TSA Experiences

[Andrea]

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.

[Andrea]

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.

[Andrea]

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.
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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.
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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.