A new inspector general report has found that a Transportation Security Administration screening program that has cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion has had no measurable effects. The “behavioral detection program” known as SPOT (Screening Passengers for Behavioral Techniques), which deploys 2,800 workers at airports around the country, is supposed to identify potential terrorists based on behavioral and appearance indicators without relying on ethnic or religious profiling.
According to the report, an advance copy of which was leaked to the New York Times, the TSA cannot “show that the program is cost-effective, or reasonably justify the program’s expansion.” The TSA has not attempted to determine whether the program has had results and has failed to institute comprehensive training for its officers.
In 2010, the Government Accountability Office investigated the program and found 16 instances in which individuals who were later implicated in terrorists plots flew through U.S. airports two-dozen times without being identified by TSA screeners.
The GAO report found that the program did not result in the apprehension of a single terrorist or “threat to the aviation system.” It also noted that “TSA deployed SPOT nationwide without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment, ” and that while the Department of Homeland security planned to review the program, it did not intend to measure whether it was more effective than random screening would be.
In a statement to the Times responding to the findings of the IG report, the TSA said that, “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 new report will be released later this week.