Posted on 08/15/2007 7:39:06 AM PDT by Dan Evans
WASHINGTON — Next time you go to the airport, there may be more eyes on you than you notice.
Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside baggage attendant.
They're called Behavior Detection Officers, and they're part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described them as "a wonderful tool to be able to identify and do risk management prior to somebody coming into the airport or approaching the crowded checkpoint."
The officers are working in more than a dozen airports already, according to Paul Ekman, a former professor at the University of California at San Francisco who has advised Hawley's agency on the program. Amy Kudwa, a TSA public affairs specialist, said the agency hopes to have 500 behavior detection officers in place by the end of 2008.
Kudwa described the effort, which began as a pilot program in 2006, as "very successful" at identifying suspicious airline passengers. She said it had netted drug carriers, illegal immigrants and terrorism suspects. She wouldn't say more.
At the heart of the new screening system is a theory that when people try to conceal their emotions, they reveal their feelings in flashes that Ekman, a pioneer in the field, calls "micro-expressions." Fear and disgust are the key ones, he said, because they're associated with deception.
Behavior detection officers work in pairs. Typically, one officer sizes up passengers openly while the other seems to be performing a routine security duty. A passenger who arouses suspicion, whether by micro-expressions, social interaction or body language gets subtle but more serious scrutiny.
A behavior specialist may decide to move in to help the suspicious passenger recover belongings that have passed through the baggage X-ray. Or he may ask where the traveler's going. If more alarms go off, officers will "refer" the person to law enforcement officials for further questioning.
The strategy is based on a time-tested and successful Israeli model, but in the United States, the scrutiny is much less invasive, Ekman said. American officers receive 16 hours of training — far less than their Israeli counterparts_ because U.S. officials want to be less intrusive.
The use of "micro-expressions" to identify hidden emotions began nearly 30 years ago when Ekman and colleague Maureen O'Sullivan began studying videotapes of people telling lies. When they slowed down the videotapes, they noticed distinct facial movements and began to catalogue them. They were flickers of expression that lasted no more than a fraction of a second.
The Department of Homeland Security hopes to dramatically enhance such security practices.
Jay M. Cohen, undersecretary of Homeland Security for Science and Technology, said in May that he wants to automate passenger screening by using videocams and computers to measure and analyze heart rate, respiration, body temperature and verbal responses as well as facial micro-expressions.
Homeland Security is seeking proposals from scientists to develop such technology. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 31.
The system also would be used for port security, special-event screening and other security screening tasks.
It faces high hurdles, however.
Different cultures express themselves differently. Expressions and body language are easy to misread, and no one's catalogued them all. Ekman notes that each culture has its own specific body language, but that little has been done to study each individually in order to incorporate them in a surveillance program.
In addition, automation won't be easy, especially for the multiple variables a computer needs to size up people. Ekman thinks people can do it better. "And it's going to be hard to get machines that are as accurate as trained human beings," Ekman said.
Finally, the extensive data-gathering of passengers' personal information will raise civil-liberties concerns. "If you discover that someone is at risk for heart disease, what happens to that information?" Ekman asked. "How can we be certain that it's not sold to third parties?"
Whether mass-automated security screening will ever be effective is unclear. In Cohen's PowerPoint slide accompanying his aviation industry presentation was this slogan: "Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible."
I'll tell you how I would handle it. Let the airlines, the pilots and their insurance companies decide how to do it. They are a helluva lot smarter than the government mesomorphs who are doing it now.
Orwell's prescience is a thing of wonder.
Of course, I also think that the mechanics that ceritfy planes fit to fly should be forced to get on them, as well.
This, after having a flight delayed for "Mechanical Difficulties". I was watching a couple of mechanics work on something on the nosewheel assembly (not much else to do in a podunk Airport at 8pm). One looked at the other and pointed to something. The other gave an elaborate shrug.
I turned away. Couldn't watch anymore. LOL!
All I’m saying is what I observed.
When the plane arrived at the gate, the three TSAs stood up, put their personal items away, and began busying themselves. They put on latex gloves, took out their wands, and began screening passengers.
I just wished that I had taken a picture of this waste of government money.
They didn’t look professional, they didn’t look like they were even working; though I’m sure they were on the clock.
Maybe having workers scan people’s facial expressions is an innovative way to get the TSA folks to actually look at the passengers.
I’d keep the insurance companies out of it. They’d have us fly naked, drugged, and sans any luggage. Can’t be paying out potential claims.....
My husband is a commercial pilot, so I know what you’re talking about.
Have I got the perfect cartoon for you...hang tight...
If not, don't tell me. LOL!!
over and out (side to repair the pool vac...)
Later...
Probably best not to joke about such things. Somewhere, there's some fool TSA official reading this and thinking "Hospital Gowns......Hmmmmmm...." LOL!
With apologies to your husband, I hate to fly. It's a part of my job (has been for almost 15 years) and I've got to say that the "fun" of airline travel has gone dramatically downhill in that span of time, IMHO.
Don't know if it's because I don't like travelling, or if I don't like TO travel (if that makes sense). Anyway, if we're talking less than a day of driving, I rent a car, now.
Have fun cleaning the pool. It's 100+ here for the rest of the week. A dip would be nice today.
This is great to announce even if we are not doing it.
You are very wrong and such thinking is very dangerous. The minute you exclude a class of people you create a group of people that can be either willing or unwilling dupes that would be used by terrorists. This would put these people in unnecessary danger and create a hole in our security that can be exploited.
So a few hours of trianing is going to help them detect people from other cultures. People who have maybe different expressions or nuance in thier expressions unrelated to our culture?
Behavior Detection Officers I can’t believe they called it that.
They don’t seem to good policing thier own.
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/4368.html
On second thought, I guess you have a valid point. I’ve learned to read my kids for instance, but they aren’t terrorists.
It’s just that many airport security officers are ham handed buffoons.
No problem here. But the bitching and whining and bellyachin' will be the same. You know that... right?
We're a culture of whiners. A trip across country that took our forefathers six ~months~ to do, now takes six hours. If that six hours becomes ten... we whine about how gruelling the trip was and now we'll never fly that airline again... yadda yadda yadda...
:-)
The difference will be that when you put it into the private sector people will be allowed to vote with their feet and go to the competition who might have a more intelligent approach to things.
The other difference is that people won't be intimidated by government officials with unreasonable searches which is a violation of the Constitution.
I don't think we are a nation of whiners. I think we are becoming a nation of sheep. I think people are being programmed to think they are children and the government is their parents and I think too many of us are buying into that notion.
The founders wanted the security of this free state to be in the hands of people, not government. I believe they were right. If the passengers on those planes on Sept 11 had been armed, and had not been programmed to act like sheep when threatened, we would not be in this mess.
We need to grow up and act like free people, not bend over and let some government goon stick his finger up our butt.
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