TSA Oversight Says Agency's Suspicionless Surveillance Program Is Worthless And The TSA Can't Prove It Isn't

from the it-works-in-the-sense-that-it-employs-people dept

The TSA's "Quiet Skies" program continues to suffer under scrutiny. When details first leaked out about the TSA's suspicionless surveillance program, even the air marshals tasked with tailing non-terrorists all over the nation seemed concerned. Marshals questioned the "legality and validity" of the program that sent them after people no government agency had conclusively tied to terrorist organizations or activities. Simply changing flights in the wrong country was enough to initiate the process.

First, the TSA lost the support of the marshals. Then it lost itself. The TSA admitted during a Congressional hearing that it had trailed over 5,000 travelers (in less than four months!) but had yet to turn up even a single terrorist. Nonetheless, it stated it would continue to trail thousands of people a year, presumably in hopes of preventing another zero terrorist attacks.

Then it lost the Government Accountability Office. The GAO's investigation of the program contained more investigative activity than the program itself. According to its report, the TSA felt surveillance was good but measuring the outcome was bad. When you're trailing 5,000 people and stopping zero terrorists, the less you know, the better. Not being able to track effectiveness appeared to be a feature of "Quiet Skies," rather than a bug.

Now it's lost the TSA's Inspector General. The title of the report [PDF] underplays the findings, stating the obvious while also understating the obvious: TSA Needs to Improve Management of the Quiet Skies Program. A good alternative title would be "TSA Needs to Scrap the Quiet Skies Program Until it Can Come Up with Something that Might Actually Stop Terrorists."

I mean…

TSA did not properly plan, implement, and manage the Quiet Skies program to meet the program’s mission of mitigating the threat to commercial aviation posed by higher risk passengers.

In slightly more detail, the TSA did nothing to set up the program correctly or ensure it actually worked. The IG says the TSA never developed performance goals or other metrics to gauge the effectiveness of the suspicionless surveillance. It also ignored its internal guidance to more effectively deploy its ineffective program.

Here's why:

This occurred because TSA lacked sufficient, centralized oversight to ensure the Quiet Skies program operated as intended.

There were some positives, but they were limited. The DHS and TSA set up information sharing programs, and performed quarterly reviews to remove passengers from the Quiet Skies watchlist. But that's about it. And, as the IG points out, these steps don't add up to anything that might quantify its success rate or justify its existence.

The failure had a trickle down effect, showering the air marshals who thought the program was useless (if not illegal) with second-hand shame.

After almost two years of flight coverage, FAMS [federal air marshals] could not provide outcome-based performance measures to show that its surveillance of Quiet Skies passengers who had already received enhanced screening at checkpoints was the most efficient use of its limited resources.

As for the good news about the periodic removal of people from the TSA's suspicionless surveillance, it's not without its bad news. The IG says the TSA didn't do it in a timely fashion or, you know, correctly.

The Implementation Plan requires TSA and DHS to conduct quarterly oversight reviews of Quiet Skies’ risk-based, intelligence-driven rules created and updated by I&A. However, in 2017 and 2018 TSA identified software algorithm and system malfunctions that resulted in passengers not being removed from the Quiet Skies List after [redacted].

And the TSA had problems with the people it had added to this watchlist, failing to ensure they got all the surveillance and checkpoint friskings they apparently deserved.

As currently designed, TSA cannot ensure all Quiet Skies passengers receive enhanced screening at checkpoints in accordance with its Implementation Plan.

[...]

We reviewed results from TSA inspections conducted from October 2015 through February 2019, in which inspectors found incidents related to the Boarding Pass Printing Result requirement. From our review of 16 incident reports, we identified [redacted] in which the boarding passes either were not designated as needing enhanced screening or the aircraft operator did not ensure the passenger received enhanced screening at the checkpoint.

Unfortunately, the number of failures is redacted. But given the TSA's track record elsewhere, it's probably safe to assume the failure rate was above 50%.

The IG recommends the TSA fix everything that's broken. That's most of the program, it appears. The TSA agrees… to a point. The TSA disagrees that it did not "properly plan or manage" the program, including its lack of metrics. According to the TSA's response, the fact that a few dozen targets (out of the thousands trailed by the TSA) showed up on other watchlists is an indication the program is a success.

In October 2020, TSA's I&A reviewed Quiet Skies encounters between 2014 and 2019, and found that 58 individuals designated for additional scrutiny by Quiet Skies are now "watchlisted" in the Terrorist Screening Database as a KST [known suspected terrorist]. This data indicates that Quiet Skies are approximately 30 times more likely to pose an actual high risk than a randomly selected passenger, validating Quiet Skies' value in identifying higher-risk travel.

Nice try. But TSA already threw all plausibility out the window back in 2018 with this testimony before Congress.

The officials said about 5,000 US citizens had been closely monitored since March and none of them were deemed suspicious or merited further scrutiny, according to people with direct knowledge of the Thursday meeting.

Tell me again how 58 watchlist hits is a satisfactory metric. Cherry-picking numbers doesn't change the facts already on the record. When you go 0-for-5,000, managing to cross-reference 10-12 targets a year with another highly-questionable database isn't a win.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, air marshals, gao, inspector general, quiet skies, surveillance, tsa

GAO Report: TSA Has No Idea How Effective Its Suspicionless Surveillance Program Is

from the results-to-be-reported-the-moment-there-are-actually-any-results dept

The TSA's "Quiet Skies" program continues and it doesn't appear to be making flying any safer. The program first exposed last year by the Boston Globe involved the surveillance of travelers for doing things like looking in shop windows or changing direction while walking through airports.

None of the people surveilled were on any terrorist watchlists. According to the TSA, it was hoping to find "unknown terrorists" by using a broad list of "suspicious" behavior to subject a greater number of travelers to additional screening and the apparent company of a flying air marshal (FAM).

The TSA thought it was great. The air marshals tasked with surveilling random people thought it was a waste of time and resources, if not an unconstitutional use of their powers. Backlash from the public and the air marshals themselves led the TSA to curtail the program. It promised not to surveill people for engaging in normal behavior the TSA had unilaterally deemed suspicious. There was also evidence the program was completely useless, as none of the 5,000 people targeted by "Quiet Skies" over a 6-month period in 2018 had gone on to do anything that air marshals deemed suspicious or worthy of further scrutiny.

The program lives on, unfortunately. The TSA may have scaled back its long list of "suspicious" behaviors, but it's still subjecting an unknown number of travelers to additional screening and surveillance, even if they're not tied to known terrorists or anyone on the government's multiple terrorist databases.

And it still doesn't work. It's still operational, I suppose, but the Government Accountability Office says the TSA doesn't know whether the program is effective. The program -- which has been running for nearly a decade now -- still hasn't been examined by the TSA to see whether it's actually doing anything to improve air security. From the report [PDF]:

We found that TSA coordinates reviews of Silent Partner and Quiet Skies through quarterly meetings and notifies an expanded set of DHS and TSA stakeholders—including DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program and the Federal Air Marshal Service—of rule changes as required under the Act. We also found that TSA has not identified a means to comprehensively measure rule effectiveness.

The TSA's reason for not following up on the program's effectiveness? It's just too much work.

TSA officials explained that they had not yet fully assessed the rules’ effectiveness because it was difficult to measure.

Difficult? Maybe. Impossible? No, says the GAO.

TSA has access to data—such as the outcomes of enhanced screening of Silent Partner and Quiet Skies passengers at airport checkpoints—that could be explored to better assess rule effectiveness. Exploring additional data sources could help TSA refine and supplement the agency’s existing efforts to measure program effectiveness.

The TSA may move forward with the GAO's recommendation it start actually measuring effectiveness. Then again, it's spent nine years not measuring it, so any progress will be on the same timescale.

TSA is currently reviewing the draft report and is scheduled to provide any comments by early November 2019.

At which point the TSA is free to reject the GAO's suggestion and continue to perform presumably useless screening and surveillance for the rest of forever.

That's not the only thing the TSA isn't following up on. The agency likes spending tax dollars on new security gear, whether it's needed or not.

Our review of TSA acquisition documents found that TSA considers risk at the beginning of the screening technologies acquisition process. However, TSA officials could not provide an example of when risk information for specific airports had directly influenced decisions about where and in what order to deploy screening technologies to airports in the recent past.

Then the agency deploys the tech and promptly forgets about it.

We also found that TSA does not ensure that screening technologies continue to meet detection requirements after they have been deployed to airports, when performance can degrade over time.

The TSA's process involves certifying the equipment prior to deployment and periodic calibration to ensure the tech is in "minimally operational." The GAO says this misses the point: the tech should be tested more frequently and, more importantly, assessed periodically to see if the deployed equipment still addresses the perceived risks present at that location as those may also change over time.

The TSA is mostly a reactive agency, one that responds to each attempted attack it's failed to thwart by subjecting travelers to another layer of screening annoyance. Its proactive efforts -- "Quiet Skies" and behavioral detection teams -- are somehow even worse. The TSA doesn't know what it's looking for because it hasn't prevented a terrorist attack yet. Its shotgun approach to screening and surveillance isn't likely to head off future attacks but the TSA seems content to settle for collateral damage.

Filed Under: airport security, gao, quiet skies, surveillance, tsa

Exposure Of Secret TSA Surveillance Program Nets The Government More Terrorist Watchlist Litigation

from the clearly-audible-responses-to-the-'Quite-Skies'-program dept

The recent exposure of the TSA's "Quiet Skies" program by the Boston Globe is leading to more terrorist watchlist litigation. The "Quiet Skies" program sends air marshals all over the US to watch travelers swallow, shop, use the restroom, and stare at things. It's suspicionless surveillance even the air marshals disagree with, with some quoted by the Globe calling the program a worthless waste of tax dollars, if not just a vehicle for repeated Constitutional violations.

The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is using this information in two of its lawsuits against the government. Its lawsuit against the Terrorist Screening Center -- which originated in 2016 -- will hopefully be aided by the Globe's reporting. A motion to compel discovery [PDF] seeks details on the program for use in this litigation. The filing notes the government continues to hide information about its many watchlists from the plaintiffs it represents, forcing it to rely on leaked documents to obtain information it has already requested from the government.

Throughout discovery, Plaintiffs have sought to determine, at the very least, the broad outlines of the watchlisting system. And yet, throughout discovery, Defendants have kept TSA’s Quiet Skies program hidden. Even though all indicators show that Quiet Skies is responsible for engulfing thousands of innocent Americans within the watchlisting system, the program appears in no document produced to Plaintiffs nor in any answers to Plaintiffs’ discovery questions. It was conveniently left out and not referenced; deposition questions which would have unmasked it were blocked. With this latest news, the Court should conclude that Defendants continue to improperly withhold basic watchlist information.

The motion points out this exposed secret watchlist likely explains the actions observed by one of its clients -- a possible "Quiet Skies" target -- when traveling. (It should be noted that fliers noticing they're being tailed by someone is also considered suspicious activity, especially if the flier does anything to ditch the tail or otherwise expose the surveillance.)

Plaintiff El-Shwehdi reports that once at JFK he was “shadowed” by what appeared to be a plainclothes security officer. The man followed him “with a clipboard with some paper” from “near the ticket counter,” through security, continuing while El-Shwehdi put back on his belt and shoes, and kept up the monitoring for the next “two hours” in the boarding area. The plainclothes man even tailed El-Shwehdi when he went to the bathroom, and when he went to get soup. These detailed descriptions of constant monitoring by an undercover officer map precisely onto Quiet Skies.

CAIR's new lawsuit over terrorist watchlists targets a few dozen government officials and agencies, including the FBI, DHS, TSA, TSC (Terrorist Screening Center), DOJ, and CBP. The complaint [PDF] alleges the government engages in routine suspicionless surveillance of US citizens and lawful residents, resulting in a number of harmful outcomes, including a lifetime of government snooping and severe curtailment of personal freedoms.

Through their watchlisting system, the federal government makes it known— to every law enforcement agency in the country, every part of the federal government, more than 60 foreign countries, an unknown number of private companies, international bodies, and other third parties—that the Plaintiffs should be treated as dangerous threats. The Plaintiffs’ friends, family, and others with whom the Plaintiffs associate are punished for their relationship with a watchlisting system’s target.

The Defendants know that their watchlisting system has never prevented an act of terrorism inside the United States and is completely ineffective, but they continue to expand it anyways.

Plaintiffs and almost all others targeted by the watchlisting system have never been arrested, charged, or convicted of any type of terrorism-related offense. Nonetheless, the federal government has designated them as “known or suspected terrorists,” wreaking havoc on Plaintiffs’ personal, religious and professional lives.

Stuff that's legal for Americans to do -- traveling to the Mideast, speaking Arabic, worshiping at mosques -- are all considered suspicious activities by those running the watchlists. This must be discriminatory behavior since it certainly isn't justified by any paperwork or research the government's been able to produce.

Leaked government documents as well as public governmental reports, reveal that the federal government’s terrorist watchlisting system is discriminatory, standardless, and devoid of adequate procedures. These documents include the March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance (Exhibit 1), the Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI): Strategic Accomplishments 2013 (Exhibit 2), the Department of Justice's March 2014 Audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Management of Terrorist Watchlist (Exhibit 3), and a 2018 informational bulletin on the “Quiet Skies” program (Exhibit 4).

The fact that watchlisting radiates outward from targets means children, relatives, friends, business associates, and fellow worshipers may all be added to the government's lists simply because they have frequent contact with a target. This creates exponential expansions of watchlists with each new "connection" added, all without individual, particularized suspicion.

Recourse for targeted travelers is limited and restricted to border crossings. For those targeted and traveling from place to place in the US, there's no way to challenge the TSA's "Quiet Skies" watchlist placement. And, as the lawsuit notes, the government hasn't been forthcoming about its many watchlists, so those suing may be on others they can't even begin to challenge because no one has acknowledged their existence.

This is an extremely unfortunate state of affairs for a country that used to welcome immigrants from around the world and held itself up as the standard bearer for personal freedoms. Capitalizing on a horrific tragedy, the government as a whole has used the specter of terrorism to amass and consolidate power. The multiple secret watchlists compiled without articulable suspicion is only one symptom of the country's failure to handle a terrorist attack in a manner befitting the leader of the free world.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, quiet skies, tsa, watchlist
Companies: cair

TSA Admits 'Quiet Skies' Surveillance Program Is Useless, Promises To Continue Engaging In Useless Surveillance

from the 'no-terrorists-yet-but-you-know,-we'll-just-keep-up-the-spying-because-r dept

More news comes from the Boston Globe about the TSA's "Quiet Skies" program. Having decided the skies were too quiet, the TSA started nominating people for surveillance based on god knows what and sent air marshals all over the US to tail "suspects" as they unsuspectingly went about their travels. Some of the targets included flight attendants and law enforcement officers. To those tasked with this futile (and likely unconstitutional) surveillance, the program is a waste of time and resources, if not a full-blown civil liberties catastrophe.

To the TSA, this previously-hidden bullshit is just some more discretion-flexing on behalf of the American public to save them from terrorists it inadvertently admitted aren't even targeting aircraft anymore. Why go through the hassle of the boarding process, smuggling precursors past half-inept, half-asleep TSA agents when you can just rent a van from Home Depot and drive it into a crowd?

The TSA insists the program has value and that it will continue to send air marshals out to tail flagged randos. It also insists better education of air marshals will shut complaining marshals the hell up. But what it failed to do in a Congressional hearing, called after the Globe's expose, is actually present any evidence the program works.

On Wednesday and Thursday, TSA officials shared details of the program with congressional staffers from four committees and fielded questions in closed-door briefings.

The officials said about 5,000 US citizens had been closely monitored since March and none of them were deemed suspicious or merited further scrutiny, according to people with direct knowledge of the Thursday meeting.

THIS JUST IN:

CARTS, HORSES IN EMBARRASSING MIXUP, SAY TSA OFFICIALS
Cart-horse confusion expected to continue for the foreseeable future

The TSA had to tail 5,000 people just to determine they weren't suspicious. That's the wrong way around, constitutionally-speaking. The government isn't allowed to snoop on people until it can find a reason to snoop on people. That's not how the Fourth Amendment works. The TSA's inept comparison to cops on the beat is worse than apples in regards to oranges. Cops don't tail people to see if they're going to do something suspicious. Suspicions are in place before the surveillance starts since, most of the time, law enforcement agencies don't have the manpower/funding to tail people all over town to see if they might be up to something.

Get a load of this talking point, delivered by someone who doesn't appear to care it's directly contradicted by statements made to Congress by TSA officials.

“The program analyzes information on a passenger’s travel patterns, and through a system of checks and balances, to include robust oversight, effectively adds an additional line of defense to aviation security,” TSA spokesman James Gregory said Monday.

Bullshit. All of this is bullshit. The "robust oversight" is especially bullshit since Congress was first introduced to this program by the Globe's reporting. The TSA claimed it had informed Congressional oversight about the program but oversight members pushed back, stating they'd never heard of it.

The "line of defense" is more bullshit. A program that has, to date, surveilled 5,000 people only to discover the TSA had no reason to surveill these 5,000 people is not a "line of defense." What it actually is is what the union representing the air marshals says it is: a waste of resources.

The air marshals union, which represents many of the 2,000 to 3,000 so-called flying FAMS, criticized Quiet Skies last week, saying that the criteria of the program were unacceptable and that the public would be better served to have air marshals assigned elsewhere.

Now, the TSA is being told it will need to answer questions about its no-longer-secret surveillance program -- one it instituted without input from its oversight and without informing anyone it was putting it in place. And the program has wasted resources 5,000 times to achieve zero wins on the national security front.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, congress, oversight, quiet skies, surveillance, tsa, useless

TSA Sending Air Marshals All Over The US To Tail Non-Terrorist US Citizens

from the skies-must-be-almost-too-quiet dept

The TSA is still wasting time and money making no one any safer. Documents obtained by the Boston Globe show the agency is sending its most limited resource -- air marshals -- on useless trips around the nation to surveil people who may have done nothing more than pause in front of an airport shop window.

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.

"Quiet Skies" relies on in-person surveillance of targets by "Flying Air Marshals" (referred to as FAMs in the program's documents). The TSA doesn't say very much about the program exposed by the docs leaked to the Globe. It prefers to point at its "broad discretion" to counteract terrorism -- something its doesn't do much in practice, but spends millions every year doing in theory.

"Whatever it takes" apparently includes adding people to watchlists simply because they've passed through certain foreign countries or are somehow "connected" to someone on the US government's multiple watchlists, no matter how tenuous that link is. This has led to air marshals following flight attendants, business people, and even other law enforcement officers all over the country, jumping from plane to plane as often as their targets do.

Marshals are given a sheet to list observations of the target's behavior while traveling, noting how often they sleep, use the restroom, access electronic devices, or otherwise do the things terrorists and non-terrorists alike do while on airplanes. But the surveillance extends to the airport itself. The checklist marshals are given also asks them to make note of "suspicious" behavior in airports, like changing directions when walking, looking into shop windows (supposedly checking reflections to see if they're being followed), or simply having the misfortune of being the last person on the plane.

The TSA apparently feels this suspicionless tracking of US citizens is not just Constitutional but somehow doing something to keep Americans safer. The air marshals actually performing the tracking disagree.

“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.

[...]

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.”

That those on the inside of the TSA's travel safety racket are questioning its means and methods isn't a good sign. The expressed concern about possible legal/rights violations indicates the criteria for turning an average US citizen into a "Quiet Skies" target must be absurdly low. Other comments indicated that even if the program somehow manages to be fully legal and Constitutionally-compliant, it's still a waste of 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.

This latest exposure of TSA tactics shows the agency is far more interested in exploring the outer limits of its "broad discretion" than actually nailing down its primary task: keeping terrorists and explosives off airplanes. The US government maintains multiple terrorist watchlists -- each of those the result of "broad discretion" -- that provides the TSA with numerous targets for extra screening and increase in-person observation. Apparently, that's not enough for an agency that has consistently failed to uphold its end of its post-9/11-attack mandates.

Filed Under: air marshals, quiet skies, surveillance, tsa, us citizens, watch list