I'ts been said before, but there's a major issue with any program that depends on TSA officers' perception of people as liars or truthful: true positives are go

I'ts been said before, but there's a major issue with any program that depends on TSA officers' perception of people as liars or truthful: true positives are going to be swamped by officer bias. In lower-stakes situations study after study shows police officers presuming non-white people to be more likely to be criminals without regard for local statistics. A terrorist group probably has a higher chance of slipping a member by who is or can pass for non-Arab under this setup. I doubt most domestic terrorists (almost universally white) are going to get the same scrutiny no matter how nervous as a frustrated Arab-American woman from Des Moines will. At best they might get checked in case they were smuggling. The model here relies on teaching officers to select people based on whether they think they're lying, it's a perfect situation for prejudice to distract from actual threats. Bruce Schneier and others have pointed how this wastes resources and increases the attack surface for terrorists, but the TSA has been highly resistant to feedback & criticism. It's the equivalent of having the physical security guys for a building do sweeps at night to look for post-its with passwords. That's not the computer security threat and it's not the breaking & entering one, so why do you have them wandering around in the dark?