
      - aaronbrethorst 8y ago
        If you believe that, then you should seek to change the policy priorities of either major party. Fatalism in a two party system is neither useful nor indicative of a keener understanding of early 21st century American politics.
- enlightenedfool 8y ago
dingo_bat 8y ago
I dunno about TSA, but I'm am Indian male and I keep a beard and visited Sydney and Melbourne recently. I was singled out for "random" checks at every single airport. Even though the metal detector thing didn't go off at all. They were very nice and polite but I was a bit annoyed. After 9-11, it seems most western countries have become cautious to the extent of paranoia and cause inconvenience to normal people.
- grecy 8y ago
  I'm a white male with long scraggly blonde hair and this happens to me in basically every developed country. Obviously long-haired hippies pose a security threat.
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    I'd guess they are hoping to find drugs on you, rather than, say, box cutters.
    - hammock 8y ago
      TSA is not chartered to look for drugs, and technically, they aren't supposed to be looking for them (though sometimes they find them in the course of their job- transportation security)
      - nasredin 8y ago
        Do the TSA screeners get training on identifying drugs?
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Even if not, the TSA does report drugs when they find them: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/medical-marijuana https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/... It is basically an end-run around the constitution -- if the police were searching through your bags without your consent any evidence they found could be challenged on constitutional grounds. The courts have (afaik) found that the TSA's searches are a different category, "administrative searches," and therefore not unconstitutional; somehow, though, there is no problem with using evidence found by the TSA in a criminal case. Also, since the TSA's mission is not limited to aircraft, it is entirely possible that "administrative searches" are coming to a public transit system near you. Presumably the same rules would apply.
duxup 8y ago
>The teams document whether passengers fidget, use a computer, have a “jump” in their Adam’s apple or a “cold penetrating stare,” among other behaviors, according to the records. I believe this isn't the first time the TSA has tried to do some sort of behavioral profiling and such. Previously it proved to be BS and did not show any ability to identify threats. Considering TSA agents are leaking this to the press makes me think someone(s) at TSA think you can just spot a terrorist and the agents think it is ballony ....
- adrr 8y ago
  How many airline terrorists have we had in the last 10 years? 2? How many travellers per year? 500m+. TSA is just really bad a math if they think they have any chance of actually profiling a real terrorist. They should just take the money and buy Powerball tickets, least then they have a better chance at a return of investment.
  - duxup 8y ago
    It does raise questions about the costs and actions for sure.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      It allows more spending by taxpayers for the military industrial complex, more invasion of privacy, increased government power, and makes the populace mentally prepared to be repressed. It’s a jobs program for people who don’t want to do manual labor, and aren’t smart enough to do anything else. Perfect for power hungry organizations. Only solution to combat this is full transparency, or to join the game and make it to the “elite” and help suppress everyone else. It’s a pretty good setup, you use the bottom 20% to help keep the 20% to 80% in line, and then pluck out a few of the smarter 20% to 80% and drop those in leadership positions in military or police and pay them a nice pension and keep suctioining up a bigger and bigger share of resources.
      - guitarbill 8y ago
pasbesoin 8y ago
The most likely explanation I can think of, is that this is work to establish baselines against which to run mass automated surveillance. So, it's not just this. Consider where it's going -- what would induce this level of effort and expenditure? P.S. It will also be "interesting" when parallel construction enters the picture -- if it hasn't, already.
travelman3000 8y ago
I'm a remote worker and have travelled a lot for fun in the past two years. While checking into a flight from AMS headed to USA, I was told as a prerequisite to getting my boarding pass I needed to talk to an agent from the US Department of the State. He asked me many detailed questions about my travels and said I was considered a person of interest. He stressed that they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA). It seems likely he was just trying to scare me, but it was still was quite jarring. I'm a fairly normal US citizen (I don't associate with political people, no criminal record, never been to a country not known for tourism). I believe I was flagged just from traveling between Turkey and Russia. Since then when I fly I cant use online check-in, my boarding pass is marked SSSS and I am taken into the backroom for questioning at border control. Maybe these extra precautions keep the USA safe, but it certainly seemed excessively paranoid.
- fooker 8y ago
  Wow
- chriselles 8y ago
  Double wow. I’m also an expat US citizen traveling regularly to the US. I’ve even travelled to a couple of conflict countries a number of times for work in recent years. Never had a problem re-entering/visiting over 50 times.
- raarts 8y ago
  > they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA). I always thought that if you're a US citizen you cannot be denied entry into the United States, though you might be delayed.
  - travelman3000 8y ago
    That is my understanding as well, and the main reason why I thought he was just trying to scare me. However, they can place me on the no flylist, but I believe that this is run by a different branch of the government.
- 8y ago
amf12 8y ago
Some of these behaviors are so benign that any regular person might exhibit these. Slept during the flight, changed clothes, boarded last (I hate standing in those queues), observed the boarding area from afar. Hell I do many of these things. I am sure their "ML" model must have spit these indicators but it's a waste of resources.
- mmaunder 8y ago
  They may be establishing a baseline.
- arunmib 8y ago
  Actually I do all of these in all my trips :-/ beyond simple reasons, there is nothing sinister. * Bored in flight - sleep. * Bored at airport - do people watching, good place is look at how people board, watch airplanes take off and land, what is the ground crew doing. * Travel comfortably and lightly - go in shorts and at the destination airport change to formals. * Don't like queue - board last * Want to travel cheap internationally - you would go through cheap airlines like Turkish, Ethihad (or) some unknown airline. * In business trip - do prep work in laptop while in flight. I'm getting more and more annoyed with these baseline establishing stuff and ML models. edit: typo
- koenigdavidmj 8y ago
  Also, they capture all ranges of behavior. Glazed over look? Suspicious. Intently paying attention to everything? Suspicious. Friendly? Suspicious. Cold to agents? Suspicious. This is worse than criteria to pull you over when driving.
  - polynomial 8y ago
    Extreme overfitting, where any data point outside the norm is correlated. It makes a kind of perverse sense once you realize the stated point is/was to target extremists.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  To be fair, they aren't--or shouldn't be--looking for one thing. The idea is that bomber-wannabe comes late, changes clothes, is all nervous, looks for undercover cops etc etc. But if fidgeting or some other innocent thing, puts you in that list, you're f---d. You will be groped every single flight. No one is going to take the risk to remove you from that list.
bogomipz 8y ago
This sounds like the latest "mission creep" by the TSA in order to justify their budget and possibly ask for a budget increase. This would not be the first instance of "mission creep" by them. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyond-airport-security.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-bey... and https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to-a-highway-near-you/#29ee469ddbee https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-... They are basically an entrenched part of the security-industrial complex at this point. It seems to be a vicious circle of "expand the mission to justify a bigger budget and ask for a bigger budget in order to meet the self-directed increase in scope." There seems to be very little practical oversight of this agency.
- neom 8y ago
  Another good summery: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-air-marshal-program-scathing-report-response/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-air-marshal-program-sca...
- avs733 8y ago
  What I particularly loathe about TSA's constant mission creep is that at no point have they proven even minimally competent at any of the existing missions. Nothing they do provides any meaningful security. They fail 90% of tests run by their own agency. They are useless and ever expanding. By a medical definition, they are cancerous.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  There has been some pushback to the mission creep; my favorite is the response from freight railroads to a proposal by the TSA to have their agents show up unannounced at rail yards: https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr-teams/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr... "You might just lose a leg" and "some of our employees carry guns" is a pretty bold way to turn down the TSA...
kylec 8y ago
This sounds like they’ve hired a bunch of air marshals but don’t have much for them to do. Having them make observations on random people might be a way to make sure they’re still doing their job?
- walrus01 8y ago
  It might be like the air marshal version of a security guard route patrol system, where the guard has to swipe a fob or access card at predefined locations in a campus or building periodically. Intended to enforce actually patrolling an area. Not saying it's a good thing, just that's the closest analogy I can think of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_tour_patrol_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_tour_patrol_system https://www.guard1.com/Products/Equipment/Checkpoints.aspx https://www.guard1.com/Products/Equipment/Checkpoints.aspx
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    <knee slap!> That's a good one! The closest analogy I could come up with was the Stasi. Okay, I'll concede, it's not really analogy, it's more like a 1:1 mapping: "One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants"[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
    - a3n 8y ago
      And this being a capitalist society, we pay our citizens (marshals and TSA) to spy on each other.
- nobody271 8y ago
  That sounds like the most reasonable explanation to me. Being an air marshal and being an air marshal's boss are coveted jobs.
- a3n 8y ago
  It could also be a way to keep the budget up. No federal department or manager wants to lose people, as it's a proxy for status.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gwbas1c 8y ago
Could a program like this just be practice?
olefoo 8y ago
This is the natural evolution of the privatized prison. To treat an ever growing segment of the population in a carceral manner in ways large and small. Degrees of citizenship is now a thing in America. You can be graded on your credit, your connections, your history; the color of your skin or the shape of your face.
- phry 8y ago
  degrees of citizenship has always been a thing, but you're correct that it's an evolution of the carceral state, and by extension capitalism
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    > by extension capitalism In communist states, you get degrees of citizenship. For example, are you a party member or not?
    - projektir 8y ago
      I don't see them mentioning communism anywhere.
      - aiyodev 8y ago
        Don’t be obtuse.
        projektir 8y ago
        I'm not being obtuse: you are implying that we cannot ever criticize capitalism because that means a request for communism. This does not follow. It also shuts down criticism completely, which is never something you want, even for a good system. If I criticize Agile, does that mean I propose Waterfall?
        Sharlin 8y ago
singularity2001 8y ago
Next headline: NSA is tracking regular Americans like terrorists in secret surveillance program.
bww 8y ago
This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don’t exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply. Is going unnoticed in public reasonably considered to be a right? I would suggest the problem here is the extent of resources that are wasted by the government watching the innocuous behavior of arbitrary people in an airport.
- dillondoyle 8y ago
  Article does mention extra screening times. And we don't know the selection criteria. If it's a proxy for 'has brown skin' as an excuse to surveil and add extra screening to a US citizen that would run afoul of rights. I don't know, but I assume we don't have a right to avoid extra screening that is based on a 'fair' selection? The article did mention travel to Turkey as a trigger, which has been in my top 5 places I'd like to visit next. Would suck to get held up for extra screenings just because I went there.
- a3n 8y ago
  > This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don’t exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply. It's the same argument against "I have nothing to hide." Consider two people, both objectively innocent. One is surveilled, one is not. The surveilled person, merely by coming to the attention of the government, is at risk of mistakes, misjudgment, quota satisfaction, resume building, budget justification, extortion by criminal government employees bad personal life and resulting sour disposition of the watcher, etc. Just because they became noticed. The unsurveilled person is safe. In firearms training, you learn not to point a gun at something unless you intend to destroy it. You should also not point a government at someone unless they have at least shown some reason beyond existence that it's worth potentially destroying their well being.
baxtr 8y ago
Agency documents show there are about 40 to 50 Quiet Skies passengers on domestic flights each day. On average, air marshals follow and surveil about 35 of them. Wow... reminds me of good old East Germany
- kolinko 8y ago
  There are 2 million people on domestic flights daily, if I checked correctly. If 30 get followed, it is a few orders of magnitude lower than in East Germany.
  - baxtr 8y ago
    My comment was meant to be sarcastic. Maybe I should have made that more explicit I think 30 per plane would be really bad. 30 per 2 million is probably just a normal rate
eximius 8y ago
Imagine the economic result if we got rid of the TSA (we did fine without it before 9/11 and they don't do shit now) and created jobs in rebuilding infrastructure using that budget.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  Healthcare, housing, education, feeding the poor. You know, those things the US says are "socialist commie bullshit", but spending ~$8 BILLION a year on a bunch of untrained people given power over others is perfectly acceptable.
a3n 8y ago
"But some air marshals ... say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat .. a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third." Who watches the watchers? Why, the watchers!
a3n 8y ago
>A bulletin in May notes that travelers entering the United States may be added to the Quiet Skies watch list if [they] ... “are possibly affiliated with Watch Listed suspects.” What a beautiful qualification. Put one person on Quiet Skies, for any reason, legit or not. Now every known contact or associate of that one person becomes of interest to the Quiet Skies program. Every neighbor, even if they don't know the neighbor. Every work colleague, even if the colleague doesn't know that they work with the person. Every vendor. Every vendee. The air marshal assigned to watch them. TSA seems to have taken a page from NSA. They aren't even "hop-limited;" they can continually go as far out on a person's network as they want, merely by including a hop in Quiet Skies. https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/nsa-files-decoded-hops https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/ns...
itronitron 8y ago
>> the program could pass legal muster if the selection criteria are sufficiently broad and... >> surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing Those seem to play off each other in a weird way. The program is legal because the selection criteria are so broad that no one under surveillance is suspected of any evildoery? It would be really interesting to find out what kind of records on these surveillance activities are kept. Having been the subject of covert surveillance at multiple points in my past (and future probably) there is a certain amount of shrugging it off that is necessary. The real concern for TSA, or Neighborhood Watch, is whether they are sharing records with any other agencies. Congress would potentially have a Pinata party if that came to light.
polynomial 8y ago
"Subject slept during the flight" ?? You got me, guilty as charged.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  Hitler and Bin Laden both slept sometimes.
polynomial 8y ago
"Subject was abnormally aware of surroundings" Isn't that the whole point of being vigilant?
globetrotter33m 8y ago
While we are on this topic, what I find to be a complete sham is TSA-PRE (a US preflight registration program). The pre-screening is valid for 5 years, in exchange you don't remove your shoes or have to remove electronics and liquids. Basically, what you did BEFORE the TSA program was put in place. I presume they are OK with taking the chance that a TSA-PRE enrolled individual is not turning into a shoe-bomber in year 3 after preenrollment? Why not just abolish all the checks and selectively pull people to remove liquids, shoes and electronics. You'd lose the $99 revenue/passsenger that TSAPRE generates.
dreamcompiler 8y ago
TSA employees are generally not well-paid and not well-educated. They come from the bottom third of the economic advantage spectrum. As a result, most of them have probably never visited a foreign country; many have likely never even been on an airplane. So their opinion of "foreigners" is skewed by their anti-terrorist training to think that people from outside the USA are mostly bad and wish us harm. TSA employees should be required to visit a foreign country at least once a year--paid for by their employer--so they have direct experience with the vast majority of non-US citizens who are simply normal people living their normal lives.
anon19871394 8y ago
OT, but I just get "You're using a browser set to private or incognito mode. To continue reading articles in this mode, please log in to your Globe account." Should that even be possible?
Calib3r 8y ago
Seeing my 12 year old daughter groped by a TSA agent because she "moved her hand too early" in the x ray machine really put things into perspective for me. TSA is the department of domestic fear mongering. That's it.

327 points by Anechoic 8y ago

This seems mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be) but also a collosal waste of time that could be spent doing nearly anything else. Mind you, it's hard to see it as security theater (they won't admit it's happening!). It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI, but even the actual marshals doing it seem to think it's dumb. If it were the FBI just tasking FBI Surveillance Vans onto random people without a predicate, there'd potentially be hell to pay as they generally have regulations on what is a valid reason for opening an investigation.

forapurpose 8y ago
> It sounds like they have a power envy thing going on vis a vis the FBI What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed something. > mostly harmless (insofar as tailing random innocent people could be) Hmmm ... I hate to start from scratch this very common discussion (i.e., the harm in surveillance). Is there anything new to add?
- roywiggins 8y ago
  I mean, it's obviously bad for the same reasons dragnet surveillance is always bad. But this particular instance so ham-handed (tailing an executive that went to Turkey one time?) and so manpower intensive it's kind of hard to take seriously. > What makes you say that? I didn't see it in the article, but maybe I missed something. The article mentions that they first got into the business of tracking people through airports and in the sky after the FBI asked them to help on existing investigations, so I wonder if they are just trying to show that they can do investigations on their own like big boys.

thisacctforreal 8y ago

https://my.mixtape.moe/ohbnhi.jpeg https://my.mixtape.moe/ohbnhi.jpeg The website detects and blocks private browsing on iOS, but you can bypass it using Reader View.

Macha 8y ago
"Look how terrible it is that the TSA may track you! If you make it harder for us to track you, go away" The double standards are amusing.

goscots 8y ago

US Federal Tax dollars at work, infringing on our rights with no tangible benefits for the American people.

bobwaycott 8y ago
This is far more an issue of the Executive and Congress at work, than it is tax dollars at work. Let’s lay the blame where it belongs—only then do we have the slightest hope of citizens recognizing how they can play a part in stopping this. Tax dollars aren’t allocating themselves.
- aaronbrethorst 8y ago
  Complaints about "tax dollars" or about 'tax payers' seem like stalking horses for the whole Reagan-esque 'drown government in the bathtub' thing. It's weird to me that the most jingoistic Americans are also the ones who are most hostile to the concrete manifestations of America. Back to the topic at hand: I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here votes in their primary and general elections. Headcount is a good, nonpartisan resource for finding out more about this: https://www.headcount.org https://www.headcount.org
  - u801e 8y ago
    > I agree wholeheartedly with you and I hope that you and everyone else here votes in their primary and general elections. I doubt that either major party plans to reform the TSA or the Department of Homeland Security.
    - aaronbrethorst 8y ago
      If you believe that, then you should seek to change the policy priorities of either major party. Fatalism in a two party system is neither useful nor indicative of a keener understanding of early 21st century American politics.
enlightenedfool 8y ago

dingo_bat 8y ago

I dunno about TSA, but I'm am Indian male and I keep a beard and visited Sydney and Melbourne recently. I was singled out for "random" checks at every single airport. Even though the metal detector thing didn't go off at all. They were very nice and polite but I was a bit annoyed. After 9-11, it seems most western countries have become cautious to the extent of paranoia and cause inconvenience to normal people.

grecy 8y ago
I'm a white male with long scraggly blonde hair and this happens to me in basically every developed country. Obviously long-haired hippies pose a security threat.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  I'd guess they are hoping to find drugs on you, rather than, say, box cutters.
  - hammock 8y ago
    TSA is not chartered to look for drugs, and technically, they aren't supposed to be looking for them (though sometimes they find them in the course of their job- transportation security)
    - nasredin 8y ago
      Do the TSA screeners get training on identifying drugs?
      - betterunix2 8y ago
        Even if not, the TSA does report drugs when they find them: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/medical-marijuana https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/... It is basically an end-run around the constitution -- if the police were searching through your bags without your consent any evidence they found could be challenged on constitutional grounds. The courts have (afaik) found that the TSA's searches are a different category, "administrative searches," and therefore not unconstitutional; somehow, though, there is no problem with using evidence found by the TSA in a criminal case. Also, since the TSA's mission is not limited to aircraft, it is entirely possible that "administrative searches" are coming to a public transit system near you. Presumably the same rules would apply.

duxup 8y ago

>The teams document whether passengers fidget, use a computer, have a “jump” in their Adam’s apple or a “cold penetrating stare,” among other behaviors, according to the records. I believe this isn't the first time the TSA has tried to do some sort of behavioral profiling and such. Previously it proved to be BS and did not show any ability to identify threats. Considering TSA agents are leaking this to the press makes me think someone(s) at TSA think you can just spot a terrorist and the agents think it is ballony ....

adrr 8y ago
How many airline terrorists have we had in the last 10 years? 2? How many travellers per year? 500m+. TSA is just really bad a math if they think they have any chance of actually profiling a real terrorist. They should just take the money and buy Powerball tickets, least then they have a better chance at a return of investment.
- duxup 8y ago
  It does raise questions about the costs and actions for sure.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    It allows more spending by taxpayers for the military industrial complex, more invasion of privacy, increased government power, and makes the populace mentally prepared to be repressed. It’s a jobs program for people who don’t want to do manual labor, and aren’t smart enough to do anything else. Perfect for power hungry organizations. Only solution to combat this is full transparency, or to join the game and make it to the “elite” and help suppress everyone else. It’s a pretty good setup, you use the bottom 20% to help keep the 20% to 80% in line, and then pluck out a few of the smarter 20% to 80% and drop those in leadership positions in military or police and pay them a nice pension and keep suctioining up a bigger and bigger share of resources.
    - guitarbill 8y ago

pasbesoin 8y ago

The most likely explanation I can think of, is that this is work to establish baselines against which to run mass automated surveillance. So, it's not just this. Consider where it's going -- what would induce this level of effort and expenditure? P.S. It will also be "interesting" when parallel construction enters the picture -- if it hasn't, already.

travelman3000 8y ago

I'm a remote worker and have travelled a lot for fun in the past two years. While checking into a flight from AMS headed to USA, I was told as a prerequisite to getting my boarding pass I needed to talk to an agent from the US Department of the State. He asked me many detailed questions about my travels and said I was considered a person of interest. He stressed that they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA). It seems likely he was just trying to scare me, but it was still was quite jarring. I'm a fairly normal US citizen (I don't associate with political people, no criminal record, never been to a country not known for tourism). I believe I was flagged just from traveling between Turkey and Russia. Since then when I fly I cant use online check-in, my boarding pass is marked SSSS and I am taken into the backroom for questioning at border control. Maybe these extra precautions keep the USA safe, but it certainly seemed excessively paranoid.

fooker 8y ago
Wow
chriselles 8y ago
Double wow. I’m also an expat US citizen traveling regularly to the US. I’ve even travelled to a couple of conflict countries a number of times for work in recent years. Never had a problem re-entering/visiting over 50 times.
raarts 8y ago
> they may in the future not allow me to enter the USA (I'm a citizen of USA). I always thought that if you're a US citizen you cannot be denied entry into the United States, though you might be delayed.
- travelman3000 8y ago
  That is my understanding as well, and the main reason why I thought he was just trying to scare me. However, they can place me on the no flylist, but I believe that this is run by a different branch of the government.
8y ago

amf12 8y ago

Some of these behaviors are so benign that any regular person might exhibit these. Slept during the flight, changed clothes, boarded last (I hate standing in those queues), observed the boarding area from afar. Hell I do many of these things. I am sure their "ML" model must have spit these indicators but it's a waste of resources.

mmaunder 8y ago
They may be establishing a baseline.
arunmib 8y ago
Actually I do all of these in all my trips :-/ beyond simple reasons, there is nothing sinister. * Bored in flight - sleep. * Bored at airport - do people watching, good place is look at how people board, watch airplanes take off and land, what is the ground crew doing. * Travel comfortably and lightly - go in shorts and at the destination airport change to formals. * Don't like queue - board last * Want to travel cheap internationally - you would go through cheap airlines like Turkish, Ethihad (or) some unknown airline. * In business trip - do prep work in laptop while in flight. I'm getting more and more annoyed with these baseline establishing stuff and ML models. edit: typo
koenigdavidmj 8y ago
Also, they capture all ranges of behavior. Glazed over look? Suspicious. Intently paying attention to everything? Suspicious. Friendly? Suspicious. Cold to agents? Suspicious. This is worse than criteria to pull you over when driving.
- polynomial 8y ago
  Extreme overfitting, where any data point outside the norm is correlated. It makes a kind of perverse sense once you realize the stated point is/was to target extremists.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
To be fair, they aren't--or shouldn't be--looking for one thing. The idea is that bomber-wannabe comes late, changes clothes, is all nervous, looks for undercover cops etc etc. But if fidgeting or some other innocent thing, puts you in that list, you're f---d. You will be groped every single flight. No one is going to take the risk to remove you from that list.

bogomipz 8y ago

This sounds like the latest "mission creep" by the TSA in order to justify their budget and possibly ask for a budget increase. This would not be the first instance of "mission creep" by them. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyond-airport-security.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-bey... and https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-coming-to-a-highway-near-you/#29ee469ddbee https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-... They are basically an entrenched part of the security-industrial complex at this point. It seems to be a vicious circle of "expand the mission to justify a bigger budget and ask for a bigger budget in order to meet the self-directed increase in scope." There seems to be very little practical oversight of this agency.

neom 8y ago
Another good summery: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-air-marshal-program-scathing-report-response/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-air-marshal-program-sca...
avs733 8y ago
What I particularly loathe about TSA's constant mission creep is that at no point have they proven even minimally competent at any of the existing missions. Nothing they do provides any meaningful security. They fail 90% of tests run by their own agency. They are useless and ever expanding. By a medical definition, they are cancerous.
betterunix2 8y ago
There has been some pushback to the mission creep; my favorite is the response from freight railroads to a proposal by the TSA to have their agents show up unannounced at rail yards: https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr-teams/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr... "You might just lose a leg" and "some of our employees carry guns" is a pretty bold way to turn down the TSA...

kylec 8y ago

This sounds like they’ve hired a bunch of air marshals but don’t have much for them to do. Having them make observations on random people might be a way to make sure they’re still doing their job?

walrus01 8y ago
It might be like the air marshal version of a security guard route patrol system, where the guard has to swipe a fob or access card at predefined locations in a campus or building periodically. Intended to enforce actually patrolling an area. Not saying it's a good thing, just that's the closest analogy I can think of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_tour_patrol_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_tour_patrol_system https://www.guard1.com/Products/Equipment/Checkpoints.aspx https://www.guard1.com/Products/Equipment/Checkpoints.aspx
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  <knee slap!> That's a good one! The closest analogy I could come up with was the Stasi. Okay, I'll concede, it's not really analogy, it's more like a 1:1 mapping: "One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants"[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
  - a3n 8y ago
    And this being a capitalist society, we pay our citizens (marshals and TSA) to spy on each other.
nobody271 8y ago
That sounds like the most reasonable explanation to me. Being an air marshal and being an air marshal's boss are coveted jobs.
a3n 8y ago
It could also be a way to keep the budget up. No federal department or manager wants to lose people, as it's a proxy for status.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gwbas1c 8y ago

Could a program like this just be practice?

olefoo 8y ago

This is the natural evolution of the privatized prison. To treat an ever growing segment of the population in a carceral manner in ways large and small. Degrees of citizenship is now a thing in America. You can be graded on your credit, your connections, your history; the color of your skin or the shape of your face.

phry 8y ago
degrees of citizenship has always been a thing, but you're correct that it's an evolution of the carceral state, and by extension capitalism
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  > by extension capitalism In communist states, you get degrees of citizenship. For example, are you a party member or not?
  - projektir 8y ago
    I don't see them mentioning communism anywhere.
    - aiyodev 8y ago
      Don’t be obtuse.
      - projektir 8y ago
        I'm not being obtuse: you are implying that we cannot ever criticize capitalism because that means a request for communism. This does not follow. It also shuts down criticism completely, which is never something you want, even for a good system. If I criticize Agile, does that mean I propose Waterfall?
        Sharlin 8y ago

singularity2001 8y ago

Next headline: NSA is tracking regular Americans like terrorists in secret surveillance program.

bww 8y ago

This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don’t exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply. Is going unnoticed in public reasonably considered to be a right? I would suggest the problem here is the extent of resources that are wasted by the government watching the innocuous behavior of arbitrary people in an airport.

dillondoyle 8y ago
Article does mention extra screening times. And we don't know the selection criteria. If it's a proxy for 'has brown skin' as an excuse to surveil and add extra screening to a US citizen that would run afoul of rights. I don't know, but I assume we don't have a right to avoid extra screening that is based on a 'fair' selection? The article did mention travel to Turkey as a trigger, which has been in my top 5 places I'd like to visit next. Would suck to get held up for extra screenings just because I went there.
a3n 8y ago
> This program sounds like a huge, irresponsible waste of public resources. However I don’t exactly see how merely being observed in public amounts to the dystopian surveillance state this article seems to imply. It's the same argument against "I have nothing to hide." Consider two people, both objectively innocent. One is surveilled, one is not. The surveilled person, merely by coming to the attention of the government, is at risk of mistakes, misjudgment, quota satisfaction, resume building, budget justification, extortion by criminal government employees bad personal life and resulting sour disposition of the watcher, etc. Just because they became noticed. The unsurveilled person is safe. In firearms training, you learn not to point a gun at something unless you intend to destroy it. You should also not point a government at someone unless they have at least shown some reason beyond existence that it's worth potentially destroying their well being.

baxtr 8y ago

Agency documents show there are about 40 to 50 Quiet Skies passengers on domestic flights each day. On average, air marshals follow and surveil about 35 of them. Wow... reminds me of good old East Germany

kolinko 8y ago
There are 2 million people on domestic flights daily, if I checked correctly. If 30 get followed, it is a few orders of magnitude lower than in East Germany.
- baxtr 8y ago
  My comment was meant to be sarcastic. Maybe I should have made that more explicit I think 30 per plane would be really bad. 30 per 2 million is probably just a normal rate

eximius 8y ago

Imagine the economic result if we got rid of the TSA (we did fine without it before 9/11 and they don't do shit now) and created jobs in rebuilding infrastructure using that budget.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
Healthcare, housing, education, feeding the poor. You know, those things the US says are "socialist commie bullshit", but spending ~$8 BILLION a year on a bunch of untrained people given power over others is perfectly acceptable.

a3n 8y ago

"But some air marshals ... say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat .. a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third." Who watches the watchers? Why, the watchers!

a3n 8y ago

>A bulletin in May notes that travelers entering the United States may be added to the Quiet Skies watch list if [they] ... “are possibly affiliated with Watch Listed suspects.” What a beautiful qualification. Put one person on Quiet Skies, for any reason, legit or not. Now every known contact or associate of that one person becomes of interest to the Quiet Skies program. Every neighbor, even if they don't know the neighbor. Every work colleague, even if the colleague doesn't know that they work with the person. Every vendor. Every vendee. The air marshal assigned to watch them. TSA seems to have taken a page from NSA. They aren't even "hop-limited;" they can continually go as far out on a person's network as they want, merely by including a hop in Quiet Skies. https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/nsa-files-decoded-hops https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/oct/28/ns...

itronitron 8y ago

>> the program could pass legal muster if the selection criteria are sufficiently broad and... >> surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing Those seem to play off each other in a weird way. The program is legal because the selection criteria are so broad that no one under surveillance is suspected of any evildoery? It would be really interesting to find out what kind of records on these surveillance activities are kept. Having been the subject of covert surveillance at multiple points in my past (and future probably) there is a certain amount of shrugging it off that is necessary. The real concern for TSA, or Neighborhood Watch, is whether they are sharing records with any other agencies. Congress would potentially have a Pinata party if that came to light.

polynomial 8y ago

"Subject slept during the flight" ?? You got me, guilty as charged.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Hitler and Bin Laden both slept sometimes.

polynomial 8y ago

"Subject was abnormally aware of surroundings" Isn't that the whole point of being vigilant?

globetrotter33m 8y ago

While we are on this topic, what I find to be a complete sham is TSA-PRE (a US preflight registration program). The pre-screening is valid for 5 years, in exchange you don't remove your shoes or have to remove electronics and liquids. Basically, what you did BEFORE the TSA program was put in place. I presume they are OK with taking the chance that a TSA-PRE enrolled individual is not turning into a shoe-bomber in year 3 after preenrollment? Why not just abolish all the checks and selectively pull people to remove liquids, shoes and electronics. You'd lose the $99 revenue/passsenger that TSAPRE generates.

dreamcompiler 8y ago

TSA employees are generally not well-paid and not well-educated. They come from the bottom third of the economic advantage spectrum. As a result, most of them have probably never visited a foreign country; many have likely never even been on an airplane. So their opinion of "foreigners" is skewed by their anti-terrorist training to think that people from outside the USA are mostly bad and wish us harm. TSA employees should be required to visit a foreign country at least once a year--paid for by their employer--so they have direct experience with the vast majority of non-US citizens who are simply normal people living their normal lives.

anon19871394 8y ago

OT, but I just get "You're using a browser set to private or incognito mode. To continue reading articles in this mode, please log in to your Globe account." Should that even be possible?

Calib3r 8y ago

Seeing my 12 year old daughter groped by a TSA agent because she "moved her hand too early" in the x ray machine really put things into perspective for me. TSA is the department of domestic fear mongering. That's it.