The TSA, Our Officers, The Public and Theft

As we know and you have reported on this very blog, theft in our nations' airports is a big problem. It's an issue that has plagued the industry for decades, but now, as the relatively new kid on the block and the agency charged with opening more than 1 million checked bags every day, the finger has been pointed directly at our workforce.

And in some cases, rightfully so... Unfortunately, TSA has experienced its problems with theft. To date, we have terminated and sought prosecution for about 200 of our employees who have been accused of stealing, either from checked bags, passengers’ carry-ons or fellow employees. While 200 out of more than 110,000 employees is a minuscule percentage (less than one half of one percent) over the short life of the agency, one theft is too many when you are in the position of public trust as we are. We do not tolerate, condone, cover up or minimize theft by our officers by any stretch of the imagination and in most cases, it is fellow employees uncovering the theft and the organization pushing hard for prosecution of those that would abuse their authority.

From our perspective, we don't want thieves in our workforce and will do all we can to root them out. We rely on security cameras, two to three person integrity - with managers present, reports of theft by fellow employees and sting operations conducted unilaterally or with law enforcement partners at our nation's airports.

For instance, you may have read a news article from the Chicago Tribune about an officer stealing gift cards from baggage at O’Hare. What you didn’t read in that article is that TSA’s Office of Inspection (our version of internal affairs) actually ran down the stolen gift cards at Target and Best Buy, obtained surveillance video of the thieves redeeming the gift cards and worked with the Chicago PD to make sure they did not get away with this.

A few other examples include: TSA working with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department during a sting operation last summer which netted two airline contractors who stole the weapons of two service members on their way to the Middle East; a TSA-led investigation conducted in New Orleans about three years ago had similar success in netting a small group of thieves working for us; and two years ago, a TSA baggage screener at LAX attempted to steal a high-priced watch from Paris Hilton, then had second thoughts and put it back. In that case, a fellow employee reported the incident and the TSA convinced the city attorney of Los Angeles to prosecute. All of these TSA employees were terminated immediately.

Additionally, to prevent theft, our employees are prohibited from taking backpacks, lunchboxes or any other personal carrying item into baggage screening operation areas. Some airports time and date stamp bag screening cards and today more than half of all travelers use airports that have “in-line” baggage systems. These systems greatly limit the personal handling of bags by our officers and enable them to screen these bags remotely. In short, we have implemented many tools to protect your belongings and ensure your safety.

The question will certainly arise... don't you do background checks on your employees? The answer: YES! The problem with background checks is they check the background, they don't predict the future.

Now many of you have referenced television reports that talk about claims and claim data that seem to implicate our workforce in wide-spread thievery. A Seattle television station aired the original story that was based on data they had requested through the Freedom of Information Act. The data, several hundred pages, listed claims that had been submitted by passengers from airports around the country. In the data, there were no categories for theft or disposition because that information was not requested. The facts, that went unreported and un-requested, were that the majority of those claims were denied or canceled because they lacked sufficient grounds for us to use your tax payer dollars to reimburse passengers.

Now, after the five or ten minutes of time that we have your bag...what happens to it? Well, we estimate that between five and eight airline employees touch that same bag, many times outside of the view of passengers, sometimes in the cargo hold of aircraft.

So what can you do if you feel you have been ripped off? First and foremost, file a police report. Most airports have law enforcement in the terminals, many airports could have a police officers respond in minutes. Second, file a claim with both TSA and the airline. We analyze this data and if we see a trend at a particular airport, we are in a better position to investigate further. Third, check to make sure you have all of your belongings prior to departing the checkpoint area. Fourth, check with lost and found. Everyday we itemize, catalog and store thousands of items that passengers may think were stolen, but in fact are waiting to be claimed. Our lost and found link on our web site can be found by clicking here, Fifth, when traveling through the security checkpoint, to prevent another passenger stealing from you, put your phone or watch or wallet in your briefcase, purse or carry-on bag. That way it all stays together and won't fall out of one of those bowls we have for screening or make for easy pickings from a thief.

Also, I can't tell you how many times I have heard of passengers putting expensive jewelry or even wads of cash in their checked bags! Keep it with you.

Christopher
TSA Evolution Blog Team

02.15.08, 2:10p.m.
Christopher said:

Couldn't agree more with anonymous at 12:31, "the screeners violated the public trust. That is completely unacceptable for a government employee at any level." That's what the post is all about. One case of officer theft is one too many and we're doing our level best to find, fire and aid in the prosectution of any officer that is stealing. Beyond the obvious lack of honesty and abuse of the public trust that has been mentioned, officers stealing sully the reputation of the great majority of the workforce and make their jobs much more difficult.

I'm not familiar with what a public affairs "gonk" is but I'm sure it's not a term of endearment. I was not trying to be intentionally vague when I wrote about 200. Let's agree to about 271, okay?

If you reply with a link to the Austin article, I'll track it down and get some facts and update this post later today. I've been with TSA three years and have never heard us characterize any theft as "minor" and am interested in this.

02.15.08, 3:10p.m.
Christopher said:

Great comments and questions about the locks. Hopefully this will clear up a couple issues. First, TSA is not cutting TSA recognized locks off your baggage. We have the keys and have no need to do this. In fact, it would take longer to grab bolt cutters (which we do keep for non-TSA recognized locks) and cut the lock off, pick up the pieces and replace the bolt cutters than it does to use the master keys we have.

The reality of the airport is that there are literally miles of belts with twists and turns everywhere. Belts the airlines use to get your luggage from the ticket counter to us, belts we use to move the bags through the mini-van sized explosive detection machines, belts to get the bags back to the airlines and to the areas where bags are collected for specific flights and of course belts to move the bags into the underside of the aircraft. This doesn't even include the belts at the destination airport that get bags from the plane to the carousel. The point about all these belts is that twists and turns in the belt system are notorious pinch points for bags and particularly locks. Go to any airport in America and the floor of these areas will have broken locks on them. Yes it's a design issue and it is being addressed in some of our more modern airports and systems but the plain truth about these locks is that more often than not, it's a belt that broke your lock, not a person.

As some have mentioned, these locks aren't built to withstand a serious pounding and can be broken, pulled apart, picked or otherwise disabled. These locks provide a modest amount of protection from opportunistic thieves, they will not stop someone bent on getting into a bag just like a lock on your front door would not prevent a burglar from breaking your window.

Christopher
TSA Evolution Blog Team

What It Takes to be a Transportation Security Officer

Many people at TSA are checking out our blog, from security officers on the front line to management here at TSA’s headquarters. Today, we received a post from Mo McGowan, who heads up aviation security operations at TSA:

Since there have been hundreds of comments about our Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) on this blog ranging from "they're great" to "they stink," I thought it might be interesting to take an inside look into what it takes to be an officer and what they do.

So what does it take to be hired as an officer? Applicants are tested before they’re hired, and have quite a bit of required training afterward. Applicants for “screening” jobs take a series of image interpretation tests before they are ever offered a job. (About one in 20 applicants actually becomes an officer.) Even after they’ve been on the job, TSA requires ongoing training throughout the year.

Once hired, officers:
- Participate in more than 120 hours of classroom and on-the-job training before they ever screen a person or a bag;
- Undergo a series of tests before receiving a work assignment;
- Complete even more training if they are going to screen both passengers and baggage (More than half of our officers do this); and
- Complete an annual certification process that includes more written tests, image interpretation tests, and a third party evaluation.

So training is a regular, important part of an officer’s job.

Seven times every day, every checkpoint in the U.S. is tested with ‘fake’ threats to ensure that our officers are on alert. Most of these fake items are very difficult to identify on the computer screen, and most of these items are detected. Unfortunately, we’re all most likely to hear about the few prohibited items that pass through undetected rather than the thousands of items that are identified at the checkpoint.

On a typical day in the U.S., security officers find two guns and around 2,800 knives and blades (of varying sizes) on passengers and in carry-on bags. Those are the most commonly discovered prohibited items, but it’s hard to imagine how many other potential threats are identified on a daily basis.

We at TSA don’t want anything to happen ‘on our watch.’ This means a lot to me when my family flies, or when I fly to see my grandkids. It means that officers want to be thorough even though it might be inconvenient for us sometimes. It means that they take our safety, security, and the threat seriously, and try their best to prevent and deter the individuals who wish to do us harm.

At TSA, we think about one passenger at a time, two million times a day.

Thanks,
Mo

Why We Do What We Do: Additional Screening for People with Hip Replacements

We've received many comments and questions from people who have had hip replacements and other metal implanted in their bodies for medical reasons. Many want to be able to present a letter from their doctor, some type of medical card, or even an x-ray to confirm that it's for an authentic medical reason that they're alarming the metal detector.

We understand that this is an inconvenience to travelers who repeatedly have to go through additional security measures because of a medical condition, but we just can't accept a letter, a card or an x-ray. I’ll explain some of the reasons.

This is a true story: a passenger told a security officer that he knew he was going to set the metal detector off because he had a pin in his hip. He hoped the officer would give him a pass on additional screening. Instead, the security officer followed TSA guidelines patted down the passenger. Guess what? He found a gun strapped to the passenger’s leg. So, if the security officer had just taken his word for it, a gun would have gotten on the plane—and maybe even been in the seat next to you. Things like this happen all the time, more than you would think.

We know those of you with genuine medical conditions are not the problem. And we realize the additional screening makes your checkpoint experience a frustrating one. But if a passenger alarms the metal detector, our security officers must resolve the alarm or the passenger can't get on the plane. We want to be thorough and protect the safety of everyone. No officer wants to be the one to let a gun, knife or bomb get through to an airplane.

If terrorists (or people who just HAVE to take their gun or knife with them on the flight) thought they could get by with a letter from a doctor or medical ID card, they'd quickly find out a way to make fake ones. How can we tell the difference in just a few seconds in a busy checkpoint line? It may make it a bit easier for you—but it makes it way too easy for them. Unfortunately, the pat down is currently the only way to resolve the situation.

Like you, we’re not satisfied with this result either. So, we’ve been busy exploring less invasive technology solutions that will allow officers to distinguish passengers with metallic medical implants from those trying to sneak weapons through the checkpoint. Last year, we began field testing several different types of whole body imagers in Phoenix, Arizona. Some passengers who were required to undergo additional screening were given the option of going through a portal instead of a pat-down. We've gotten great feedback from passengers on the technology, so we plan to continue testing the technology in other airports like JFK in New York, LAX in California, and others later this Spring. If you happen to go through portal in Phoenix or other airports, write back and let us know what you think.

A Few Thoughts on Consistency and Where We're Going...by Kip Hawley

Thanks for participating in the Evolution of Security blog. In the coming weeks we will ask for your opinions about some issues we have now in discussion -- balancing intrusions into personal space (pat-downs, imaging) with better detection, devoting dedicated lanes to 'speedsters' frequent flyers and how to manage who goes to that lane -- are two examples. We will also continue to go where you take us with the issues you raise. I would like to address one of those issues now: 'why do I get different results at different airports?'

There are two main issues: a) process consistency, where we want to have the same result everywhere; and, b) purposeful variation so as not to offer a static target.

Let me say up front that we have sometimes confused the issue ourselves, seemingly excusing unwanted results with 'well we do it differently on purpose' answers. While I understand the frustration of not having a completely identical process every time, I cannot say that you will ever be able to go through completely on autopilot. Here's my perspective...

Let's take process consistency first. Imagine we were a manufacturing business and that we wanted to crank out identical, high quality widgets. That's hard to do even when you use precision equipment and consistent materials. If TSA were a manufacturer, we would be processing over 700 million unique transactions a year, using over 40,000 different people, at over 400 locations. And, rather than combating maintenance woes (although we do) and the standard banes of manufacturing quality, our enemy is active, intelligent, malicious, patient, and adaptive.

Because TSA started from scratch, we used very defined 'standard operating procedures' in order to get the new organization up and running. Over time, that detailed process control started to work against us. It had the effect of making the job checklist-oriented. ('If I follow the SOP, then I am doing my job.') The tighter we squeezed to demand tighter adherence to the SOP, the more we squeezed individual initiative and thinking out of it.

While we had great people as TSO's, we were putting them in situations where they had to do things 'because it's SOP' whether or not it made sense. It was not helpful for public credibility or for keeping our people sharp.

Since nobody would care that we followed the SOP precisely if there was a successful attack, and since our enemy can observe our SOP and plan ways to beat it -- we needed something more.

This is the purposeful variation part. The idea is to have a menu of different security measures that TSOs add randomly to the standard process.

Everybody goes through the magnetometer and puts carry-ons through the x-ray and if there is an alarm, it is resolved. However, given the limits of technology and simple human fallibility, vulnerabilities inevitably exist. We are covering those vulnerabilities by adding, truly at random, additional measures. For example, in the last couple of months, I have had two versions of a quick pat-down. My computer was swabbed for an explosives check, as were my shoes even though I didn't alarm going through (Yes, I go through security just like everyone else). We also have new handheld liquid and solid explosives detection devices deployed as well as a variety of other measures. You may, and should, see what I mean in an upcoming trip.

I should also add that we have recently added other layers of security to address the same vulnerabilities that I have been discussing -- behavior detection, document checking, K-9 teams, undercover air marshals, etc.

So, our theory of how to achieve process consistency from a quality control perspective is to train well and set outcome goals that encourage individual initiative and judgment. We think that for a distributed workforce that sees endless variety in passenger situations and faces an adaptive enemy -- that is the way to go. This means that, yes, you will see some differences trip to trip on some judgment things that are not on purpose. That is the price for a thinking, switched-on front-line -- if you want people thinking, then you have to let them make decisions based on their training and experience.

You will also see some different measures applied trip to trip that are purposeful, put there to prevent someone from exploiting a vulnerability.

Thanks for working with us, Kip

RUMOR ALERT! LAPTOPS

We have received several questions, comments and links to other blogs about a Washington Post article on confiscating laptops and other electronic devices at airports.

» Click Here to read the Washington Post Article.

As the article correctly states, this is a customs issue and not one TSA is involved in.

TSA does not and will not confiscate laptops or other electronic devices at our checkpoints. Our officers’ are solely focused on the safety of the traveling public and are looking for explosives and other prohibited items. Should one of our officers find something suspicious, we will immediately contact local law enforcement and potentially the local bomb squad. We will not ask for any password, access to any files or take the laptop from you for longer than it takes to determine if it contains a threat.

Should anyone at a TSA checkpoint attempt to confiscate your laptop or gain your passwords or other information, please ask to see a supervisor or screening manager immediately.


Christopher
TSA Evolution Blog Team

2/14/08 8:41 a.m.

Nico Said:

The post referencing LAX Terminal 6 requiring all passengers remove all electronic items piqued our interest, so we have done some digging. First thing this morning we checked with our Lead TSO at Terminal 6 and we spoke with our Assistant Federal Security Director for Screening, who both refuted the posting and stated, "passengers are not required to remove all electronics, in fact, we are requesting they put all small electronic items in their carry-on bags to help keep them together." Additionally, the Screening Manager at LAX who is responsible for the operations in both Terminals 5 and 6, is in the process of conducting an employee by employee inquiry to determine if anyone has required this of passengers in the last couple of days. So far, there have been negative findings. Is it possible that one passenger had to remove all electronics after an initial pass through the X-ray because we had trouble identifying possible threat items? Yes. But again, all passengers are not required to remove all electronics.

Blog Team Member