Blog Archives
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BDOs – Watching the Watchers Watching You
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday June 12, 2013The DHS Inspector General’s office recently issued a 41-page audit of the TSA Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, [ OIG-13-91 ], the intent of which is to observe passenger behavior that may be indicative of stress, fear, or deception in order to detect potential high-risk travelers. SPOT is right up there - #8 on the ubiquitous rainbow chart depicting TSA’s “20 Layers of Aviation Security”, and while the disappointing results of the audit come as no surprise to most security experts, one of the more curious statements is this admission by DHS: This audit did not include work to determine the extent to which the SPOT program is based on valid scientific principles for use as an effective layer... -
The Rising TIDE Floods All Neighborhoods
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday May 15, 2013According to the most recent tally, the number of names in the government’s primary classified counter-terrorism data base has increased 62% in the past 5 years, from 540,000 to 875,000. That would be the "Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment" (TIDE) master database used by other agencies to create sub-catalogs of possible terrorists, including the infamous "no-fly" list. My first thought upon reading that was: that’s a lot of terrorists in my neighborhood – I should check those facts: http://www.nctc.gov/docs/Tide_Fact_Sheet.pdf . Alas, it’s apparently true; they’re everywhere. That’s 184 new names every da y for five years. The US Census Bureau says there are 3,143 counties in the United States, which... -
Weapons on Planes
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday April 17, 2013
To its credit, TSA continues to do its mandated job: finding weapons and other prohibited items at screening checkpoints throughout the country. The chart shows just one week of guns discovered during mid-March, and contrary to my own view that they might be concentrated in one region, they are pretty much everywhere. The same week yielded eight stun guns in carry-on and eight inert grenades in checked baggage. While I seriously doubt that any of the gun-bearers had grandiose visions of hijacking, the fact remains that weapons in carry-on are illegal, and in today’s security-intense environment, one would have to be pretty dense to claim they “forgot” they are packing heat on an airplane (the most typical excuse), or to do so... -
You Can't Make This Stuff Up
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday March 27, 2013I promised myself I would not join the fray on sequestration or the prohibited items list, but I can’t help myself when such stories take a left turn on the off-ramp to Strangeville. Let’s begin with a pop quiz: With sequestration causing huge budget cuts in every office of every Federal agency; FAA closing ATC towers, cutting essential air service to small markets, furloughing government employees one day per week - 20% of their income, and cancelling all White House tours to save the Secret Service a few bucks in overtime pay, what would you say is TSA’s latest contribution to cutting costs during the economic crisis? Good guess!! A $50 million one-year contract to buy TSA screeners new uniforms, announced 2 days before the... -
Let's Talk About RBS. And Pre-Check. And Opt-Out. Again.
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday February 13, 2013On the face of it, TSA’s Risk Based Security (RBS) seems like a pretty good idea: use your limited resources to address real identifiable risk, which in the physical security world is most often defined as threat-times-vulnerability. There are certainly plenty of airport vulnerabilities to go around, but the operative question is vulnerable to what? Defining the threat is always a fast-moving, fast-morphing target which is a continuing challenge for static policies and procedures using static technologies. Pre-check is a child of RBS: use the U.S.’ massive intelligence capabilities to check up on you, your family and friends, and if you’re not a terrorist threat, you get a quick once-over instead of the full screening... -
The Principle of Parsimony
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday January 16, 2013
I admit up front that we are often unjustifiably defined by a single questionable deed rather than our hundreds of intervening positive good deeds. Such is often the case with some TSA endeavors in the past, perhaps more so by those odd deeds encountered at the relatively uncontrolled outer edges of the system than in the belly of the beast at HQ. However, [you knew there’d be a “however”, didn’t you...] sometimes something strange originates at the core that just gives the folks in the field a head-scratching moment that’s hard to describe, much less make sense of. By now, we are all reasonably well-versed on the pleasures of TSA Pre-check, which allows pre-vetted persons the joy of a less stressful and more clothed trip... -
What Would Thomas Jefferson Say About TSA?
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday December 5, 2012
Actually, I think we can come pretty close. I’ll admit it’s been taken just a tad out of context from The Declaration of Independence, where Jefferson was referring to the British Government sending additional customs officials and courts of admiralty into the colonies to enforce trade laws and prevent smuggling. But the operative phrase in founding our great nation was: “ He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. ” In the opinion of many, that description fits TSA just fine, the difference being that it's not the King of England, but our own government that seems to have gotten out of hand. There have been several recent Congressional hearings... -
TSA Pre Check - Is It Working?
- Wednesday November 14, 2012Yes and No. TSA’s trusted traveler “Pre-check” program has gained a lot of media attention lately, both good and bad. We’ve seen a continuing barrage of media items about “X-number of additional airports implementing Pre-check”, although interestingly enough, I can’t find an accurate number, even on the TSA web site – it lists 20, but talks about 28 “this year”. Most of the articles have the same verbiage, but that’s to be expected – TSA makes it known through orchestrated press releases that provide information on how to join the shorter and fully clothed parade. I believe it’s a good idea, but public acceptance and airport implementation has proven to be a bit problematic. Administrator Pistole and... -
Funding The Intelligence Community — Maybe I Was Wrong...
- Wednesday October 10, 2012For years, I have advocated a significant increase in funding for the intelligence community in order to identify the bad guys days or weeks before they come near the airport, rather than try to pick them out of the thousands of people in the queue during the last-chance 25 seconds using the AIT, x-ray, and/or pat down. Silly me. Recently a biting 141-page report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations stated that “DHS ‘fusion centers’ are pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions.” So apparently, it’s my fault. Read on. There is a nationwide network of 77 such fusion centers intended to share information with other local and Federal agencies about... -
Where to begin ...
By Art Kosatka - Wednesday September 19, 2012Far too often I agonize over this column, not from a shortage of security-related material, but a multi-plethora of choices, if there is such a thing. This is one of those times. Congress is issuing reports [1] and holding hearings on what they told TSA it should have been doing if it had just listened (just 60 days before elections); the Rand Corporation has published a pretty good 183-page analytical report [2] on aviation security efficiency, risks, cost-benefit analysis, consequences, and tradeoffs, but not much in the way of real solutions; and TSA has marshaled a massive public relations blitz trumpeting all its good deeds by inventing Pre-Check and “risk-based security”. All this notwithstanding a Frequent Business Traveler...
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