Rumors Apparently Spreading On The Internet

The official TSA blog has a post dated Saturday that responds to an apparent Internet rumor that the agency was soon going to begin testing DNA. That is not the case, according to the agency.

According to the post:

"An article was posted to "The Daily" today (Saturday) with the misleading headline "Genetic Patdown." Even more misleading, the first sentence leads off with the mention of airport scanners.So obviously, even though the rest of the article says nothing about airports or TSA, some readers naturally assumed this was a new technology that would be heading to the airports and the tweets went wild. It didn't help that "tsa-scanner" was included in the URL.

"The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is doing preliminary testing with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) who already uses DNA testing in some cases to establish familial relationships in refugee processing.

"DHS S&T expects to receive a prototype DNA analyzer device this summer to conduct a preliminary evaluation of whether this kind of technology could be considered for future use. At this time, there are no DHS customers, nor is there a timeline for deployment, for this kind of technology - this is a simply a preliminary test of how the technology performs.

"Again, TSA is not testing and has no plans to use any technology capable of testing DNA."

FMI: www.tsa.gov