TSA Says Theyre Not Discriminating Against Black Women but Body Scanners May Be

https://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-not-discriminating-against-black-women-but-their-body-scanners-might-be

by NN88 • 7 years ago

43 60 7 years ago

ralusek2• 7 years ago

"...Afros, braids, twists and other hairstyles popular among black women."

They literally say so in the subtitle. The discrimination exists before people enter the airport, and it comes in the form of what hairstyle to choose. This is partly done on a cultural basis, and partly because of a different hair composition. But the important thing is, the machine does not differentiate on the basis of race, it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband. I am a white man with long dense hair, and my hair triggers the machine almost every time. Not because I look like a hippy, and Nixon is still running the show, but because I could hide things in my hair.

The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine.

matt4077• 7 years ago

Yeah, how dare they call it racism when it’s built into the system, and conveniently uses highly correlated features instead of race itself! We also don’t discriminate against men, only people called “John”, “David”, or “Jack”.

penagwin2• 7 years ago

Counterpoint, If there's a known terrorist named "James Williams" and you flag everyone with that name going through the airport, yes you are going to be HIGHLY correlated with males, but the feature wasn't chosen by gender it was selected because of the increased risk of danger associated with that feature.

penagwin2• 7 years ago

If the situation is as described, then I would agree with the idea that this shouldn't be treated as an "issue".

Discrimination's common definition has the negative connotation, but in this case, it seems to legitimately be "discriminating" based on ability to hide contraband, however in this case "discriminating" is synonymous with "differentiate".

TFortunato3• 7 years ago

The reason it is an issue is because the TSA is disproportionately singling out people for more invasive searches under the guise of, "we have this shitty technology that can't tell the difference between explosives and black hair or a 'turban', and that's what the procedure tells us to do." Just because it isn't designed to explicitly 'single out black people', that was the outcome of using this combination of technology and procedure.

To top it all off, we are all paying millions of dollars for this, via taxes for some fancy security theater to tell us, whether there is the "ability to hide contraband", which seems utterly insane.

jerf• 7 years ago

"The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine."

That is not a politically-acceptable argument.

TFortunato3• 7 years ago

Just because the technology isn't explicitly designed as a 'single out black people' machine, doesn't mean that it isn't disproportionately affecting them due to how it is being used. Just because this imaging technology can't tell the difference between dense hair and explosives does not make someone's thick hair, or hair covering "an area of suspect density" that should automatically be flagged for more invasive searchs.

It's definitely trying to split some really fine hairs to be saying 'actually, it isn't discriminating against black people, it's discriminating against hair types that are highly correlated with being a black person, and it's totally acceptable that people with those hair types should be considered suspect / subject to further scrutiny', as if that is some sort of edge case that couldn't have possibly be thought about beforehand.

I absolutely don't think we should be defending a tech / procedure that only seems to be negatively affecting people, costs millions, and doesn't seem to have any positives effects,

briffle• 7 years ago

It could also be the diversity of testing as well. If the machine is tested to work with such dense hair from the beginning the algorithms can be adjusted.

Kind of like the Amazon facial recognition, [0] that really didn't work well on minorities, likely due to the training models used

[0] https://medium.com/@bu64dcjrytwitb8/on-recent-research-audit...

mikestew• 7 years ago

it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband.

And literacy tests for voters simply ensures that our electorate is properly educated. Any side effects are a convenient freebie.

JumpCrisscross• 7 years ago

the machine does not differentiate on the basis of race

I’m guessing it was predominantly white men who built this machine and white men who tested it. Reminds me of certain facial-recognition programs being (initially) unable to identify black faces. It may not be racism, but it is discrimination.

pbhjpbhj2• 7 years ago

Who is it racist against? Surely it's white people primarily who suffer as they're more likely to be caught by the facial recognition?

Following the simplest case, because lighter skin gives greater contrast is _not_ racism.

It's not 'unnecessary discrimination' either, as it arises out of the facts of how light works.

It's like saying that products with a weight limit that arises out of the materials used are "fattist".

danso2• 7 years ago

People are free to choose their hair and hairstyles. The burden of not discriminating is on the government agency, which is funded and mandated (including, according to TFA, $100M for deploying the scanners) to not be discriminatory, including on characteristics related to race.

As u/tj-teej pointed out [0], the utilizers of this tech have the agency and means to improve or mitigate the tech, including prioritizing the training of algorithms to handle black hair styles instead of shunting it off to an edge case, conveniently burdening a demographic who has been historically limited in power and influence.

To think of it another way: in many parts of the U.S., Asians are very much a minority. Asians more commonly have narrower eyes which can interfere with face detection/recognition [1]. In the near and possible future, when face-detection becomes a "feature" in security tech as a means to expedite processing -- e.g. if your face is scanned and not found in a "Real ID" database, you're automatically put in a line for more invasive searching -- would Asian-Americans not have a legitimate case that the U.S. gov't has failed to improve their tech to the detriment of Asian-American citizens? Especially when it seems Asian countries have successfully mitigated the issue?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684290

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error...

phissk• 7 years ago

Actually, I knew a guy who used to smuggle drugs into nightclubs in his afro, so targeting people on the basis of whether their hairstyle is physically capable of concealing contraband seems quite reasonable.

If you don't like it ... then you are free to change your hairstyle ...

DuskStar• 7 years ago

I think the major difference here is immutable vs mutable characteristics. You can choose your hairstyle, but not what your face looks like.

NathanKP• 7 years ago

Yep same here. As a white dude with dense longish hair who travels a lot for work I've noticed that if I have my hair in a ponytail about 1 in 3 times that I go through the body scanner they are going to pat down the back of my head to check my ponytail.

I don't agree with your last point though. The discriminating factor is that the machine screening is designed based on the average white male and female appearance. And that means that anyone outside that built in assumption, whether its a white dude with a thick ponytail, or a black woman with a Afro gets extra screening.

What the article is trying to highlight is that when we design such systems we shouldn't just be designing them against the average because that causes the system to discriminate against anyone outside that average.

ralusek2• 7 years ago

The onus is on you if you make that declaration. You don't know that the reason the machine triggers more frequently in "black hair" is because of improper testing, you're just asserting that. There are such things as objective differences that have objective implications.

Fjolsvith• 7 years ago

I am reminded of the issues the Air Force had due to cockpits being designed for the average pilot size. They did a study and found that the majority of pilots were not near the average size and had difficulty reaching for switches and pedals and such. [1]

1. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

coldtea• 7 years ago

The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine.

Most of the people who ordered, designed, built and tested the machine are white.

They don't have to explicitly discriminate against blacks.

They can just go their business as usual, designing stuff based on their own norms and cultural habits, and it will come out as naturally discriminating.

If all those whites doing the machine's design had those "certain hairstyles" in the same ratio as blacks, and were flagged as much when they've tested it, they'd have considered this facet of the machine as useless and removed it...

CompanionCuuube3• 7 years ago

So which detection facets regarding areas likely able to conceal hidden contraband were removed due to being part of the white people testing group?

exelius2• 7 years ago

Body scanners and current TSA processes also discriminate against transgender people. The body scanners are obvious (the agent has to push “male” or “female” and someone with “bulk” in their chest and crotch sets it off), but the X-Ray machines also alarm on dilators and lube so my bag is manually searched every time.

Sometimes I get a friendly agent and they send me on with minimal fuss, and sometimes they’re jerks and try to find a way to stop me from going thru security.

Rebelgecko• 7 years ago

Interesting article about "flying while trans" in the NY times today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/opinion/tsa-transgender.h...

Yet another reason to opt out of the body scanners. No one wants a pat down due to a machine deciding that their genitals are an "anomaly"

exelius2• 7 years ago

Yep. I fly multiple times a week. It’s an awful, dehumanizing experience every time but I refuse to allow my activities to be restricted because of that.

rongenre4• 7 years ago

Given that TSA has never stopped a terrorist, and this is all theater, choosing to continue makes it biased theater.

Gibbon13• 7 years ago

It's funny not funny that the same people that like to rage about government agency's being increasing intrusive and consuming more and more resources while doing nothing valuable have nothing bad to say about the poster child for that.

rongenre4• 7 years ago

Just World Fallacy is great when you're unaffected.

wutbrodo• 7 years ago

the same people that like to rage about government agency's being increasing intrusive and consuming more and more resources while doing nothing valuable have nothing bad to say about the poster child for that.

Don't they? The diehard libertarians I've been exposed to are the first and loudest to complain about the TSA. Is there some constituency I'm unaware of that's anti-government action but not anti-TSA?

recursive2• 7 years ago

There's no way to tell how many terrorists have been dissuaded from making an attempt because of the existence of the TSA.

yjftsjthsd-h• 7 years ago

How conveniently unfalsifiable.

otterley2• 7 years ago

Given that TSA has never stopped a terrorist

This is a pretty bold conclusion to make. Why do you assert this isn't so? There's no way to be certain of this because we can't read people's minds. A potential terrorist may have been thwarted simply because a TSA Agent refused to allow a weapon into the secured area.

rongenre4• 7 years ago

Has TSA ever taken credit for stopping something? No. If they could plausibly claim they stopped a "major plot", it'd be 3-4 news cycles.

They've caught idiots with handguns and drugs in their luggage, which is fine, but there was no intention of doing anyone harm.

So no. They're as useless as a security blanket.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 7 years ago

It seems that this may be due to the limitations of machine vision. When the body scanners were being deployed, there was a lot of concern that they could see under clothes and that the TSA officials were basically going to be able to see everyone naked as they walked through the scanner. To deal with that, it was decided to use machine vision to create a stylized "Ken Doll" body and superimpose areas of concern, but not allow the actual image to be seen.

Now, with certain hairstyles, I would guess the algorithms can't reliably distinguish hairstyle from concealed items and just alert. I would guess that a human looking at the the imaging would be able to distinguish, but that would involve the TSA being able to see you naked again.

tomphoolery• 7 years ago

Sounds like a prototype being deployed to production. We all know how well that goes.

pranjalv123• 7 years ago

If the machines triggered on hairstyles commonly worn by white men, what are the odds that they would have made it to production? Conversely, if the development teams had a significant amount of black women with hairstyles like these, what are the odds that this problem would exist?

The TSA wants to externalize its discrimination to "the machine", but the machine is a product of human systems, and reflects and captures the biases that already exist in society.

helloayo3• 7 years ago

Exactly. This is similar to how women and children kept getting killed or injured by seatbelts simply because no one in the room thought to test for them since no one in the room looked like them.

tj-teej3• 7 years ago

A lot of people will say "this is a limitation of Computer Vision", but they are missing something.

If these kinds of technologies treat the hair of a certain race as a P1, then the technology (and people who designed the tech and the program) are participating in discrimination.

I'm not saying this to be 'woke' or to 'cancel' TSA. It's just a fact; and once we can all admit it (a lot of people in this thread don't seem to be able to), then we can make changes to fix it.

Editorial: If an aspect of traveling makes you feel like an 'other' in your own country, that's wrong, and I don't think public funds should be encouraging that. Public buildings have to have wheel-chair ramps, and TSA body scanners shouldn't be racialized.

satokema_work• 7 years ago

Why does it need fixing per se? (Assume optional plurals)

If the parameter is incorrect, then the parameter should be adjusted correctly. Note that having an availability bias in the dataset is also incorrect, the parameter will reflect the incorrectness.

However, if the parameter is adjusted correctly: what is the problem other than people not wanting to be confronted with uncomfortable truths?

rando4442• 7 years ago

Read the article again. The machine has a problem with certain hairstyles.. not hair of certain races.

People of African descent have a propensity towards the problem hairstyle that skews the results.

If your argument is for 'de-racialization' then you need to convince people to change their hairstyles to make everyone more similar.

You can't blame a machine for treating a 1 as 1 and 0 as 0.

tj-teej3• 7 years ago

You're right you can't blame the machine. I'm blaming the people who designed it, who defined what the 1 and the 0 are.

If everyone in the country had the "certain hairstyles we'd have no problem saying "this machine doesn't work".

And frankly I don't think anyone who knows a lot of African-American Women would even consider asking them to change their hair.

harimau777• 7 years ago

My understanding is that they are not targeting a certain type of hair, rather a certain type of hair has characteristics that the machine cannot distinguish from potential risks.

tj-teej3• 7 years ago

If all hair had that problem then we'd say the machine doesn't work.

They launched this new tech knowing a "certain type of hair" (specifically black women's) triggers the machine (and triggers degrading searches). I'm saying this machine shouldn't be launched if that's the consequences, I'm saying that it's discriminatory.

b_tterc_p• 7 years ago

Racism and bias in prediction is a problem. I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here.

The article says false alarm, but when you think about the goal here, a false alarm might just be a lack of ability to get an accurate read through black hair styles. A false alarm doesn’t mean they’re accusing someone. It means their tech isn’t good enough to do the job and they need a manual check to cover the gap.

Let’s say it is somehow technologically impossible to infer what’s hidden in an Afro. Wouldn’t you expect manual checks to occur? Otherwise what’s the point of doing checks at all? There would be an easy strategy: rock a ‘fro

Unless your argument is against the TSA being nothing but theater because the task is basically impossible against a good determined actor but that’s a separate issue.

helloayo3• 7 years ago

For all the people claiming that flagging dense hairstyles makes us safer...please name one terrorist who hid contraband in his hair.

CompanionCuuube3• 7 years ago

Now that they've published the vulnerability, they can take advantage of that information in future plans.

TSA Says Theyre Not Discriminating Against Black Women but Body Scanners May Be

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