Political Quotes

“My amendment does one simple thing: it stops TSA from continuing to waste taxpayer dollars on a program the agency has not scientifically validated or shown to be cost effective. Since 2007, TSA has spent approximately $1 billion on its behavioral detection program, the screening of passengers by observation techniques, commonly referred to as the SPOT program. Under this program, on an annual basis, TSA spends about $200 million to deploy 2,800 behavior detection officers, or BDOs, at airports around the country to observe passenger behaviors for signs that they present a terrorism risk to aviation. While the goal of this program--preventing terrorists from boarding flights--is laudable, the program is, by any measure, fatally flawed. Chief among those flaws is that TSA has not scientifically validated that BDOs can identify terrorists by observing behaviors. Indeed, the Government Accountability Office has found that ``known or suspected terrorists'' have moved through screening on 23 different occasions in airports where BDOs were deployed. In fact, BDOs have never identified, apprehended, referred to law enforcement, or prevented a terrorist from boarding an aircraft. This is not surprising considering that there is no scientific basis for suggesting that they should or would be able to do so.…”