Welcome to Airport Security. A "Wizard" Will Be With You Shortly to Engage in Racial Profiling and Violate Your Privacy.
Let's talk about a little known program being deployed across the nations' airports called SPOT, Screening Passengers by Observation Technique. According to an in Nature News, by Sharon Weinberger, America's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has trained 3,000 officers to detect and infer future behavior, in what can only be described as a psychic effort, to determine an individual's intent. The TSA claims that these screeners are trained to observe and identify people who appear to be deceptive and planning hostile acts.
How, you ask?
In the 1970's psychologist Paul Ekman codeveloped the 'facial action coding system', for analyzing human facial expressions. He is now capitalizing on this theory by teaching people he calls "wizards" how to link those expressions to hidden emotions, including the intent to deceive. I would caution travelers against tensing your lips or raising your brow while waiting in an airport security line. You may end up in cuffs.
Although this has been a lucrative venture for Ekman and the media is eating up his superhero detection rhetoric, Weinberger that his colleagues are still waiting to see a comprehensive evaluation of his work. According to her findings, his work has never been subjected to controlled scientific tests. She goes on to cite instances where fellow scientists were unable to replicate Ekman's results on facial coding. In fact, recent studies have cast serious doubt on the scientific basis for Ekman's and the TSA's wishful thinking. The prepared a report in 2008 that stated, "No scientific evidence exists to support the detection or inference of future behavior, including intent." In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, released a stating that the TSA had no business deploying SPOT in airports across the nation "without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment."
It gets better. According to the GAO report,from late May 2004 through August 2008, Behavior Detection Officers (BDOs) referred 152,000 travelers to secondary inspection, which resulted in approximately 1,100 arrests. These arrests included offenses such as outstanding warrants, illegal alien status and possession of drugs, but none of them were for terrorism-related offenses or threats to aviation, which is what the SPOT program is designed to identify. As , the number of arrests represents less than 1 percent of those sent to secondary screening. The GAO noted its inability to determine if this is a better arrest rate than would occur under random screenings. In other words, these statistics are likely not greater than chance. On a separate note, the GAO report also determined that at least 16 individuals allegedly involved in terrorism plots have moved at least 23 different times through eight airports where the SPOT program has been implemented. SPOT failed to catch any of these individuals.
A prime example where SPOT may have been implemented, yet failed to produce anything but civil liberties violations is the case of Nick George. In 2009 Nick was interrogated, handcuffed and detained for nearly five hours at the Philadelphia International Airport after the TSA found a set of English-Arabic flashcards in his carry-on luggage (he was using them to study for a college language course). On what basis, you ask? No one seems to know.
SPOT has sent a total of over 232,000 travelers to secondary screening but has never identified a threat to aviation. The program is effectively giving TSA employees carte blanche to stop anyone they like based on their own personal biases, which essentially amounts to arbitrary enforcement measures. They are implicating innocent people with dubious science, and neither they nor their agency heads are held accountable for their actions.
These measures are intrusive and serve no other purpose than to act as a fa莽ade, all the while unjustifiably profiling American citizens, at significant expense and with no real security gains. This program is a direct violation of individual privacy, arguably one of the most basic civil rights afforded to U.S. citizens. Is it too much to ask that the government scientifically verify the effectiveness of a practice that impacts millions of Americans, before rolling it out in airports across the country?
Learn More 老澳门开奖结果 the Issues on This Page
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
老澳门开奖结果 and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban老澳门开奖结果 and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
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WASHINGTON 鈥� The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, 老澳门开奖结果 and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 National Security Project: 鈥淲hile this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We鈥檙e profoundly frustrated that the administration didn鈥檛 take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.鈥� -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. 鈥� Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. 鈥� Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government鈥檚 case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man鈥檚 Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man鈥檚 Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. 鈥� This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 case, his claims challenging the government鈥檚 detention of him would fail. 鈥淩eviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we鈥檙e heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,鈥� said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 Center for Democracy. 鈥淭he government鈥檚 arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.鈥� In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court鈥檚 ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. 鈥淢r. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,鈥� said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants鈥� Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. 鈥淗e cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.鈥� Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the 老澳门开奖结果, the University of Chicago Law School鈥檚 Immigrants鈥� Rights Clinic, the 老澳门开奖结果 of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.