The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) still has no idea whether the use of behavior detection techniques used by security officers to screen for potential terrorists at the nation’s airports are scientifically valid and it may be “years” before there is scientific basis to know this, a Government Accountability Official (GAO) official said yesterday.
DHS completed in April a validation study of the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) behavior detection program, called SPOT, that concluded it “was more effective than random screening to varying degrees,” Stephen Lord, director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at GAO, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Homeland Defense. “However,” he said in his prepared remarks, “DHS noted that the identification of such high-risk passengers was rare in both the SPOT and random tests.”
Lord also said that the DHS study, which was independently reviewed, did not “comprehensively validate whether SPOT can be used to reliably identify individuals in an airport environment who pose a security risk.” Given that this study took nearly four years to complete, Lord said “DHS may be years away from knowing whether there is a scientifically valid basis for using behavior detection techniques to help secure the aviation system against terrorist threats.”
TSA has invested about $750 million in SPOT since FY ’07 and is requesting $254 million in FY ‘12 to support 350 more Behavior Detection Officers. Lord said that in FY ’10 the SPOT program referred about 50,000 passengers for additional screening, of which 3,600 were referred to law enforcement officers resulting in about 300 arrests.
None of the arrests were terror related and instead were for illegal aliens, drugs, fraudulent documents, outstanding warrants and other offenses, Lord said.
Lord also discussed TSA’s progress in strengthening airport perimeter and access controls security, noting that the agency hasn’t done a comprehensive risk assessment nor developed a national strategy for airport security. He said that TSA has assessed various risk-based scenarios related to airport perimeter security, although has not considered the threat of an insider attack.
Now TSA plans to include a “framework for insider risk” in its next assessment, which is due later this year, Lord said.