Wednesday, April 02, 2008

New TSA screening helped nab man with bomb parts - USATODAY.com

This is a good thing:  New TSA screening helped nab man with bomb parts - USATODAY.com

ORLANDO (AP) — Federal agents won't say exactly what made Kevin Christopher Brown look suspicious to them, but what they found in the bags he tried to check for a flight to Jamaica bolstered their confidence in their new screening techniques.

They say his luggage had everything needed to build a pipe bomb — glass bottles with nitromethane, a model rocket ignitor, batteries, galvanized pipes with caps drilled to fit a fuse and even instructions. Authorities and airline officials said passengers were never in danger.

Tall and slender with a ragged beard, the 32-year-old Brown caught the attention of a Transportation Security Administration official as he approached the Air Jamaica ticket counter Tuesday at Orlando International Airport.

Behavior detection officers Frank Skowronski and Jose Zengotita, who were called to watch Brown, wouldn't specify what he did that looked suspicious, saying it would undermine TSA's strategy. But they generally study facial expressions and body posture for fear, stress and deception.

I travel several times a month via plane (more than I'd like), and overall, the impression I get is that the security procedures in place are impartial and non-profiling, and have always believed that is the problem. We need to do more screening based more on behavior as opposed to a random check, which, by definition, has only a random chance of detecting anything.

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