Next layer of air security: Chat-downs on top of pat-downs?
BOSTON -- As Ingrid Esser hands a Transportation Security Administration officer her identification and boarding pass for a flight from Logan International Airport to Washington, D.C., she faces a flurry of questions.
Where is she going? Why? How long is she staying?
"It was a new experience," says Esser, 31, who works in public relations. "It doesn't bother me at all. I understand their job, and it's keeping America safe."
In that exchange, Esser became part of an experiment that, if successful, could change how every passenger who seeks to board a commercial airline flight in the USA is screened: Besides going through a metal detector, and possibly a full-body scanning machine and pat-down, they'd first undergo a "chat-down," or face-to-face questioning by a TSA officer. The tactic is similar to what air travelers in Israel face under a program aimed at averting terrorism in the skies.
Chat-downs, a play on the word "pat-down," describing the physical screening that has angered some passengers as too intrusive, are part of the U.S. government's effort to adopt a broader strategy of sifting out people who might pose a greater security risk among the roughly 1.2 million people who fly each day.
"It means moving further away from what may have seemed like a one-size-fits-all approach to security," TSA Administrator John Pistole says.
Chat-downs already are controversial in their trial stage. Civil-liberties advocates and some critics of the TSA see them as another government invasion of travelers' privacy, a hassle for mostly law-abiding passengers, or just ineffectual.
"They're asking questions that people have a right not to answer," says Mike German, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. "It's nobody's business — and certainly not the government's business — where you're traveling and why."
So far, only 48 travelers out of about 132,000 who have been questioned here at Logan have refused to answer the questions, and instead their carry-on bags were physically searched.
"If they refuse to answer, we (still) let them catch their flight," says Ed Freni, Logan's aviation director.
Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., says he sees chat-downs as another example of the TSA wasting time and money on "largely law-abiding citizens, for the most part."
'New situation for bad guys'
Chat-downs, which began at Logan in August, feature blue-shirted TSA officers asking every passenger in Terminal A a series of questions for a few hours each day.
TSA officers pose the questions when they check travelers' IDs and boarding passes. The choice of location has changed slightly, after first trying the questioning while travelers were in line before the ID check, or after the ID check and before the metal detectors.
Travelers say the questions typically focus on where they are headed, for how long and the purpose of the trip. More probing questions include whether carry-on bags have liquids or why the traveler is holding so much cash.
The answers aren't all that officers are after. They're looking for behavioral clues to possible deception, and hostility that warrants further scrutiny or a referral to law-enforcement officials. Authorities won't describe the physical clues, but various research has focused on liars averting their eyes, having an inconsistent head gesture or wringing their hands.
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