Media personality battling breast cancer posts 'humiliating' TSA search on Facebook

http://abc7ny.com/news/radio-host-battling-breast-cancer-posts-humiliating-tsa-search/1641467/

A New York woman battling breast cancer says that what happened to her during a TSA search while traveling should never happen to anyone.

Denise Albert says she has never felt so violated.

"It's a feeling that I just never expect to ever experience," Albert said.

The mother of two, who has been quite public about her battle with breast cancer, posted that humiliating experience on Facebook. For the past three years, she's been the host of show called "The MOMS with Denise and Melissa" on radio and TV.

She says Sunday night at LAX, TSA agents aggressively tried to do a body cavity search - in public.

This all happened after she informed them of the metal port on her chest and the medical cream in her bag.

"Her hands were shoving up me, and she went around me and down my pants in the back. And then when she tried to put her hands in my shirt is when I said, 'enough,'" Albert said.

Albert complied with the agents request to take off her shoes, but she didn't want to put her bare feet on the floor because of open sores and rashes from her cancer treatment.
"After having looked at the TSA website, they were not allowed to ask me to take my shoes off because I had a medical condition that I told them about," Albert said.

At one point, out of sheer frustration, she took off her wig, a move she rarely does in public.

Albert says the whole ordeal could have been handled so much better.

"I actually want those people fired because they didn't follow any protocol and I think it was really a game for them," Albert said.

The 42-year-old has filed a formal complaint with the TSA. The agency informed her the matter will be investigated by supervisors at LAX.

The TSA released a statement Monday night saying, "The Transportation Security Administration takes reports of alleged impropriety very seriously. TSA is currently looking into the specific details as to what occurred during the screening process to ensure our security protocols were followed. We regret any discomfort the security screening process may have caused the passenger. We will work with the passenger directly to address her concerns."

On Tuesday, Albert announced that the TSA called her. "I'm very pleased with our conversation. They apologized for my experience and at this point there is an LAX investigation into what happened. They very aggressively train their agents on how to screen medical / disabilities. This was not at their expectations and a lot of disappointment they didn't get it right. They are going to refresh training at LAX 3000 employees," Albert posted on Facebook.

These people went through the TSA background check:

3 bag handlers at Vegas airport accused of looting luggage

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/feeds/canadian-press/world/3-bag-handlers-at-vegas-airport-accused-of-looting-luggage/article33988937/

Three contract baggage handlers at McCarran International Airport are facing felony criminal charges in what Las Vegas airport police described as a behind-the-scenes theft ring.

Las Vegas police Officer Laura Meltzer said Friday the recent arrests of Aaron Matthew Lopez and Jamarcus Domonique Harper, both 27, and 19-year-old Noah Javier Gonzalez, followed a two-week investigation of a man's Jan. 16 report that a gun was missing from his checked bag.

All three men face burglary, theft and stolen property charges.

Meltzer says the three worked for Worldwide Flight Services, a luggage handling firm for Allegiant and Frontier airlines at the airport.

She says police are still investigating the thefts.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports (http://bit.ly/2kyIAMD ) items taken included luxury purses and guns.

This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.

TSA Busted In Massive $100 Million, 40,000 Lb Cocaine Smuggling Conspiracy

TOPICS:ConspiracyIllegal DrugsJay SyrmopoulosTSA

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

By Jay Syrmopoulos

San Juan, Puerto Rico – In a case highlighting the infiltration of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) by transnational criminal organizations, twelve current and former TSA officers and airport staff were indicted for allegedly trafficking over 20 tons of cocaine — worth over $100 million — into the U.S. over an 18-years timeframe.

Last Wednesday, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against the twelve defendants, who are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine.

From 1988 to 2016 the conspirators allegedly smuggled about 40,000 pounds, or twenty tons, of cocaine through Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and into the United States, according to the DOJ.

The DOJ press release detailed how the massive trafficking operation allegedly worked:

During the course of the conspiracy, the defendants smuggled suitcases, each containing at least 8 to 15 kilograms of cocaine, through the TSA security system at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (LMMIA). Sometimes as many as five mules were used on each flight, with each mule checking-in up to two suitcases. From 1998 through 2016, the defendants helped smuggle approximately 20 tons of cocaine through LMMIA.

Six current and former TSA employees, José Cruz-López, Luis Vázquez-Acevedo, Keila Carrasquillo, Carlos Rafael Adorno-Hiraldo, Antonio Vargas-Saavedra, and Daniel Cruz-Echevarría allegedly smuggled multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine while employed as TSA Officers at the San Juan airport.

Their full time responsibilities were to provide security and baggage screening for checked and carry-on luggage that was to be placed on outbound flights from the LMMIA. During the duration of the conspiracy, these TSA employees smuggled multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine through the TSA X-Ray machines within LMMIA and onto airplanes without detection.

“These individuals were involved in a conspiracy to traffic massive quantities of illegal narcotics to the continental United States,” said Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico. “These arrests demonstrate the success of the AirTAT initiative, which has successfully allocated a dedicated group of state and federal law enforcement officers, whose mission is to ensure that our airports are not used in the drug traffickers’ illicit businesses.”

Defendants Edwin Francisco Castro, Luis Vázquez-Acevedo and Ferdinand López are alleged to have operated as facilitators between drug trafficking organizations and the TSA employees who smuggled the cocaine into the airplanes. Defendant Miguel Ángel Pérez-Rodríguez, an airport security company employee, was a source of supply of cocaine to the drug trafficking organization, according to the superseding indictment.

The DOJ press release notes the strategic nature of the operation:

Defendant Javier Ortiz began assisting drug trafficking organizations as an employee of Airport Aviation Services (AAS) as a baggage handler/ramp employee. During the time of the conspiracy Ortiz used to pick up suitcases he knew contained cocaine from the mules at the airline check-in counter. Ortiz would then place the suitcases into the X-Ray machines being monitored by the TSA drug trafficking organization members, who cleared the suitcases.

After the suitcases had been cleared by TSA members, Ortiz took the suitcases to their designated flight, making sure no narcotic K-9 unit or law enforcement personnel were present when the suitcase went from the checkpoint to the airplane. Once the suitcases were loaded into the airplane, defendant Ortiz would make a phone call to a drug trafficking organization member indicating the all clear and the mules would then board the airplane. Ortiz also paid the TSA employees for clearing the suitcases through TSA security.

Defendant Tomas Dominguez-Rohena assisted the drug trafficking organization by taking the suitcases he knew contained cocaine after they had been cleared by TSA members or smuggled passed security to their designated flight. Defendant José Gabriel López-Mercado was a mule for the criminal organization.

“This investigation was initiated by TSA as part of its efforts to address employee misconduct and specific insider threat vulnerabilities. TSA has zero tolerance for employees engaged in criminal activity to facilitate contraband smuggling,” said José Baquero, federal security director for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, in the Monday press release.

The indictment was a result of an internal TSA investigation by the Airport Investigations and Tactical Team (AirTAT), a 2-year-old multi-agency initiative.

If convicted, the defendants face prison terms of between 10-years to life in prison.

Not surprisingly, this is the second such bust of TSA officials in only 2 years for transporting massive amounts of cocaine.

In November 2015, three former TSA agents were indicted on charges of defrauding the government and smuggling cocaine.

According to the indictment, 35-year-old Joseph Scott, 32-year-old Michael Castaneda, and 27-year-old Jessica Scott, all former TSA agents at San Francisco International Airport, were involved in an ongoing operation to help transport drugs through airport security.

Still feel safe with the TSA protecting the nation’s airports?

Jay Syrmopoulos writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.

http://www.activistpost.com/2017/02/...onspiracy.html

TSA allows Kennedy Airport passengers to walk through security checkpoint without being screened

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/tsa-jfk-passengers-bypass-security-checkpoint-article-1.2977418

No lines. No waiting. And no TSA screeners.

Eleven passengers strolled through a security lane without being screened at Kennedy Airport early Monday after Transportation Security Administration agents left the area unsupervised, law enforcement sources said.

Instead of following protocol and notifying Port Authority cops, it took the TSA two hours to tell police about the frightening breach, the sources add.

The unscreened passengers — three of whom set off a metal detector — didn’t even have to take off their shoes to get through security, according to a photo of two of the men obtained by the Daily News.

There was no one present to operate the magnetometer, the X-ray machine or to do pat-downs and secondary screening, the sources said.

“It’s scary that people could just walk in like that. It’s seems like something’s out of control here,” said Marie Ruiz-Martinez, 49, of Connecticut, who was at the airport to see her niece off to Puerto Rico.

The breach happened just after 6 a.m. at Jet Blue’s Terminal 5.

Rather than notifying the police, who are specifically trained to handle those situations, the TSA used its own agents to search for the unscreened passengers.

The two men depicted set off metal detectors but are not suspected of any wrongdoing.

“The TSA tried to mitigate the situation by sending their screeners through the terminal in violation of all the protocols,” a source said. “The protocol says law enforcement is immediately notified.”

When they were finally alerted, Port Authority cops flooded the terminal equipped with surveillance photos of the travelers, but none of them could be found, the sources said.

The three people who set off the metal detector all flew to California, a Port Authority official said. Records show there were four Jet Blue flights from Terminal 5 scheduled for California between 7 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. — two to San Francisco and two to Los Angeles.

In a statement, the TSA said it was reviewing the incident.

“Early reports indicate three passengers did not receive required secondary screening after alarming the walk-through detector,” the agency said. “All personal carry-on bags received required screening.”

The Port Authority official said eight of the travelers hadn’t been identified by late Monday.

“Port Authority Police are continuing to assist federal authorities in efforts to identify and locate the other eight passengers,” the official said.

Julia Talcone, 32, who was traveling home to France with her 5-year-old son, Matthieum, said security should be better.

“If it could happen once, maybe it could happen again,” Talcone said.

“We’re living in dangerous times right now, a lot of things are happening worldwide,” she said. “Security should increase.”

Gavin Pruett, 20, traveling home to California, was alarmed by the security breach.

“You never know what people are thinking or what their motives are,” he said. “For someone to go unscreened, that’s kinda questionable. Especially at JFK.”

There was plenty of outrage to go around.

“What you have is 11 people, unscreened, who boarded unknown flights to unknown destinations,” a law enforcement source said. “This is the failure of the TSA to do its job.”

Rep. Pete King (R-Long Island) weighed in. “We are looking into it and trying to get more information,” he said, “but it is disturbing.”

A Port Authority police official confirmed the TSA’s two-hour delay in alerting cops.

“Port Authority Police attempted at approximately 8 a.m. today to locate 11 individuals who went through an unattended TSA PreCheck checkpoint at approximately 6 a.m. at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 5,” the official said.

“Those terminal searches, initiated when a TSA supervisor discovered and alerted Port Authority Police to the lapse, were unsuccessful, and it is believed the travelers in question boarded various flights.” The statement did not make clear whether there was anyone at the screening spot to look at the monitors as the bags went through the X-ray machine.

The TSA said it was “confident” the incident represented “no threat to the aviation transportation system.”

“TSA works with a network of security layers both seen and unseen,” the statement said. “Once our review is complete, TSA will discipline and retrain the employees as appropriate.”

TSA Rolls Out New Pat-Downs, Some Travelers Say They’re Invasive

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tsa-rolls-out-new-pat-downs-some-travelers-say-they-n729181

The Transportation Security Administration has rolled out changes to pat-downs at airports, which some travelers said resulted in more invasive screenings at airports.

The pat-downs don''t involve any additional areas of the body, and will still be performed by agents of the same gender as passengers, the agency said.

Previously, agents used several different types of pat downs to choose from after travelers set off the metal detector or were otherwise flagged for security concerns, but the new rules establish one standardized pat-down procedure that is more comprehensive.

Nico Melendez, a public affairs manager at the TSA, said the procedure was streamlined to reduce confusion and lessen the cognitive burden of officers after the TSA faced a record number of firearms detection during the week of February 20. Agents found 79 firearms, 21 of which were round chambered, setting a new record from its highest number of 18 firearms in 2014.

Some travelers called the new pat-downs invasive.

Seasoned traveler Joel Stratte-McClure said when he was catching a flight from Redding Municipal Airport to Egypt on Thursday the agent warned him the new procedure "would involve a more intense horizontal and vertical pat down" to look for concealed weapons that people typically hide in their pants.

"This was the most intriguing, intense and invasive pat down I've had by the TSA since they came into existence," Stratte-MCClure said in an email to NBC News. "Usually it's comparatively perfunctory (the gold bracelet on my right wrist sets off every security alarm in the US)."

Stratte-McClure said he is curious why it took the TSA fifteen years to understand that people conceal weapons in their pants, and doubted that the new pat-downs would be much more effective than the old ones, which he said didn't work in the first place.

"Seasoned travelers might take it in stride but infrequent travelers will be embarrassed and shocked," he said.

Some Twitter users criticized the new system, calling it "legalized groping."

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Bruce Anderson said the new pat-downs will continue to use enhanced security measures implemented several months ago.

"TSA continues to adjust and refine our systems and procedures to meet the evolving threat and to achieve the highest levels of transportation security," Anderson said in a statement.

The change comes on the heels of the agency's study of a 2015 report by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General that drew headlines. The audit lambasted TSA for not detecting handguns and other weapons and suggested the termination of the "managed inclusion program."

Andrea, they are actually allowed to cup your genitals now. This guy said a TSA agent put out his forearm and asked him to squeeze his forearm in the way he touches his genitals. This was so the TSA guy didn't squeeze him too hard when he cupped them. TSA actually informed law enforcement that they expect they will be getting more sexual assault complaints due to what they are now doing.


https://consumerist.com/2017/03/06/t...t-down-method/

TSA agent at Pittsburgh airport charged with sexting 13-year-old girl

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/west/2017/03/15/Former-Pittsburgh-police-officer-accused-of-inappropriately-texting-13-year-old-girl/stories/201703150125

A federal Transportation Security Administration agent and former Pittsburgh police officer has been charged after a year-long investigation with sending sexually suggestive texts to a 13-year-old girl.

John Serak, 51, of Baden, was arrested Tuesday by Allegheny County Police and faces multiple felony charges. He has been suspended from his job at the Pittsburgh International Airport, where he worked for TSA as a security specialist in explosives.

The investigation began in March 2016, when the girl’s parents showed police text messages that Mr. Serak sent the girl that talked about cuddling, according to a criminal complaint. In the messages, Mr. Serak asked the girl for pictures of her from the “waist up and waist down,” the complaint said.

The allegations were originally brought to a North Fayette school resource officer, who referred the case to Allegheny County Police.

The girl told her parents about the texts because she felt uncomfortable. The girl was a friend of Mr. Serak’s daughter, according to the complaint. In March 2016, a detective took over the girl’s phone, posed as the girl and continued to text with Mr. Serak for months, the complaint said.

Between March and October 2016 the detective and Mr. Serak texted regularly, according to the complaint. In a transcript of text messages listed in the criminal complaint, Mr. Serak texted that he dreamed about kissing and marrying the girl, that she’d look “hot” in a bathing suit and discussed touching her body.

“The issue for me is part of me wants to snuggle with you like a father figure but the other part of me wants to snuggle with you because you are a very attractive young lady,” reads one text listed in the complaint.

Mr. Serak repeatedly warned the girl to delete the text messages they exchanged, and told her that if anyone saw their texts, they would never be able to see each other again, the complaint said.

Mr. Serak did not text the girl’s phone after October 2016, according to the complaint. After the initial investigation, the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Child Abuse Unit reviewed the case, according to the complaint.

Mr. Serak is charged with unlawful contact with a minor, criminal solicitation, criminal use of a communication facility, attempted corruption of a minor and attempted indecent assault on a person under age 16.

Mr. Serak, who resigned from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police in 2007, has now been suspended from his job at the TSA pending removal, said Michelle Negron, a TSA spokeswoman.

“TSA does not tolerate illegal, unethical or immoral conduct,” she wrote in an email. “TSA is cooperating with local law enforcement officials as they continue to investigate the allegation.”

Mr. Serak is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on March 28. He is being held in the Allegheny County Jail on a $50,000 bond.

Andrea: Bolding mine

So glad these agents are vetted
 

Sea-Tac TSA agent pleads guilty to voyeurism charge

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/sea-tac-tsa-agent-pleads-guilty-to-voyeurism-charge/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=R SS_travel

A security worker at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport accused of taking photos from underneath passengers’ skirts has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge as part of a plea deal.

KOMO-TV reports 29-year-old Nicholas Fernandez of Tukwila pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted voyeurism.

A probable cause statement says authorities received reports of Fernandez’s behavior last July and began monitoring him.

Another TSA agent followed him as he left a security checkpoint for a break. The agent reported seeing Fernandez stand behind a woman at baggage claim and turn his phone on to record under her skirt.

Prosecutors are recommending a suspended sentence that would include a sexual-deviant treatment program and no use of a camera, among other conditions.

TSA officials said previously that Fernandez had been placed on indefinite suspension without pay.

TSA defends pat-down of Texas boy; countless others creeped out

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2017/03/28/tsa-defends-pat-down-of-texas-boy-countless-others-creeped-out/?utm_term=.ddc94fff201a

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is defending an officer’s pat-down of a boy at a Texas airport that outraged his mother and thousands and thousands of people who viewed her Facebook posting on the incident.

For at least two minutes, the TSA officer at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport gives the boy a going-over that just seems a little too thorough.

First, the TSA officer explains to the boy what’s coming. Then the TSA officer, who is wearing blue gloves, moves behind the kid and starts with a search of the kid’s left shoulder. Nothing there. Then the right shoulder. Nothing there, either. The kid’s only wearing a T-shirt after all.

Then the TSA officer runs the back of his gloved hand down the kid’s back four times. Then he runs his hands up and down the kid’s torso on both sides.

Then the TSA officer examines the waistband of the kid’s shorts with the sort of painstaking care a tailor might show while taking in a seam. Then the TSA officer runs the back of his hand down the kid’s buttocks and upper leg on the left side six times or so, with a few on the right side for good measure. Then he wraps his big manly hands around the kid’s hams.

Now it’s time to move around to the front. The TSA officer frisks the kid’s shoulders again – you never know when you’re going to find an armpit bomb. Then down the torso again. Then it’s time to fuss at the waistband some more. Then the TSA officer runs the back of his hands down the front of the kid’s upper leg. More ham-gripping.

Phew. All done. The kindly TSA officer steps away as if the ordeal’s over but – nope, he’s back at the kid’s crotch again.

Take a look, as more than 5 million other people have so far. It looks like the TSA officer’s giving the poor kid a sponge bath, not a pat-down.

“We have been through hell this morning,” the boy’s mother, Jennifer Williamson wrote on Facebook. Williamson, who did not give her son’s age, said she had asked the TSA treat him in a way that would not aggravate his disability, known as a sensory processing disorder.

“He set off NO alarms,” Williamson writes on her Facebook page. “He physically did not alarm at all during screening, he passed through the detector just fine. He is still several hours later saying ‘I don’t know what I did. What did I do?'”

She didn’t respond to a request for comment made through Facebook. In her posting, however, she said her son’s screening took so long they missed their flight.

“I am livid,” Williamson writes. “I wish I had taped the entire interchange because it was horrifying.”

The TSA said it was just following orders.

Pat-down?

More like a molestation.

WTF??!!

I honestly feel like the whole world has gone insane since November.

TSA
 

I wonder how TSA will react to my tooth implant. I get my knee replacement through TSA without any issues but now I have my knee replacement and a tooth implant.

I will report back on my experiences.

Chad, if anyone goes to "frisk" ya inform them "not without dinner first" .......LOL

Haha! I would probably just smile and say "pleased to make your acquaintance ma'am".

It is a damn shame they have NO sense of humor because I can think of a million things to say to crack them up!

I have two implants. No problems and have been flying a lot in the past year.

Thanks buddy.

I did get a pat down in the airport and it got very personal. I thought that it did meet the dinner obligation or at least drinks. I hope she enjoyed playing with my body.

:cool:

I made it through all the scanners just fine. TSA is cool with my implants. They could not resist patting me down though.

.....:|....

TSA begins testing fingerprint check-ins at two US airports

https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/14/tsa-testing-fingerprint-checkin/?sr_source=Twitter

It's never a nice experience to stand in line at the airport for hours just to get a pat down when you get to the end. Hopefully, TSA's new biometric fingerprint tech could make air travel a more pleasant experience for most people. Starting this week, the Transportation Security Administration's fingerprint sensors will go through proof-of-concept testing at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport and at Denver International Airport. The test will last for four weeks, and you can try it out for yourself if you registered your fingerprint as part of TSA's PreCheck program.

Your biometric info will serve as both proof of identification and boarding pass, so it can, in theory, lead to shorter lines and much speedier check-in. For the proof-of-concept test, though, participants still have to show their identification documents, boarding passes and tickets, since its purpose is to assess how accurate the biometric system is.

TSA Acting Assistant Administrator Steve Karoly said in a statement:
"TSA looks at technologies and intelligence capabilities that allow us to analyze and secure the travel environment, passengers and their property. Through these and other technology demonstrations, we are looking to reinvent and enhance security effectiveness to meet the evolving threat and ensure that passengers get to their destinations safely."

Haven't provided the agency your fingerprint yet, but you're willing to trust them with your info for the chance to test the new system out? You can still volunteer your fingerprint using its PreCheck lanes at the airport. If we're lucky, it could change the way airport security works in the US.

Fish market owner 'personally offended' by large lobster TSA photo

http://www.kcra.com/article/fish-market-owner-personally-offended-by-large-lobster-tsa-photo/10232478

The owner of a Connecticut fish market says she is "personally offended" after she saw a photo of a 20-pound (9-kilogram) lobster being handled by a Transportation Security Administration screener on social media.

Lisa Feinman owns Atlantic Seafood Market in Old Saybrook, and says she packed the lobster in a cooler with other lobsters for a customer from Georgia.

TSA spokesman Michael McCarthy later shared a photo of a screener holding the lobster, getting thousands of likes on Instagram.

In a Facebook post, Feinman took great exception to the photo being taken.

"I have something to say about this," she wrote." "This TSA agent should mind his own business. When is it okay to go through someones checked baggage and take photographs? I am personally offended by this because I packed this checked cooler with care and concern for the lobsters and my customers personal property. In addition to this lobster, my customer also purchased several other lobsters all of which were purposefully packed on top of this guy. This agent (after seeing the contents on an x ray machine, no doubt) had to dump out 12 other lobsters to get to this guy. Seriously, nothing better to do? And who would be to blame when these lobsters show up with a claw broken off because the TSA agent doesn't know how to properly handle a lobster? Do your job and leave our personal property alone."

She also criticized the way the agent held the lobster, saying he could have snapped off a claw by putting all of its weight on its joints.

The agency has not responded to requests for comment.

I have such mixed feelings about lobsters.

I have eaten lobster on a rare occasion but not without guilt.

I don't think I ever shall again after reading this:

"Lobsters usually feed on bottom dwellers like clams, snails, and crabs. Lobsters live in the murk and mud at the bottom of the ocean. Lobsters can grow up to four feet long and weigh as much as 40 pounds. It is believed that lobsters can live as long as 100 years."

100 Fun Facts About Lobsters - Woodman's of Essex

Any creature that can live 100 years should not be eaten.

Sorry for the thread derail Andrea.

TSA Security Measures Could Cause an Allergic Reaction

https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/tsa-security-measures-could-cause-an-allergic-reaction.html?utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=

Next time you’re traveling with a lot of snacks, be prepared – you may need to go through some extra security screening. As part of the Transportation Security Administration’s new, stricter screening rules, carry-on foods may need to go in their own bins. The measure has already gone into effect in airports like Orlando, where a woman from Arkansas told a travel agent that TSA was swabbing everything.

“When I went to Orlando from Memphis, I was pulled over for additional screening and was told it was [because] I had lots of snacks in my bag,” she said on a Facebook post reported by Allergic Living. “They swabbed every single snack.”

This poses a problem, though, for those with food allergies worried about cross-contamination. The bins are communal, so you don’t know what food has been in there already that might contain an allergen. And for TSA agents searching through bags or examining the food, they may have some sort of food allergen on their gloves from a previous traveler.

Sari Koshetz, a spokesperson for the southeast region of the TSA, gave Allergic Living some hints for how travelers can ensure no cross-contamination happens: Put all the allergy-safe food in clear, tightly sealed containers or baggies; Ask an officer going through your items to put on clean gloves; Point out liquids with medical purposes that exceed the volume limit for carry-ons so that TSA agents can scan them without opening them. It’s also a good idea, Allergic Living says, to carry a note from your doctor explaining your allergies and the safe foods (and possibly an EpiPen) you need to carry. Travelers should also consider joining TSA PreCheck, where the stronger security measures do not apply.

Feel safe?
 

Homeland insecurities: Lost guns, backlogged asylum-seekers among DHS vulnerabilities

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/07/homeland-security-lost-guns-backlogged-asylum-application-vulnerabilities-lax-grant-oversight-dhs/838089001/

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has key vulnerabilities in administration and oversight that could leave the agency open to fraud and pose threats to national security and public safety, according to a series of reports issued in recent weeks by the department’s inspector general.

The problems range from miscommunications on immigration to oversight failures at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a skyrocketing backlog of asylum applications that could present a “significant risk to national security and public safety,” the inspector general found.

The issues show just how steep the challenges are for President Trump’s pick to lead the agency, Kirstjen Nielsen, who is facing a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday.

The 15-year-old agency, created to help keep Americans safe after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has a broad mission guarding the nation's ports, borders and airports and overseeing federal disaster response and recovery.

Nielsen is an attorney with homeland security and cybersecurity experience who was chief of staff to Gen. John Kelly at DHS before he became White House chief of staff. She followed him to the White House, where she is principal deputy chief of staff.

Previously, she worked at the Transportation Security Administration and on the White House Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush.

Here are some of the key vulnerabilities identified by the DHS inspector general — and issues she faces if confirmed.

Asylum backlog

A backlog of asylum applications has skyrocketed in recent years, jumping from roughly 57,000 in 2014 to more than 250,000 this year.

Immigrants who are already in the United States can seek asylum by filing an application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which then reviews them and sets up fingerprinting, background checks and interviews before asylum can be granted.

The inspector general did not indicate where in the process the backlogged applications are, but the IG’s office told USA TODAY that USCIS officials indicated they had only received initial, preliminary vetting.

“These cases present a significant risk to national security and public safety when not vetting the applicants’ backgrounds,” the inspector general concluded.

Eliminating the backlog without added staffing or policy changes could take years, and in the meantime, the inspector general said, USCIS officials have identified fraud trends in the program.

“Individuals may file for affirmative asylum, anticipating a prolonged waiting period, as a means of exploiting the application process to obtain an Employment Authorization Document,” the inspector general said.

Last year, the department implemented an “asylum surge issue team” to help improve processing, but the inspector general found “no meaningful changes implemented.”

Immigration miscommunications

DHS does not foster enough coordination between its offices responsible for immigration administration and enforcement, which has led to miscommunications and breakdowns, the inspector general found.

The inspector general identified issues with bed space availability, inmate transfer responsibility, language services and processing of undocumented immigrants because of different decisions made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

CBP apprehends immigrants but relies on ICE to house them, yet ICE didn’t consistently notify CPB if and where beds were available. In addition, while CBP is a 24-hour, seven-day operation, ICE enforcement and removal staff normally don’t work nights and weekends, leaving customs and border workers scrambling to house detainees.

A decision by USCIS last year to stop conducting interviews with individuals not currently detained at one location prompted ICE to convert nearly 2,000 cases pending asylum hearings to notices to appear in court. An ICE official said they likely would have been removed and not released into communities if their cases had been adjudicated upon entry to the United States.

ICE officials also didn’t always communicate with USCIS when they moved or released detainees, so USCIS at times showed up at facilities to do interviews but the subjects were not there.

“Lack of coordination in processing aliens creates potential vulnerabilities to national security and public safety,” the inspector general found.

In response to the report issued last week, department officials said they planned to establish a policy council with members from ICE, USCIS, CBP, and other offices to coordinate department-wide administration of immigration policies.

Hundreds of guns, badges lost

Between 2014 and 2016, DHS personnel lost thousands of sensitive assets including guns, badges and secure immigration stamps, the inspector general found.

Border patrol, ICE agents and TSA officers are among DHS personnel who carry guns and badges that pose a security risk if they are lost or stolen. A total of 228 guns and nearly 1,900 badges went missing during the two-year period.

The IG cited instances where two off-duty ICE officers left guns in backpacks while on a beach in Puerto Rico, and another left his gun and badge unsecured in a hotel room while on vacation.

A CBP officer left his badge in an unlocked public gym locker, another left his gun in a bag at a friend’s house, and a third left his gun in an unlocked car overnight. A TSA officer left his gun in his car while he had dinner with his family.

All were stolen.

Only a fraction of the officers were disciplined and none received remedial training on safeguarding such sensitive assets in the future.

In three cases, the inspector general found, weapons fell into the hands of convicted felons.

”Police recovered one firearm from an individual in possession of heroin; another from a suspect charged with armed robbery; and the last from a convicted felon at a pawn shop,” the IG wrote.

DHS officials said they concurred with the findings and plan to update policies, training and inventory control for guns and badges.
Marshaling better aviation security

The contribution to aviation security of the Federal Air Marshal Service is “questionable,” the inspector general concluded.

The details of the findings are classified but an unclassified summary said investigators made five recommendations for improvement. “We also identified a part of FAMS operations where, if discontinued, funds could be put to better use,” the summary states.

Part of the Transportation Security Administration, the service deploys marshals on commercial flights to “protect airline passengers and crew against the risk of criminal and terrorist violence.”

But critics contend that there are only enough marshals to cover 5 percent of flights, and yet the program accounts for 10 percent of the TSA’s budget, costing more than $800 milion per year.

“In general, spending one dollar on the service generates less than 10 cents in benefit,” wrote John Mueller, a political scientist at the Cato Institute and Ohio State University, and Mark Stewart, a civil engineer and risk analyst at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Mueller told USA TODAY he believes they are virtually useless.

“They do nothing,” Mueller told USA TODAY in an interview. “They may have helped with a few drunks here and there. They’ve apprehended nobody.”

Mueller and Stewart, co-authors of Are we safe enough? Measuring and assessing aviation security, maintain that slashing the marshal service’s budget by 75%, increasing training and arming of pilots and installing secondary barriers to cockpits would produce “better aviation security and a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.”
Disastrous loan oversight

In a separate report released last month, the inspector general found that FEMA “did not manage disaster relief grants and funds adequately and did not hold grant recipients accountable for properly managing disaster relief funds.”

Between 2009 and 2015, the inspector general identified $1.6 billion in questionable costs. Last year, the watchdog found another $155 million.

They included instances where projects did not qualify or grant recipients did not ensure full and open competition for work under the grants, did not provide opportunities to small, women- or minority-owned business and used prohibited cost-inflated contracts.

FEMA provides grants to state and local governments and nonprofit organizations to help response and recovery from major disasters.

The inspector general also audited the agency’s initial response to major disasters and found the responses were effective but noted “FEMA’s management responsibility merely begins with the initial disaster response.”

In response to the report, FEMA officials said they are committed to addressing the findings and the agency is working to advance consistent, FEMA-wide guidance for grant management and compliance.

Big improvement?
 

'Disturbing' findings: Airport screeners miss most weapons

http://www.kcra.com/article/disturbing-findings-airport-screeners-miss-most-weapons/13456754

Undercover testing at multiple airport checkpoints brought back uncomfortable results, finding that security procedures missed weapons a majority of the time.

"We found that briefing disturbing," House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said at a hearing following Wednesday's briefing to discuss the details of the tests conducted by Office of the Inspector General.

The briefing itself was private, but a source told ABC News that the failure rate was "in the ballpark" of 80 percent. A CBS correspondent says the investigators were able to get through checkpoints with mock knives, guns and explosives more than 70 percent of time.

The Transportation Security Administration said it agrees with the report and is committed to Department of Homeland Security recommendations, though are no specifics on what those entail.

"We take the OIG’s findings very seriously and are implementing measures that will improve screening effectiveness at checkpoints," TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a statement. "We are focused on staying ahead of a dynamic threat to aviation with continued investment in the workforce, enhanced procedures, and new technologies."

Despite the high rate of failure, the results of this round of testing is better than two years ago, when screeners missed 95 percent of prohibited items.

i do not know why but TSA always stops me...and flying from dallas to vegas i was stopped...the TSA lady felt my "chest" with her fingertips...i was told i could move along...and i did...it was because of my necklace...sheesh

Andrea??? Have you come across any articles, which address how the so-called "legalized groping" of airline passengers has negative impact on the airline industry?

I'm SO curious about this particular fall out, the unintended consequence of allowing this type of "security measure"..... I mean, hey, that article you found about screener's groping people to find guns or knives or any device of the sort is an failure to find anything except to grope people and put passengers through undue stress. I won't take an airplane anymore because I refuse to have strangers groping my body. I can hardly believe the hostile environment just to take an airplane to travel. It seems terribly counterproductive to have to submit to a body search, which is more like some prison tactic or sorts.

Anywhooo..... next time I'm visiting my friend who's a senior librarian, thus is something I'm going to ask her, if she's seen any credible literature concerning negative impacts on those who fly and the airline industry as an whole.

I haven't seen any numbers but the board I find stuff on indicates to me there are different classes of people. Those that travel for work and don't have much of a choice, those that believe the gropes are keeping us safe because there hasn't been another attack like 9/11, and those that don't fly but claim they wouldn't have an issue with being groped because if the government says it is necessary......

Then there is the rest of us that don't like it so limit our flying, but sometimes it is the only way to get somewhere when you have to be there.

What I don't get is why we keep spending the $ on an agency that has proven again and again it can't do the job.

Same here, I agree with you wholeheartedly, Andrea! :bunchflowers:

Those airport cameras tracking your face may not be legal, study finds

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/21/scanning-the-face-of-every-american-traveling-overseas-would-be-invasive-costly-and-potentially-illegal-a-new-report-finds/?utm_term=.a1790b378669

A Department of Homeland Security program that would collect facial scans of every American citizen traveling overseas may skirt the law, come at enormous cost, exhibit technical flaws and invade the privacy of innocent people, a new report finds.

Published Thursday by three researchers at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University’s law school, the report examined a DHS pilot program currently underway at nine U.S. airports with overseas flights. In an effort to prevent visitors from overstaying their visas or using fraudulent travel documents, border agents scan the faces of travelers before they depart, and compare the biometric scan against a DHS database.

Visitors and U.S. citizens alike who are traveling on certain international flights originating from cities including Washington, D.C., Atlanta, New York, and Chicago will have their faces captured. According to the study, DHS plans to extend the face scanning program to every airport in the United States that sends passengers abroad.

But the researchers urge policymakers and the public to consider abandoning the biometric exit program, which they say is “riddled with problems” and “offers no tangible benefits.” Congress has never clearly authorized the collection of facial data at the border from American citizens, the report says, and DHS has not begun a rulemaking process on the facial scanning program that it is required by federal law to conduct.

The $1 billion program may prompt more invasive forms of government surveillance, including passive biometric scans at domestic airports and the use of facial recognition in other public spaces not associated with air travel, according to the report. That may lead to the chilling of free speech and free association, the researchers said.

In a statement, Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that the agency takes its privacy obligations seriously, and that U.S. citizens can currently opt out of the facial scanning process.

“In addition, in an effort to be transparent, CBP held a dialogue with privacy advocates in August 2017 and will do so again in January 2018,” she said. Gabris added that CBP has instituted a rigorous process to review the performance of the biometric pilot program, which has a “matching rate in the high 90 percentile.”

“CBP is working to meet the Congressional mandate for biometric exit in a way that’s most efficient and secure for the traveler and that is least disruptive for the travel industry, while also effectively enhancing border security,” she said.

But in addition to legal and privacy implications raised in the study, the researchers found that DHS itself had acknowledged technical flaws in how the facial scanning system functions. Citing DHS's own data, the report states that the agency's facial recognition system erroneously rejects as many as 1 out of every 25 travelers who display valid credentials. Applying that error rate to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, 1,632 innocent passengers could be wrongfully delayed or denied boarding every day under DHS's system, the study found.

What's more, DHS appears to not have measurements in place to evaluate how well its facial scanning systems actually detect would-be impostors, according to the study. The 1-out-of-25 error rate measures only false positives, not accurate detections of fraud.

The study likened DHS's lack of a positive detection metric to a bar owner who hires a bouncer without asking him how well he can spot fake IDs. “DHS appears to have no idea whether its system will be effective at achieving its primary technical objective,” the study said.

The report also found DHS is unable to determine whether the accuracy of its facial scans drops because of a traveler's demographic traits. Citing industry research and DHS's own inconclusive findings, the report argues that its likely the agency's biometric scanning systems may discriminate against people based on their race and sex. “Innocent people may be pulled from the line at the boarding gate and subjected to manual fingerprinting at higher rates as a result of their complexion or gender,” the report said.

If the program does continue, the researchers offered six recommendations. They include DHS offering a justification for biometric scanning and identifying and quantifying the problem they are trying to solve; excluding Americans from facial scanning; and for the DHS to adopt a policy restricting the use of facial data for verifying the identify of foreigners, and not for other purposes.

A woman called the ‘serial stowaway’ sneaked past airport security — again — and flew to London

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/01/20/a-woman-called-the-serial-stowaway-sneaked-past-airport-security-again-and-flew-to-london/?utm_term=.ae065e78295e

Marilyn Jean Hartman is infamous. For years, law enforcement agencies in several states have known her for her seemingly endless and bizarre habit of getting on planes without a ticket, a boarding pass or a passport.

The 66-year-old with short, white-blond hair was caught trying to get to Hawaii at least once in 2014. She made it to Los Angeles that same year after trying several times to board a plane in San Jose. She flew to Florida in 2015 after boarding a plane in Minnesota. She was jailed in Chicago that same year for trying to bypass security at the city’s two major airports. According to news reports, she usually tries to blend in with big groups to get past airport security.

And in 2016, an Illinois judge sentenced her to two years of probation and six months at a mental-health facility, where she had already been staying, after she was arrested again at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Hartman is back on the news again. This time, she made it to London.

She sneaked past security in Chicago and boarded a flight to Heathrow Airport. She was arrested after arriving there Monday and was flown back to the United States on Thursday, according to Chicago police. Hartman has been charged with criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, and theft, a felony.

The Transportation Security Administration is investigating how she managed to sneak past security.

“During the initial investigation it was determined that the passenger was screened at the security checkpoint before boarding a flight. Upon learning of the incident, TSA, and its aviation partners, took immediate action to review security practices throughout the airport,” the federal agency said in a statement.

Lauren Huffman, spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Aviation, said no passengers or visitors were placed in harm’s way because of the incident.

“We are working with our law enforcement partners to support a comprehensive and thorough investigation, while continuing to maintain the highest levels of security at O’Hare Airport,” Huffman said in a statement.

Several media outlets, including The Washington Post, have documented Hartman’s misadventures and often referred to her with a nickname. “ ‘Infamous serial stowaway’ Marilyn Jean Hartman strikes again,” says a Post headline from 2015. Media outlets have also called her a homeless loner bouncing between women’s shelters and motel rooms up and down the West Coast over the past decade.

But her bizarre and headline-grabbing behavior has confounded authorities.

“Ms. Hartman, what am I supposed to do?” Cook County Circuit Court Judge William Raines asked during a hearing in May 2015, according to NBC affiliate WMAQ.

A year later, Hartman was back in Raines’s courtroom. The judge dished out a harsh scolding as he recounted Hartman’s history, which included several attempts to escape from mental-health facilities in Illinois.

“The only reason why you’re not going to jail this time is because all these people that are here trying to help you still want to help you. I can’t figure out why that is,” Raines told Hartman, according to the Chicago Tribune’s account of the hearing. He added later: “There’s no more feeling sorry for you. I think you’re addicted to the attention.”

In many cases, Hartman seemed to expect to be caught.

“And it’s not as if she is, ‘Catch me if you can.’ It’s almost like, ‘Just come catch me,’ ” Assistant State’s Attorney Jeff Allen told reporters during the hearing.

But why the airport? That’s a question that assistant public defender Parle Roe-Taylor had told reporters she couldn’t answer.

In 2015, San Francisco Magazine tried to do so. A lengthy profile published online in June 2015 painted a picture of a woman who had been estranged from family members in Illinois, who constantly felt “the need to get on a plane to go away,” and who told wild tales of coverups and conspiracies.

Hartman claimed that people — airport security, public transit passengers, jail inmates, President Obama — have all conspired to compel her to sneak onto planes in an elaborate attempt to punish her, and then allow her to escape lengthy prison sentences so she can do it all over again, and again.

“They just hope I kill myself or act out against society,” she told the magazine during an interview while she was jailed in Florida. “Goodbye, cruel world.”

Hartman was living at an apartment facility for low-income seniors at a Chicago suburb before her arrest this week. She’s scheduled to appear in court Saturday, according to media reports.

TSA worker arrested after feds say he showed up for sex with 11-year-old girl

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-reg-tsa-worker-child-sex-case-20180410-story.html

A TSA worker based at Fort Lauderdale’s international airport is jailed on federal allegations he showed up at a Plantation park expecting to have sex with an 11-year-old family friend who he had been sending inappropriate texts and pornography.

Gary Delynn Linder, 27, of Lauderhill, cried during a bond hearing Tuesday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. He did not speak but quietly wept and looked at his father in the courtroom.

Officials with the Transportation Security Administration at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport said the agency has begun the process of terminating Linder’s employment. Linder worked as a TSA officer since November 2016.

Linder began trying to groom the girl for sexual activity about a month after he obtained her cellphone number in January, prosecutors said.

“Have you hit puberty yet?” was one of the texts he sent to the girl, followed by more inappropriate questions about her body and development.

The girl’s parents saw the inappropriate texts from him in mid-February and turned the phone over to law enforcement.
Top officials at Backpage.com indicted after classifieds site taken offline

Investigators assumed the girl’s identity and began responding to Linder’s texts as if they were her.

Linder exchanged more than 1,000 texts in about two months, often reaching out to the girl while she was at school and as late as midnight to 1 a.m., according to testimony from Lee Bieber, a Plantation detective who works on the FBI’s child exploitation task force.

“I responded in kind but he set the tone of the conversation,” Bieber testified about the texts he exchanged with Linder when he posed as the 11-year-old.

During the investigation, Linder sent pornographic images of adults having sex, as well as photographs of his erect penis, and begged the girl to send him sexual photographs of herself. He gave instructions on how to shoot the photographs but the undercover detective made excuses and did not send photos.

The texts were extremely sexual and included a labeled diagram of female genitals, instructions on masturbation, and graphic descriptions of Linder’s sexual fantasies involving the girl, investigators said.
Stories and secrets from a TSA screener

Linder arranged to meet the 11-year-old girl at 4 p.m. on April 4 at a park in Plantation. Beforehand, he specified that he wanted to have sex with her in his car.

The undercover agent, posing as the girl, told him to bring two glazed donuts with him and to knock on the public restroom door and the girl would come out.

Agents arrested Linder when he showed up for the sexual encounter – with the glazed donuts.

“In this case, there was a real child – a child that was known to the defendant for a long time … and he took the substantial step of showing up to meet her,” prosecutor Jodi Anton told the judge. “But for law enforcement intervening, you’d have a hands-on offender.”

They said Linder confessed and identified the girl as a family friend whose home he often visited. He also said he was attracted to young girls between the ages of 6 years old to 14 years old, authorities said.

Linder also said he had been communicating with two other minors, girls aged 14 and 16. Authorities said they found two child pornography images on his phone when they searched it.

Linder was arrested on federal charges of using a cellphone to entice a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct to produce child pornography and transferring obscene materials to a minor.

If convicted, he could face 15 years to life in federal prison. Linder has not yet indicated if he plans to fight the charges.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Seltzer on Tuesday ordered that Linder will remain jailed while the case is pending.

So, I wanted to follow up with you Andrea about the subject of credible scholarly literature available on the subject of Airline Industry issues... for example, issues relating to methods of security checks, methods utilized at boarding gates, port of entries, invasion of privacy (gross cases of body touch types of things --- groping, etc) and any number of topics available to read.

I'm limited in my attempt to conduct an exhaustive type of search due to lack of an desktop or laptop, but by smart phone device and experimenting with certain Boolyan catch-phrases, I couldn't find anything that comes close to what I had in mind. Of course, I'm no librarian or category research expert, but a few things come to mind about why there might not be too many credible Scholarly articles available.

1) Most all upper education institution's with research departments has to have an Independent Review Board (IRB). If an candidate conducting any formal research for a study wants to have their research to be deemed credible, the candidate has to submit an research proposal that meets that institution's set of criteria, to gain permission to move forward with their study, as well as the chair of their department. That's one hoop you can't neglect when committing to the research project the candidate undertakes as either fulfilling an departmental requirement for any upper graduate or doctoral study involved.

2) Since the general subject of the airline industry is an stand alone agency, I'm guessing that there might be barriers to uncovering certain types of available data. For example, I'm guessing, depending on the scope of study and how well the candidate narrows down to the type of information necessary to the case study involved, the candidate might face an awful lot of bureaucratic red tape gaining access to such information. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) agency is notorious for being exceptionally obtuse and often times it is hard to get any type of reasonable cooperation from this agency. Or.... Maybe the candidate might have trouble gaining access to credible case law applications or decisions rendered by State or Federal district courts. Or....maybe the candidate might have trouble getting available data from the FAA (there's always the possibility that certain sets of data might be classified as not available due to security risks).

3) When an candidate takes up an research topic, it's usually based off other research that has been previously published by another candidate .... and from what I've learned about getting your study published, it's helpful to either add toward the collective base of studies previously published or its even more helpful if the candidate's research disputes prior research and makes an airtight argument that nullifies previous studies noting x y or z types of conditions or similarities or that type of thing.

All that to say, that my ability to find any recent study within ten years, which it takes a few years for credible studies to get the institutional stamp of approval, was close to nothing -- I came up empty handed.

Anyway, you may or may not have already known about some of the barriers to credible studies and how hard it is to get enough information to get your study published. Especially if it's ground breaking news.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post about TSA issues in the news. :bunchflowers:

Welcome to the Quiet Skies

http://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/graphics/2018/07/tsa-quiet-skies/?s_campaign=breakingnews:newsletter

Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.

The previously undisclosed program, called “Quiet Skies,” specifically targets travelers who “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.

The internal bulletin describes the program’s goal as thwarting threats to commercial aircraft “posed by unknown or partially known terrorists,” and gives the agency broad discretion over which air travelers to focus on and how closely they are tracked.

But some air marshals, in interviews and internal communications shared with the Globe, say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat — a businesswoman who happened to have traveled through a Mideast hot spot, in one case; a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, in another; a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third.

It is a time-consuming and costly assignment, they say, which saps their ability to do more vital law enforcement work.

TSA officials, in a written statement to the Globe, broadly defended the agency’s efforts to deter potential acts of terror. But the agency declined to discuss whether Quiet Skies has intercepted any threats, or even to confirm that the program exists.

Release of such information “would make passengers less safe,” spokesman James Gregory said in the statement.

Already under Quiet Skies, thousands of unsuspecting Americans have been subjected to targeted airport and inflight surveillance, carried out by small teams of armed, undercover air marshals, government documents show. 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.

Air marshals note these observations — minute-by-minute — in two separate reports and send this information back to the TSA.

All US citizens who enter the country are automatically screened for inclusion in Quiet Skies — their travel patterns and affiliations are checked and their names run against a terrorist watch list and other databases, according to agency documents.

Explore the behavior checklist
1. Subject was abnormally aware of surroundings

Reversing or changing directions and/or stopping while in transit through the airport
Attempting to change appearance by changing clothes, shaving etc. while in the airport or on the plane
Using the reflection in storefront windows to identify surveillance
Observing the boarding gate area from afar
Boarded last
Observing other people who appear to be observing FAM team and/or subject

2. Subject exhibited Behavioral Indicators

Excessive fidgeting
Excessive perspiration
Facial flushing
Rapid eye blinking
“Adam’s apple jump”
Rubbing/wringing of hands
Strong body odor
Sweaty palms
Trembling
Cold penetrating stare
Exaggerated emotions
Gripping/“White knuckling” bags
Wide open, staring eyes
Face touching
Other

3. Subject’s appearance was different from information provided

Lost weight
Gained weight
Balding
Graying
Hair length/style change
Goatee
Visible Tattoos (Describe)
Visible Piercings (Describe)
Beard
Mustache
Apparent Altered Experience (Explain)
Clean shaven
Other

4. Subject slept during the flight

Subject slept during most of the flight
Subject slept briefly

5. General Observations

Checked baggage?
In possession of cell/smartphone?
In possession of multiple phones?
Used phone to talk?
Used phone to text?
In possession of computer?
Seated in first/business class?
Used lavatory?
In possession of any unusual items?
Traveled with others?
Met with others in the airport?
Engaged in conversation with others?
Subject initiated conversation with FAM?
Carryon baggage?
Other notable activity?
Subject engaged in “more than casual contact” with airport or airline employee?

6. For Domestic Arrivals Only

(If possible, provide identifiers (license plate, vehicle description) of pick up vehicle in AAR)

Picked up at curbside shuttle, taxi, bus or public transit?
Picked up at curbside by private vehicle?
Obtained rental car for transportation

The program relies on 15 rules to screen passengers, according to a May agency bulletin, and the criteria appear broad: “rules may target” people whose travel patterns or behaviors match those of known or suspected terrorists, or people “possibly affiliated” with someone on a watch list.

The full list of criteria for Quiet Skies screening was unavailable to the Globe, and is a mystery even to the air marshals who field the surveillance requests the program generates. TSA declined to comment.

When someone on the Quiet Skies list is selected for surveillance, a team of air marshals is placed on the person’s next flight. The team receives a file containing a photo and basic information — such as date and place of birth — about the target, according to agency documents.

The teams track citizens on domestic flights, to or from dozens of cities big and small — such as Boston and Harrisburg, Pa., Washington, D.C., and Myrtle Beach, S.C. — taking notes on whether travelers use a phone, go to the bathroom, chat with others, or change clothes, according to documents and people within the department.
Flying the quiet skies

Air marshals are following citizens to or from cities big and small, including these airports

Seattle
Minneapolis
Detroit
Boston
New York
Chicago
Harrisburg
San Francisco
Philadelphia
Washington, D.C.
Las Vegas
Charlotte
Phoenix
Myrtle Beach
Los Angeles
Atlanta
Houston
Miami

Quiet Skies represents a major departure for TSA. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency has traditionally placed armed air marshals on routes it considered potentially higher risk, or on flights with a passenger on a terrorist watch list. Deploying air marshals to gather intelligence on civilians not on a terrorist watch list is a new assignment, one that some air marshals say goes beyond the mandate of the US Federal Air Marshal Service. Some also worry that such domestic surveillance might be illegal. Between 2,000 and 3,000 men and women, so-called flying FAMs, work the skies.

Since this initiative launched in March, dozens of air marshals have raised concerns about the Quiet Skies program with senior officials and colleagues, sought legal counsel, and expressed misgivings about the surveillance program, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Globe.

“What we are doing [in Quiet Skies] is troubling and raising some serious questions as to the validity and legality of what we are doing and how we are doing it,” one air marshal wrote in a text message to colleagues.

The TSA, while declining to discuss details of the Quiet Skies program, did address generally how the agency pursues its work.

“FAMs [federal air marshals] may deploy on flights in furtherance of the TSA mission to ensure the safety and security of passengers, crewmembers, and aircraft throughout the aviation sector,” spokesman James Gregory said in an e-mailed statement. “As its assessment capabilities continue to enhance, FAMS leverages multiple internal and external intelligence sources in its deployment strategy.”

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.

In late May, an air marshal complained to colleagues about having just surveilled a working Southwest Airlines flight attendant as part of a Quiet Skies mission. “Cannot make this up,” the air marshal wrote in a message.

One colleague replied: “jeez we need to have an easy way to document this nonsense. Congress needs to know that it’s gone from bad to worse.”

Experts on civil liberties called the Quiet Skies program worrisome and potentially illegal.

“These revelations raise profound concerns about whether TSA is conducting pervasive surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing,” said Hugh Handeyside, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project.

“If TSA is using proxies for race or religion to single out travelers for surveillance, that could violate the travelers’ constitutional rights. These concerns are all the more acute because of TSA’s track record of using unreliable and unscientific techniques to screen and monitor travelers who have done nothing wrong.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Quiet Skies touches on several sensitive legal issues and appears to fall into a gray area of privacy law.

If this was about foreign citizens, the government would have considerable power. But if it’s US citizens — US citizens don’t lose their rights simply because they are in an airplane at 30,000 feet.

— Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor

“If this was about foreign citizens, the government would have considerable power. But if it’s US citizens — US citizens don’t lose their rights simply because they are in an airplane at 30,000 feet,” Turley said. “There may be indeed constitutional issues here depending on how restrictive or intrusive these measures are.”

Turley, who has testified before Congress on privacy protection, said the issue could trigger a “transformative legal fight.”

Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor chosen by President Obama in 2013 to help review foreign intelligence surveillance programs, said the program could pass legal muster if the selection criteria are sufficiently broad. But if the program targets by nationality or race, it could violate equal protection rights, Stone said.

Asked about the legal basis for the Quiet Skies program, Gregory, the agency’s spokesman, said TSA “maintains a robust engagement with congressional committees to ensure maximum support and awareness” of its effort to keep the aviation sector safe. He declined to comment further.
A view from the top of dozens of passengers walking in an airport terminal.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Beyond the legalities, some air marshals believe Quiet Skies is not a sound use of limited agency resources.

Several air marshals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, told the Globe the program wastes taxpayer dollars and makes the country less safe because attention and resources are diverted away from legitimate, potential threats. The US Federal Air Marshal Service, which is part of TSA and falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has a mandate to protect airline passengers and crew against the risk of criminal and terrorist violence.

John Casaretti, president of the Air Marshal Association, said in a statement: “The Air Marshal Association believes that missions based on recognized intelligence, or in support of ongoing federal investigations, is the proper criteria for flight scheduling. Currently the Quiet Skies program does not meet the criteria we find acceptable.

“The American public would be better served if these [air marshals] were instead assigned to airport screening and check in areas so that active shooter events can be swiftly ended, and violations of federal crimes can be properly and consistently addressed.”

These revelations raise profound concerns about whether TSA is conducting pervasive surveillance of travelers without any suspicion of actual wrongdoing.

— Hugh Handeyside, American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project

TSA has come under increased scrutiny from Congress since a 2017 Government Accountability Office report raised questions about its management of the Federal Air Marshal Service. Requested by Congress, the report noted that the agency, which spent $800 million in 2015, has “no information” on its effectiveness in deterring attacks.

Late last year, Representative Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican, introduced a bill that would require the Federal Air Marshal Service to better incorporate risk assessment in its deployment strategy, provide detailed metrics on flight assignments, and report data back to Congress.

Without this information, Congress, TSA, and the Department of Homeland Security “are not able to effectively conduct oversight” of the air marshals, Hice wrote in a letter to colleagues.

“With threats coming at us left and right, our focus should be on implementing effective, evidence-based means of deterring, detecting, and disrupting plots hatched by our enemies.”

Hice’s bill, the “Strengthening Aviation Security Act of 2017,” passed the House and is awaiting consideration by the full Senate.
Read the bulletin

The Globe, in its review of Quiet Skies, examined numerous TSA internal bulletins, directives, and internal communications, and interviewed more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of the program.

The purpose of Quiet Skies is to decrease threats by “unknown or partially known terrorists; and to identify and provide enhanced screening to higher risk travelers before they board aircraft based on analysis of terrorist travel trends, tradecraft and associations,” according to a TSA internal bulletin.

The criteria for surveillance appear fluid. Internal agency e-mails show some confusion about the program’s parameters and implementation.
Another image of the Quiet Skies bulletin with highlighted text showing that selectees are not on under investigation or any watch list

Quiet Skies focuses on a person’s international travel patterns and potential affiliations. Passengers are not under investigation and their names are not on a terrorist watch list or in a screening database.

Air marshals have surveilled a businesswoman, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, and a fellow federal law enforcement officer, sources said.

A bulletin in May notes that travelers entering the United States may be added to the Quiet Skies watch list if their “international travel patters [sic] or behaviors match the travel routing and tradecraft of known or suspected terrorists” or “are possibly affiliated with Watch Listed suspects.”

Travelers remain on the Quiet Skies watch list “for up to 90 days or three encounters, whichever comes first, after entering the United States,” agency documents show.

Travelers are not notified when they are placed on the watch list or have their activity and behavior monitored.

Quiet Skies surveillance is an expansion of a long-running practice in which federal air marshals are assigned to surveil the subject of an open FBI terrorism investigation.

In such assignments, air marshal reports are relayed back to the FBI or another outside law enforcement agency. In Quiet Skies, these same reports are completed in the same manner but stay within TSA, agency documents show, and details are shared with outside agencies only if air marshals observe “significant derogatory information.”

According to a TSA bulletin, the program may target people who have spent a certain amount of time in one or more specific countries or whose reservation information includes e-mail addresses or phone numbers associated to suspects on a terrorism watch list.

The bulletin does not list the specific countries, but air marshals have been advised in several instances to follow passengers because of past travel to Turkey, according to people with direct knowledge of the program.

One air marshal described an assignment to conduct a Quiet Skies mission on a young executive from a major company.

“Her crime apparently was she flew to Turkey in the past,” the air marshal said, noting that many international companies have executives travel through Turkey.

“According to the government’s own [Department of Justice] standards there is no cause to be conducting these secret missions.”

TSA in the subways soon
 

ACLU Seeks More Information About Los Angeles Subway Body Scanners

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/aclu-seeks-more-information-about-los-angeles

The ACLU of Southern California filed a public records request today demanding more information about the body scanners that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority is deploying in subway stations purportedly to detect terrorists. There are a lot of unanswered questions about these body scanners, which see through clothing to detect objects on people’s bodies. That raises numerous privacy and racial equity issues — and ultimately, the question of whether we want remote body scanning to become pervasive in our public spaces.

We wrote about this technology and the questions it raises in March when TSA tested it in New York’s Pennsylvania station. The privacy questions include whether the scanner searches are permissible under the Constitution under California’s very privacy-protective state constitution without a warrant and whether an alarm by one of these scanners is sufficient to justify a demand by a security officer to see underneath a person’s clothes. People carry all kinds of personal effects on and about their bodies, especially in a busy place like a transit hub, and many of those things are very personal: valuables; back braces; medical devices, such as colostomy bags and prosthetics, etc. We should also bear in mind that this technology will likely improve over time in its resolution, clarity, and effective operating distance — and will, therefore, become more intrusive.

There are also serious questions about its effectiveness and whether it survives a cost-benefit analysis. We don’t know what the system’s false positive and false negative rates are, but with all of the things that people carry, it’s likely to be generating constant false alarms. For instance, a German study reported on in 2011 found a strikingly high false positive rate of 54 percent in the use of these scanners. In other words, more than one out of every two items tagged as suspicious turned out to be innocuous. And that was the version used in airports on subjects who are standing still with their arms raised and their pockets empty rather than the free-standing version used here on moving crowds in a chaotic environment. Similarly, the risks of the false negatives — the rate at which these devices fail to detect actual threats — are potentially astronomical as well. In 2017, the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog reported that its undercover agents were able to slip contraband through TSA’s suite of security screening protocols in over 70 percent of attempts.

We don’t have anything like sufficient information to suggest that these devices will be effective in preventing mass casualty attacks. The government hasn’t made the results of its tests in Penn Station or elsewhere public. And even if we did have cause to believe they’d be effective, remember that, as security experts have long pointed out, when you harden one target, attackers will simply shift to a softer target. That is especially true of terrorists, who generally don’t care about disabling or degrading a specific facility but are simply interested in creating publicity and terror.

More broadly, this development is the latest to threaten the “airportization of American life.” Under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, police officers and other government agents ordinarily can’t search you without a warrant supported by probable cause. The courts have accepted an “administrative exception” to that requirement for the narrow purpose of detecting weapons and explosives that might be brought aboard aircraft. One of the questions raised by the Los Angeles body-scanner deployment is whether we’re going to allow that narrow exception to our privacy rights to be wedged wide open into a world where we are constantly searched as we circulate throughout our public places, effectively rendering the Constitution’s protections meaningless.

Los Angeles’ Union Station, for example, contains numerous restaurants, houses art exhibits, hosts weddings, and attracts tourists to view its renowned architectural elegance. New York’s Pennsylvania Station, where this technology was also tested, is similarly a contiguous part of New York City’s public spaces, with plentiful entrances and exits and numerous stores and restaurants. Neither are anything like the secured area of an airport. It’s hard to imagine that even with hundreds of body scanners installed throughout these stations, such scanning would be at all effective in detecting a sole bomber from among the 700,000 people who flow in and out of the two sprawling complexes each day.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske told reporters of the deployment, “We will not have a repeat of 9/11 or any terrorist incident inside our transportation systems in the United States.” As far as the Los Angeles subway goes that’s fairly certain because you can’t drive a subway train into a building. Mass transit facilities are far more like regular public spaces than they are like aircraft. Aircraft are uniquely structurally vulnerable to attack, uniquely terrifying to passengers contemplating such attacks, and uniquely able to be weaponized against ground targets.

Our domestic security bureaucracies will, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, mindlessly press forward with their task beyond any point of reasonableness. That is the nature of bureaucracies, which, as we have argued elsewhere, are best thought of as mindless organisms with certain common characteristics. They will carry out their task of stamping out any risk of attack, no matter how small, without regards to cost, proportion, or damage to other values.

The continued occurrence of mass shootings may also be taken up by our security bureaucracies as additional fuel for the construction of a “checkpoint and search” society. Officials at the launch of the Los Angeles scanners cited guns as another justification for these searches. But consider the ever-increasing calls for security checkpoints, metal detectors, randomized searches, and onerous backpack policies at schools in the wake of any school shooting. The security apparatus’ response to the epidemic of school shootings is to turn schools into fortified bunkers rather than to invest time and resources into student programming, school supplies, teachers, restorative justice, student support, and mental health care — all of which actually may stand a chance of preventing an attack.

Los Angeles Metro’s acquisition of scanners raises another troubling reality: racially biased policing. These devices only identify potential risks. The officers tasked with operating them follow up on alarms by determining whether an individual deserves additional scrutiny, questioning, or detention. As research has proven, the insertion of line-level discretion in policing introduces racial bias in enforcement decisions. The use of body scanners threatens to exacerbate these disparities. If an officer is unsure about whether to question an individual who may have a suspicious device, they will inevitably be more likely to do so if the person is a Black man than a white woman. Worse still, these scanners may provide officers with an “objective” basis to carry out a racially pretextual stop that they might not otherwise feel legally entitled to do.

In short, for all the specific unanswered questions raised by the Los Angeles subway deployment, which we are trying to get answers to today, the big question is whether we are going to go down the road of subjecting Americans to remote automated searches at every turn. The security bureaucracies and device manufacturers will be pushing for it, but that’s not how Americans should have to live.

I May Have to Quit Harvard Because the TSA Won’t Stop Searching Me

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/i-may-have-quit-harvard-because-tsa-wont-stop#comment-239509

I realized my life had entered a new phase while crossing into the United States from Canada in September 2016.

“You both have to come inside,” the border officer said to my husband and me. “Inside” was an empty and cold warehouse with rows of wooden benches. They confiscated our keys and phones, and when I asked for my baby’s diaper bag from our rental car, they escorted my husband as they spoke into their radios: “Suspect is approaching car.”

I had already been detained on the same trip from my home in Orlando, including during a layover in Los Angeles that caused us to miss our flight to Portland, Ore. I had rationalized those stops: They’re just doing their job; maybe it’s a random search like they said.

But this time, they kept us overnight. As the hours passed in that warehouse, my 6-month-old baby howled and shivered. After we left, we went straight to the airport, only to endure extra screenings again on the return trip.

I started researching the Transportation Security Administration’s “secondary security screening selection” process to understand why I was being stopped every time I got on a plane or came back home to the United States after a foreign trip. Nearly two years later, I am still being stopped and searched, and I still don’t know why.

I’m a graduate student at Harvard University, and missed flights and travel anxiety were beginning to affect my schoolwork. So with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, I have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security asking that I be allowed to travel freely, which is my constitutional right.

Am I being stopped because I am Muslim, or because my family once traveled to Iran to visit a holy shrine? Is it because of my criticism of U.S. policies on the multimedia website I run to raise awareness about injustices around the world? Maybe it’s all three. Federal officers have asked me about my writing and religion, both of which are protected by the First Amendment.

I’ve tried using DHS’s “redress” process. I’ve applied to TSA’s PreCheck program and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Global Entry program. And I’ve written to members of Congress. All my efforts have failed.

In response to my redress inquiry, DHS sent me a frustratingly unhelpful letter: “[We] can neither confirm nor deny any information about you which may be within federal watchlists or reveal any law enforcement sensitive information. However, we have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary.”

It added: “We cannot ensure your travel will be delay-free.”

Now I have a routine every time I travel: Arrive at the airport more than three hours early. Explain to the airline agents at the help desk that they must call Washington to clear me for travel — a process that can take an hour. Try to be patient when TSA officers escort me from the boarding area to the gate for a private security check. Allow them to rummage through my things and grit my teeth as they pat me down multiple times. Don’t bother telling them about parts of my body that are sensitive from surgery, since they’ll be rough regardless. Run to the boarding area and don’t make a scene as they pat me down again, trying not to feel embarrassed as other passengers watch. Stay as brave as possible.

And above all, be prepared for something new. Once, they brought the explosives unit — several armed men — because of sticker residue on the back of my computer. Another time, they brought a team of dogs to search me. Once, they took my crying 2-year-old through the screening process by himself because he clung to my husband during a pat-down search. Recently, they took me to a private room and forced me to open my pants and show them my underwear. They hid their badges when I asked for their names.

My husband and I bonded over our love for travel when we got married, but now our adventures have been greatly diminished. What once was a dream to take our children around the United States and abroad has been reduced to short car trips. I’ve contemplated many times giving up my studies at Harvard because of the anxiety and humiliation that come with the inevitable harassment on my flights to and from Boston.

America is my home. It’s where I was raised, got married, had my children and built a life. Its greatest qualities of freedom, liberty and opportunity have undoubtedly shaped the person I am today. But these values are slowly diminishing, and those liberties are being taken away from us little by little. I fear one day we will be unable to recognize it as the place we called home.

Airports with terrible service (…)
 

I never fly or use airports but I went searching for a news report speaking to bad service at airports and other types of complaints. Not long ago, a jet plane flying over the PDX metro area lost its door over the west side of our metro area, and with summer only half way through the calendar and fall holidays coming up, I just wanted to see what has been recorded about airports, especially agencies like TSA who can cause you to miss a flight or other troubling things that can happen at airports. Here’s an article about airports with the worst TSA experiences…


Link: https://www.islands.com/1828244/airp...es-complaints/

In Good News

TSA is no longer requiring passengers to remove their shoes at check points, effective immediately.