TSA for the day

northsunm32, based in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, and an anchor for Allvoices, has an article about the 'good work' of the TSA:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was urged by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to scale back or even eliminate its "behavior screening" program, in which TSA officers try to strike up conversations with passengers and airport employees as a means of discovering would-be terrorists. A study showed little evidence the program worked.
The GAO claimed that the TSA program was a waste of money. The TSA is an agency with the Department of Homeland Security with the specific task of ensuring the security of the traveling public. The head of the program, John Pistole, even admitted at the time of the report that the program had never caught a single terrorist. However, recent reports suggest that not only has the TSA not cut back on the program, it is expanding it.
Here are the general findings of the original GAO report:

In November of 2013, the GAO reported that (1) peer-reviewed, published research as reviewed did not support whether nonverbal behavioral indicators can be used to reliably identify deception, and (2) methodological issues limited the usefulness of DHS' April of 2011 SPOT validation study, and (3) variation in referral rates raised questions about the use of indicators. The GAO reported that its review of meta-analyses (studies that analyze other studies and synthesize their findings) that included findings from over four hundred studies related to detecting deception conducted over the past sixty years, other academic and government studies, and interviews with experts in the field, called into question the use of behavior observation techniques, that is, human observation unaided by technology, as a means for reliably detecting deception. The meta-analyses the GAO reviewed collectively found that the ability of human observers to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral cues or indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance (just over fifty percent). The GAO also reported on other studies that do not support the use of behavioral indicators to identify bad intent or threats to aviation.

Apparently the TSA has simply ignored the GAO study and has expanded the behavioral observation program on passengers at Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport. A test extension of the program began on 5 March 2014 and is to continue through 28 April 2014.
Representative Bennie Thompson (a Democrat from Mississippi) claims that the program is an intrusion into the privacy of travelers and has no scientific evidence showing that it is efficient. The TSA did not respond to his criticisms.

Rico says his sarcasm was intended...