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TSA's Risk-based Approach to Security

George Naccara is betting that the lift of his risk-based reforms will overcome the drag of politics and bureaucracy. And the test bed for these innovations is Boston's Logan Airport

The Massachusetts State Police have been using a program based on Ron's at Logan for several years. "I watch those guys do this," Naccara says. "They impress the hell out of me." So do the techniques, and from early on Naccara wanted TSA to use behavioral profiling. Massport and the state police trained TSA people, and Naccara linked the programs together, developing clear protocols for handing cases off between one agency and another.

For an airport, such artful cooperation is somewhat unique; at Logan it contributes to the Boston reputation. For now, TSA's program is called the Screenings by Passenger Observation Technique, or SPOT for short (the acronym has changed no fewer than four times, and at least three of them are currently in circulation). Whatever it's eventually called, SPOT is the sun of Naccara's solar system, around which all other risk-based security techniques revolve.

At first, he says, there was reluctance in Washington to move so quickly with SPOT. "We were pushing too hard and too fast for them," he says. "But we didn't back off, because we'd seen it work here. We knew it was the right thing to do." Naccara's aggressiveness could have backfired, but instead it aligned with the appointment of Hawley as TSA's new director. Hawley wanted fresh ideas on aviation security, and he embraced SPOT and decided to name Naccara the program's national director, meaning that Naccara would oversee the rollout of SPOT to the country's 40 highest-risk airports.

At about the same time Naccara was appointed director of SPOT, Hawley was re-centralizing TSA in Washingtona decision that seemed dubious to many TSA officials scoring success after success in Boston. "Every airport is different," Ventresca says, walking along a blast wall that backs one of the runways. "Physically they're different. In the way the port authority works. In the relationships with law enforcement." At any rate, re-centralization meant all directors worked out of Washington, so Naccara would have to move to direct SPOT.

But he told Hawley he would lead the SPOT rollout only if he could remain at Logan. Hawley, fully validating the Boston reputation, relented.

Part 2: Drag

In leveraging the Boston reputation, TSA at Logan is part research lab, part startup venture, andowing to a righteous belief in its methodspart religion. That's right, religion. For Naccara's TSA acts in some ways like the Church of the Managed Risk, determined to atone for past sins and eager to bring its gospel to other airports.