
TSA Says Theyre Not Discriminating Against Black Women but Body Scanners May Be - NN88
https://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-not-discriminating-against-black-women-but-their-body-scanners-might-be
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ralusek
>"...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.

~~~
danso
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684290)

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-
error...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error/new-
zealand-passport-robot-tells-applicant-of-asian-descent-to-open-eyes-
idUSKBN13W0RL)

~~~
phissk
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 ...

~~~
danso
Then given the sacredness/importance of human life, relative to the value of
someone's hair, there is no reasonable justification for _not_ requiring every
airline passenger to shave their head before entering security, if it reduces
the probability of the scanner having false negative even by a small margin.

Come to think of it, there's no justification for allowing passengers to keep
their clothes on as they pass through security.

~~~
YUMad
That is the endgame. Together with every human spending their life in a small
isolated cage. Perfect security.

------
pranjalv123
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.

~~~
helloayo
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-teej
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.

~~~
rando444
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-teej
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.

~~~
rando444
You can't blame the people that designed it.

Some hairstyles are just bunched up and the machine can't tell what it is, so
it gets flagged for manual inspection.

This is not a problem that is easily solved with technology.

Your only options are:

(1) not checking anyone's hair

(2) manually checking everyone's hair

(3) letting the machine do it's job and accept the fact that it can't scan
certain hairstyles.

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

~~~
Gibbon1
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.

~~~
wutbrodo
> 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?

~~~
Gibbon1
> diehard libertarians

They bark and complain and then get on their knees and lick the boot.

~~~
rongenre
Libertarian koan: Next year, that's gonna be my boot.

~~~
Gibbon1
The short answer is libertarians are hostile to collective action. The only
politically powerful group that aligns with is that of extreme wealth.

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b_tterc_p
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.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
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
Sounds like a prototype being deployed to production. We all know how well
that goes.

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

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

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

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"

~~~
exelius
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.

