The TSA is conducting a pilot program at Boston Logan airport where Behavior Detection Officers (BDOs) will interact with passengers during the Travel Document Checking process to assess if further screening is required of the passenger. The new security tool in this case is the conducting of a brief conversation and passenger threat assessment.
This approach is methodologically different from anything the TSA has done previously. Although the TSA refers to it as risk-based assessment, actually this is a threat-based approach. How so? At this point, for example, pilots undergo less screening than do passengers; pilots are not required to remove their shoes. Pilots represent a lower risk. Certain nationalities are screened more intensely than others, as they are understood to pose a higher risk. The policies as to how to deal with different categories of people comes down to the front line from the upper echelons TSA management. All the screener has to do is identify someone as a pilot or as a ‘risky’ nationality and then follow the dictated procedure.
In the case of this new Logan program, while the guidelines may come from the top, the decisions are made on the ground floor, in the field. This is an important shift. If after questioning and conducting a threat assessment on yes, even a low-risk nationally, the security officer may identify a threat. This passenger may display indicators that correlate with hijacking, bombing or being used as a mule (a threat) albeit that he belongs to low risk population or nationality.
With this change in approach, the passenger is being assessed rather than his belongings. What’s more, whereas currently the main detection tool in use by the TSA is technological, now they are adding the powerful human element. Risk-based assessments are fine, but this amplification is a welcome step in the right direction towards a system that involves: detection, determination and deployment.
I don’t know as much about the Logan pilot program procedures as I’d like to. But I am hoping that it will go beyond having the BDOs deal only with behavioral aspects, and that it will include making a threat assessment of a passenger’s story as it relates to their documentation, declared identify, purpose and demeanor. Then we’ll really be talking.
I sounds as though, we finally have someone that is listening to the experts. I just hope they allow the personnell to get the amount of training that is necessary and, that the personnell doing the assessments are screened as thouroughly as can be.
A breakthrough in our thinking, and while we can never duplicate the Israeli system in all of our airports the presence of profilers to the extent we can hire, train and deploy them is both a deterrent and a good offense. We certainly have an adequate source of such personnel in the veterans of our current wars, people whose SA is high.