Behavioral Science and Security: Evaluating TSA’s SPOT Program

Opening Statement By The Honorable Donna F. Edwards

Ms. Donna F.  Edwards,

 Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Investigations & Oversight,
Committee on Science, Space & Technology

 I&O Subcommittee Hearing

 “Behavioral Science and Security: Evaluating TSA’s SPOT Program,”

 Thursday, April 6, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 2318 Rayburn

 Every one of us has had the experience of instinctively sensing that something about a situation or a person is wrong, worrying.  Police officers, immigration officers, Transportation Security Officers have those same instinctive feelings all the time.  However, it is an open question whether instinctive reactions are reliable as warnings of mal-intent.  We also do not know whether a person can be trained to accurately sort through their instinctive reactions, choosing to intervene when faced with a potential threat and to resist reactions based on racial profiling. 

 What the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has tried to do is develop behavioral training for officers so that they can quickly and accurately screen passengers.  Can hunches be harnessed in service of identifying potential threats to air traffic safety?  That is the key question that underlies today’s hearing

After Richard Reid’s failed shoe-bombing, some in the aviation security community concluded that we were spending too much time and money on trying to stop the bomb and not enough effort trying to stop the bomber.  Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques or SPOT was viewed by TSA as the way to get some officers’ eyes off the scanning screens and onto the passengers. 

 Those credited with helping to develop the SPOT program, some of whom are testifying before us today, intended the program to train behavior detection officers (BDOs) to focus on an individual’s behavior, appearance and demeanor.  An ongoing concern with the BDOs, and with law enforcement as well, is that they not engage in racial profiling.  If BDO’s focus on a passenger’s ethnic, religious or racial qualities  they are violating the law, and they are not acting to protect the flying public.  Terrorists have come in all colors, shapes and sizes.  If security personnel were fixated on a profiling approach to finding the next Mohammed Atta, then they would miss identifying the next John Walker Lindh, Timothy McVeigh or Richard Reid.

The SPOT program tries to identify a specific menu of behaviors that will naturally emerge due to elevated levels of anxiety or stress.  The hypothesis is that terrorists would display those cues when attempting to enter a secure facility such as an airport.  But behavioral scientists do not agree on these non-verbal cues and they do not agree on whether terrorists would exhibit them.   Because it is impossible to get a group of terrorists to participate in a double-blind experiment, it is hard to validate the theory.  DHS points to the program’s success in identifying people who have violated the law, and are caught, but no one can be certain criminals and terrorists behave in a similar fashion.

TSA relies on non-verbal cues to help sort through the more than 1 million passengers that fly in the U.S. each day.  Non-verbal cues provide a filtering method to allow officers to determine who they should engage in discussion looking for verbal si

Witnesses

Panel

0 - Mr. Stephen Lord
Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues Government Accountability Office Government Accountability Office
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0 - Mr. Larry Willis
Program Manager, Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency Science and Technology Directorate U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technol
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0 - Dr. Paul Ekman
Professor Emeritus of Psychology University of California, San Francisco President and Founder, Paul Ekman Group, LLC University of California, San Francisco Pr
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0 - Dr. Maria Hartwig
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology John Jay College of Criminal Justice John Jay College of Criminal Justice
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0 - Dr. Phillip Rubin
Chief Operating Officer Haskins Laboratories Haskins Laboratories
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0 - Mr. Peter J. DiDomenica
Boston University Police
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