TSA Spending $900 Million on Unproven Anti-Terrorism Program

The TSA has implemented a system of 94 signs that a plane passenger is a potential terrorist, but Nate Anderson explains that there’s little evidence the program works:

Science! Forget subjective screening, which too often slides into racial and ethnic profiling; instead, evaluate travelers entering an airport using a rigorous set of objective measurements that could spot deception. This was the admirable principle behind the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program known as Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT), which has been operating at airports around the country since 2007 at a total cost of $900 million—or about $200 million a year.

Unfortunately, according to the US government’s internal watchdog agency, little real science stands behind the program. In a new report (PDF) released today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that “the human ability to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance.” And it dryly noted that programs like SPOT should be “demonstrated to work reliably in their intended environment prior to program deployment.”