U.S. Transportation Security Administration workers today will begin interviewing passengers entering Delta Air Lines Inc.’s terminal in Detroit in an expansion of its so-called behavior detection program, Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman, said.
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport joins Boston’s Logan International as a test site for the program, in which TSA employees briefly talk to passengers to assess whether they might be involved in terrorist activities.
The technique has been called “chat-downs” by Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, ranking Democrat on the House homeland security committee, who has questioned whether it works.All passengers at checkpoints involved in the test are required to answer questions when they encounter the agency’s document checker, before proceeding to baggage X-ray and passenger screening. The interview lasts about one minute and resembles an encounter at a U.S. Customs checkpoint.
