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TSA's "Behavior Detection Officers"
Stanistani sends us to MSNBC for a dyspeptic Newsweek commentary on the TSA's latest attempt to make air travel safer: the rather ominously named "Behavior Detection Officers" now working in a dozen US airports, and slated to go nationwide in 2008. They are trained in the discipline of reading "micro-expressions." The editorialist calls that a pseudo-science, but in fact it's a well-understood skill that can be taught and learned. A cursory look at this TSA program might put one in mind of Orwell's "facecrime," and that's the road the Newsweek writer goes down. Yet some who bemoan the security theater historically run by the TSA point to the gold standard of airport security, Tel Aviv airport, and wonder why TSA officers can't act more like the Israelis. Bruce Schneier wrote recently about one reason why the Israeli security model isn't completely transplantable to these shores: scale. And here's Schneier's take on behavioral profiling from a year ago. That's what the BDOs will be trying for: scrutinizing intent instead of pocket knives. Let's just hope they don't get swamped with false positives.
What is there to worry about? Odds are you're safe if you don't sweat (quite literally)
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
The Israeli airline has been profiling passengers all sorts of ways for decades. This sounds a lot like one of the methods they employ.
The vast majority of Americans take the "Hey, if it has the chance of keeping me safer, it's ok" stance with the TSA. I recently took an international flight out of the US on a Sunday morning - which is one of the "busy" times. Only took me 20 minutes to get through the security checkpoint line. To keep things in perspective, I spoke to a few people that didn't check-in /print boarding passes online - it took them 2 hours to get their luggage checked, but only 10 minutes to get through security. I know the TSA is a regular punching bag on slashdot.. but it's really a *minor* inconvenience that has the potential to stop a few idiots from doing stupid things. Is there really so much wrong with that?
So smile, smile, smile, especially while you take your shoes off as ordered and surrender your fluids. Or just drive instead.
Israeli security is the "gold standard" because it needs to be.
For a different take on (what I assume is) the same program, read this article. I think the writer of TFA may be overreacting - in this article, an officer simply noticed someone acting suspiciously, and it turned out that he was carrying a 9 mm handgun and thirty rounds without a permit. No trick, no "micro-expressions", just good old-fashioned alertness.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
As a brown man with a beard, it won't be long before they stop me for having funny "microexpressions."
Yay!
We Americans aspire to be something better.
But I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of people who are trying to scrutinize people by looking for subtle clues to their state of mind as they go through security and flag some people for better security. It's got to be better than the "random" checking that goes on now.
The flipside to that is that I don't trust anybody I've interacted with at TSA to be astute enough to actually flag people properly. One *might* be able to get a few well trained people everywhere, but you're not going to be able to get enough to do any good. The next logical step is going to be trying to integrate it with all those "face recognition" programs we're always hearing about...and that won't work so well either.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext.
Do they collect statistics on how powers like this are used? In the UK, the police have had to start collecting statistics on the use of stop and search powers, because of concerns about racial profiling. The statistics have verified claims that the behaviour of the subjects is not what's being used by officers when deciding to search, the race of the subject is. Of course, this has lead to claims that the police are trying to find excuses to stop and search large parties of other ethnic group, to alter their statistics, without any probable cause (eg searching all passengers coming of a train for weapons, when they had no evidence that any existed)
I'm not necessarily against this kind of selection, but I do believe that it needs to be implemented carefully to prevent abuse and unfair treatment of certain sections of the population, so that not only is the security done right, it's seen to be done right.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
Yeah, we know! It says so in the story summary:
Yet some who bemoan the security theater historically run by the TSA point to the gold standard of airport security, Tel Aviv airport, and wonder why TSA officers can't act more like the Israelis.
That said, you don't want to act like them. It's about as anti-American as you can become. And I'm not talking about anti-Americanism as in disliking America today. I'm talking about anti-Americanism as directly violating and contradicting the ideals of the Founding Fathers: freedom, justice, individuality and tolerance.
A cursory look at this TSA program might put one in mind of Orwell's "facecrime," and that's the road the Newsweek writer goes down.
Because he is an educated journalist who has background knowledge like how such stuff like judging people by their faces combined with "pseudo science" can end up.
Stop skipping history classes for being a Slashdot editor, kid.
I can't believe the people on here acting like this is a good thing or that Israeli style air force security is a step in the right direction. I just saw a documentary on how the Israelis routinely cavity search ten year old girls just because they are Palestinians. The intent is not to find anything, but to intimidate them and their families from returning to Israel. Even Israeli citizens, particularly female, who have publicly disagreed with militarist policies are strip searched simply to humiliate them and discourage them from travel.
That's really where we should be heading in America, is it now? So, since our Palestinians equivalents are the Mexicans then I suppose our lovely new Israeli style airport security policy ought to include strip searching and fondling all young Mexican girls in order to discourage them from travel. I mean after all, that's the example the Israelis offer. It has worked so well for them so far, hasn't it.
If we really want to stop terrorism, then perhaps we should start by not dropping bombs on foreign countries and killing hundreds of civilians each week. That might be an even more effective method than assigning the gestapo to the airports.
This is the lesson that the British are learning. However it seems that the British are slow learners. The Spanish learned the lesson fast. We Americans still seem utterly clueless!
The MSNBC commentator called it a pseudo-science because that's exactly what it is.
There are exactly zero citations in MEDLINE and PsycINFO for a peer-reviewed study done on normal people using this technique. There's one where it was used to help people with schizophrenia learn emotional cues in others. The only other citation was a book chapter (which isn't a study).
So yes, when you have little or no science in the psychological and medical databases to back up your psychological technique, we call that a pseudo-science -- it's not a real, proven technique.
And because of this, it definitely should NOT be used at airports. There is a great deal of science showing how lousy humans are at detecting lying, including nonverbal cues.
--
Get your psych on: http://psychcentral.com/
It's the mustache twirl that gives them away.
I can learn how not to do it...I wonder how much the consultant got paid? ;)
"Arabs" != Muslims.
There exist non-Muslim Arabs, and there exist non-Arab Muslim groups (Iranians for a start).
-b.
Israel has exactly the same threats as the U.S. w.r.t. terrorists. Ever noticed how all those South Americans whose families were murdered by the CIA don't infact blow up U.S. airplanes? Ever seen a North Korean hijacker? etc.
Yes, there are demographic differences : Israel's terrorists are usually palistinian, and thus look exactly like Israelis. America's terrorists are usually Saudi Arabian, i.e. half African but nothing like African Americans.
In fact racial profiling for terrorists would work quite well in the U.S. and E.U. People just aren't interested in risking their lives to hurt you, unless their religious.
Our position will only becomes as bad as Israel's when crazy American Christians start blowing up airplanes.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext.
They already have this option!
This is designed to make that option actually, you know, useful.
Even if you think it could be "abused", they can already effectively select anyone, for any reason, for secondary inspection. That's the whole point of trying to use some kind of behavioral cues, instead of just randomly doing it to anyone (or young blonde women), or only persons who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent.
Yes, as you say, it needs to be done right. But please read Schneier's article and the New York Times story on the topic.
This is more money impudently squandered.
Passengers are not the only worry for airport security. For most of modern US history, passengers have posed little concern. At the same time, the US has had many international enemies.
Airports are full of security holes. Other freight handling systems are full of security holes. "Appearing" to do things to improve security is a political strategy.
The USA is not more secure. But government is much, much bigger... and has more power than a supposed democracy should give it.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Maybe 'it's a well-understood skill that can be taught and learned', but so is astrology. Does that stop it from being a pseudoscience?
Perhaps that's the key - from now on the TSA can do natal charts for all passengers and use horoscopes to work out which ones are terrorists!
will be those, who already know, that they will die: suicide bombers. Nothing really matters to them anymore besides their mission. Perhaps this is what the BDO are really trained to look out for: exceptionally calm persons?
Shashdot already has enough flame wars.
I travel regularly all over the U.S. I am huge on security and want me and my family to be safe.
However, what security does the TSA provide? It's pretty obvious that any intelligent enemy will continue to change tatics. This became all the more clear to me when the TSA harassed my wife for more than 5 minutes recently about my 4 month old son's baby bottle. It was more than three ounces because he eats more than three ounces, this was a revelation. They also continue to harass me for 'electronics density'.
You can't travel regularly without flying airlines. Terror is something pretty straight forward and it's being inflicted on america every day by the TSA. We are no safer.
Best case I can always go through security with just my book and my boxers. (they'll search my book for cellulose density) I'll then superglue my face so I have no expression and do the robot through the airport.
How long before some news agency trains a few reporters on how to "act suspicious" without committing any crime, then sends them into the airport?
How long before terrorists catch on and play this diversion game too? If the real terrorists can train themselves to "look normal" and pay some college students to "spoof the system" as a distraction, will that lead to another air disaster?
In the game of spy-vs-spy, or rather the TSA vs. real or imagined terrorists, no technique is foolproof.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That's the problem with using the media's term. Look up Paul Ekman from USCSF. He has numerous published papers on facial expressions and affect.
The question isn't whether the study of micro-expressions is science or not; the question is whether particular claims or assumptions about micro expressions exceed what is scientifically defensible, particularly whether inferences made from the study of micro-expressions are reliable. They're almost certainly, in this context, not.
It all has to do with the nature of evidence. Evidence forms a network, within which inferences can be made. Any single strand of that network will tend to be unreliable.
For example, if you know a person well, you probably could use micro-expressions very effectively. If you knew a lot about what the person is doing, you probably could as well. However, as a screening test, it is bound to be extremely unreliable. Even if you catch a fleeting glimpse of anger, disgust, or contempt on somebody's face in an airport security line, even presuming you are correct, it tells you absolutely nothing about that person, other than he is angry, disgusted, or contemptuous. Anybody who has done much traveling by air is bound to feel those things from time to time.
This is the problem with all screening tests that look for something extremely rare in the general population. Even with a highly reliable test, the rate of false positives will tend to be much higher than the rate of true positives. This is the problem with random drug tests; unless you are testing for a drug that is very commonly used, you don't have a great deal of certainty from a positive test, unless you have other evidence leading you to suspect drug use.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I know that airport security is a tough issue, and something that needs to be done right, but allowing an interpretation of a micro-expression to be used to select people for further investigation basically gives the airport staff the option of pulling over anyone, any time under this pretext.
Yes. Except that this is no extension of powers. They ALREADY have the option of pulling over any passenger, at any time, without needing a reason. I guess I don't see the reason for outrage here. You're worried about microexpression recognition being an avenue for abuse? If there's someone who wants to abuse the system, they don't need this to do so.
They can already flag you for additional screening if you seem nervous, fumble for words, generally look shifty, or even if you smell funny (yes, explosives DO have an odor).
What they're doing here is trying to get more sophisticated about detecting behavioral anomalities that might indicate suspicious behavior.
And, frankly, isn't that what we want? The people who get stopped for screening being stopped because they ACTED suspicious, not that they met some demographic profile? No, microexpressions may not be foolproof, and I expect there's a learning curve there. But why shouldn't we applaud the effort to get more scientific here? It replaces the current system of "gut feel."
Of course, they're going to get swamped. And they're going to over-react to each and every one and some $8/hour junior Gestapo wanna-be is going to pull 75-year old grannies out of line for full body cavity searches because they know that sweet grin is just a mask for true evil-doers. Face it, TSA and their staff are worthless suckers on the public money teat. They're the Milhouse Van Houten's of society but armed with the power to ruin your day.
I travel by train you insensitive clod!
Do you know the rights of a Jew in an Arab country? The right to be hung
When the Crusaders retook Jerusalem from Saladin's forces the firt thing they did was massacre the Jewish population who had been living there under the protection of the Moslem forces for generations. Iraq had a sizeable Jewish population until fairly recently.. coincidentally their murders began just after the invasion/liberation (depending on your political PoV) of Iraq. There sre Jews all over the world living in Moslem societies, we shouldn't associate the views of Moslems about them with the views of extremists over Zionists (a lot of Jews recognise that Israel's policies do the whole race no favours while protecting only those who live within the Jewish states' walls.
Most moslems accept unconditionally that Israel only represents a zionist point of view which is a minority view among the world jewry.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
A much bigger question is whether these officials should have those powers. Whether passers rights should not be more respected. This is a deeply political question, to be settled by political means. Denying tools is only very indirect criticism.
I would vastly have preferred airport security stay within the control of the airlines. Perhaps with federal "guidence". Then no question of 4th Amendment could come up. Or maybe "fruit of the poisoned vine" doctrine should be imposed: "20kg cocaine? Hmm ... that's not explosive. Have a nice flight, sir." :)
Has it occurred to anyone that there will most likely NEVER be another successful hijacking of an airliner BECAUSE of 9/11? Any effort to do so will result in another Flight 93. It's not hard to be a hero when you know the only other option is death...I doubt any group of American passengers is likely to sit quietly the next time an Arab with a box cutter starts barking orders.
The over-the-top security measures at our airports are simply political theater and not effective policing methods. I can't believe they still have everyone removing their shoes...thank goodness no one tried to smuggle an IED on board in a bodily orifice. And if anyone swiped MY kid's formula bottle because of some Kubrickian fear of fluids, I'd be on my way to Gitmo for attempting to bend a TSA agent into a pretzel.
Why can't they simply take a nod from Israeli Airlines and stick a guy with an Uzi on board each plane? Lord knows I've been on flights where his presence would have been welcome, if only to subdue the toothless trailer park escapee trying to open the window at 30,000 feet.
And why aren't these same security procedures in place at U-Haul? After all, they haven't always used airplanes to blow up buildings...
All of the money being spent on this bloated home security apparatus, all of the money spent keeping the military stocked with munitions, all of the money spent devising better prosthetic limbs before all of the returning veterans hobbling around begin to make 'victory' in Iraq seem a bit of an oxymoron,,,all of this money might have been better spent reducing our dependence on fossil fuels three decades ago when it first became obvious how vulnerable we were to the vagaries of Middle-Eastern politics. If we'd spent even half the money we have wasted making ourselves feel safe from threats both real and imaginary since 9/11 on alternative fuel research ten years ago, Bin Laden would be penniless and living quietly in a tent in some arid desert, pulling the legs off of scorpions for his sick amusement, instead of enjoying eternal life as the bogeyman of the 21st century.
It would be wise to remember that, througout history, many more people have been killed or imprisoned by their own government than any foreign power. It's probably not such a good idea to make it easy for them.
Here's the information you're interested in. I'm sure you're genuinely interested rather than merely being one of these typical right wing assholes hoping to discredit any opinion you don't like by asking for documentation in the rhetorical manner of Rush Limbaugh or one of the many idiots at Fox News.
0 548687549
I'm willing to assume you're not one of those fascist cunts and that you really are interested in the facts. In that case, this is the video I refer to:
Easiest Targets: The Israeli Policy of Strip Searching Women and Children
description:13-minute video: Five women - Palestinian, American, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish - tell stories of humiliation and harassment by Israeli border guards and airport security officials.
In fact, you will find testimoney by American Christians and Jews as well as Palestinians if you take the time to watch the video.
You can watch it at Google Video with the following link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-69116100
In addition, you can download the torrent from www.onebigtorrent.org which was formerly known as chomskytorrents.org.
I would say enjoy the film, but it's not meant to be an enjoyable film.
Of course Israel is worse than its racist laws. It is a country that declares itself to be for one type of people. Would you object if America decleard itself to be a country only for white christians?
This is a good illustration of the reality of Israel; http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nimer_sultany/ 2007/04/dont_call_it_discrimination.html.printer.f riendly
And yet they're STILL not screening the cargo that goes on the same flights. They'll look in everyones shoes for a bomb, but not in the fucking CRATES.
This space available.
Did you read the entry about Yitzhak Rabin? He was one of the terrorist founders of Israel! For him to be killed by an Israeli terrorist is exquisite justice.
Americans who are visiting Israel once or twice tend to be deeply impressed with Israeli security. Once you get used to it, however, it is easily gamed -- many of the procedures haven't changed for decades, most of the inspectors are 20-somethings making minimum wage and subject to the same levels of boredom as the TSA, and increasingly they don't have the language skills required to do a good interrogation. Once you've gone through a few times, you know what to expect and, assuming you aren't Arab and aren't "in the computer", you can pretty much choose the level of harassment you want assuming you know how to convincingly lie, which is not a particularly difficult skill to learn (and pretty much a required skill for anyone doing work in the area, on either the Israeli or Arab side). And in fact even Palestinians know quite a few ways around the system -- sure, they will be harassed, but it is fairly predictable.
I once did a business trip that involved visiting, in a two-week period, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon (illegal at the time for US citizens, though plenty were there), back to Jordan, back into Israel, Egypt, then Israel again, then out Tel Aviv. I answered lots and lots of questions about where I had been, what I had done, etc etc, lying the whole time, never once came anywhere close to getting stopped. Again, it just isn't that hard...comes with the territory, for better or worse.
Security going into Israel on carriers other than El Al is incredibly lax, worse at times than flights within the USA. So if someone wanted to try to smuggle explosives onto an airplane, in-bound would be the way to go, not out-bound through Tel Aviv. Given that the passenger profiles going into Israel are more or less the same as the profile going out, you'd make the same political statement.
So yes, it is mostly theater and pseudo-science, but makes a great first impression. And folks are making huge amounts of money "consulting" with the Dept of Homeland Security, who no one has ever accused of being the sharpest pencils in the box, on various hare-brained schemes like this.
Okay, so you don't care for this policy. It makes you irritable, but of course you don't want to show it, so all that gets past is micro-expressions. Naturally, that is exactly what they are looking for, and you probably will spill the beans during interrogation, but I doubt they'll believe you.
As for me, I couldn't care less, and actually think this is a good thing. I doubt it will really lead to many false positives and will hopefully be seen as part of a larger policy which will make it easier in general to get through the airport. So while you're sweating in an interrogation room, I'll be breezing through, flip-flops and all. Have fun.
Back in my day when we chiseled our bits into stone and sent them by mule train from village to village...
The editorialist calls that a pseudo-science, but in fact it's a well-understood skill that can be taught and learned.
In fact the "editorialist" is right: for the time being, "microexpressions" are a pseudo-science. That is, the claims for their predictive ability are not sufficiently well-founded, there haven't been large enough studies, and the experiments have not been replicated enough, to justify widespread deployment.
Techniques used by law enforcement should really be studied with the same experimental and statistical rigor as drugs. People get upset, and there are big lawsuits, when a drug causes causes a few deaths per million, but the rate at which some bad law enforcement techniques disable people, lead to injury or death is several orders of magnitude worse.
Mod me down! Put all of your insecurities into it! I know the truth hurts... oppress me! Shut down my dissent! Police these forums with all of the fascistic tendencies you project onto people with whom you disagree!
LOL. Feel better?
It sounds like a psuedo-science to me, regardless of whether you can be "trained in it". (I am sure someone somewhere offers seance training and tarot card reading training).
It is critically important that every American understand what is happening here. The TSA is a government agency. This is not "vote with your dollars" and choose a different airline. This is your federal government detaining and searching you based on how you feel about them. Your government has announced it reserves the right to detain and search you for any reason whatsoever, including bearing the expression of one who holds that same government and its agents, for these very practices, in utter contempt.
And through your hard earned tax dollars you are funding them and their cronies to do this to you. As much as 60% of your working life will be directly to fund the government that is doing this to you, that government whose agents are shouting and you with a boot on your head, with your trousers dropped, and an agent's cold hand - big brother's hand - telling you it is for your own good, that if you would only fall in line they would not have to do this.
But don't worry, so long as you smile, keep your mouth shut, and fall in line, you won't be bothered, citizen.
It is only a matter of time if we do not dramatically reverse course now. If this presidential election comes down to a race between Hillary or Obama and Giuliani, Thompson, or Romney, the decline will only accelerate. If we do not reverse course now, in 8 years we will very likely have passed the point of no return, where these policies are accepted by the populous, where the police state propaganda has thoroughly subdued them, and we will be unable to rouse them to fight.
To avoid this fate you must act now. Get behind a candidate who you can count on not to sell us out to the military industrial complex, who you can count on to wrest us free from the interests of large bankers and financial institutions, who you can count on to defend the letter of the Constitution in its original spirit, for which the blood of many patriots was shed.
And that doesn't mean just posting on internet forums. That means volunteering to travel to, to write to, and to call citizens in the primary states. If we do not get wins for these candidates in the primaries, it will be as good as lost. Now is the time to act to defend your freedom, or you will soon find it has been taken from you and it will be too late. http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
dont even get annoyed by namecalling in this post. because that has gone WAY out of hand.
now this government is intent on detaining people according to their FACE EXPRESSIONS for god's sakes !!!! have you ever seen something like that ? maybe in nazi germany. even not in fascist italy ffs !
some officer treats you poorly, you frown and voila ! youre in jail !!!
dont tell me that this is not bush & co and republican bullshit. because it hell is.
Read radical news here
we are not acting like they're going to throw people in jail for "acting funny". they ARE going to throw people in jail for "acting funny". because this is what it is.
Read radical news here
I visited Israel thrice. On the first visit everyone was searched — in a remote terminal in El Al's exclusive use in a German transfer-point. It was rather annoyed by having to drag my checked-in luggage (which I planned not to see until Tel Aviv) and re-check it in again.
On the second flight, I went through a detailed search both ways — in and out of the country. Somehow these experts read my body-language as suspicious... First, at JFK, they took me to a special room, where they even took my shoes away for X-raying...
On the way back in Tel Aviv, I was also flagged, and the searchers' zeal went even further as they took a test-shot with my camera (to see, if it was real).
Only on the third flight, which was not by El Al did I escape the scrutiny. Either because Continental is not as paranoid (much to the annoyance of some of the Israelis on the flight), or because I was flying with my (very) significant other — a couple is always perceived to be of lower risk.
Now, here why I was not offended. First and foremost, because the Israeli searchers were always extremely polite, well-mannered, and respectful — unlike a typical TSA asshole. (I don't know, why that is. Maybe, because America's low unemployment forces TSA to hire and keep lower quality people...) When they asked for my shoes, for example, they pulled me a chair, so I would not have to stand on the floor bare-feet. After the search, one of them escorted me all the way to the plane chatting and apologizing continuously and handed me over to the stewardess (cutting the line of the boarding passengers), who apologized once more.
Or, maybe, because they weren't looking for bullshit like scissors and other implements, which no terrorist will ever use on a plane again, because it just would not work any more... Because now that we learned, that some hijackers may not be interested in ever landing the hijacked vessel — the passengers and crew will fight them head on (as they did the Shoe Bomber).
Or, more likely, a combination of both factors.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Small country, few airports (one international?) and the USA picks up their defense budget because we were stupid and didn't think the displaced Arabs would be pissed.
Just cause it works there, etc...
Blar.
To everyone who says that this is jackbooted Oppressiveness, what exactly do you propose should we do to make sure that hijackers can't get on a plane?
I agree that most items currently in place (putting toothpaste in a clear zip bag, requiring ID, watch lists, etc) are nothing but band-aids designed to make the government look like it's doing something. This is the closest thing anyone has to identifying actual intent. Yes, it's not fool-proof. Yes, it is open to abuse. Yes, it is based on something very vague. But for anyone who has managed to leave a bar right before a fight breaks out, who knew that people around them were about to get nasty and got out, this is one of the few approaches that can actually work.
If this makes you feel uncomfortable, what exactly do you propose? It's easy to shoot holes in things - how about coming up with some constructive criticism? How about an alternative? Business as usual won't work - so what will?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Lessee, the Administration and the Republicans (and Faux News) say that criticising Bush and the War are one step from terrorism, and now they're watching you (and if you happen to like to play with hardware...), so tell me, how is this not one step from Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's fascism?
"How are they going to keep hijackers off the planes?" some coward whines, forgetting that the locking or fixed-blade box cutters that the 9/11 hijackers used were ALREADY ILLEGAL, and supposed to not be allowed, and that the hardened cockpit doors and more air marshalls were the actual recommended answers.
Wait, wait, someone will be accused of soaking their clothes in nitric acid, and the fabric turned into guncotton, and we'll all be flying naked!
mark
So, what does this comment tell you about yourself? What about the other bits where you think you don't fit in and insult the reader, what does that tell you about yourself?
How could you do a psychological profile on people based on a few small snippets of text without it being complete voodoo anyway?
If you believe that, you're hopelessly irrational. Go read the article... it doesn't offer any evidence that there is any truth to such absurd notions. People on this site REALLY need to learn to think critically, and to apply those skills to things they read.
From the article linked by the less accurate and more sensationalized Newsweek article:It doesn't say anything about "arresting" people. That's retarded, and you're jumping to bullshit conclusions because you think it makes you sound cool among the faux-intellectuals that populate the slashdot comments.
i dont believe that. it is a rational concluded fact.
they have put forward patriot act, and numerous people ended up in the "no fly" lists for just criticizing the bush adm, and cant use any air service in united states as of today.
they have been running a gulag on guantanamo unquestioned for around 8 years, the congress is just being able to get back at them. it is not known how many gulags they have.
attorneys who were not compliant with bush and co were fired.
i can go on an on with shady stuff bush & co has been doing in the last 8 years. but no need to waste time for both of us.
it is just a rational conclusion that this new gig wont be too different.
Read radical news here
The Patriot Act is one of those things that a lot of people (like you, apparently) don't understand. Nobody is put on the no-fly list "for just criticizing the Bush administration", and that has little directly to do with the Patriot Act. Actually, your post is so uninformed and cartoonishly riddled with blind, knee-jerk partisanship--with more than a hint of juvenile talking-point-parroting--that I'm not going to further respond other than to say that there is nothing rational about a single one of your "points". If you want to dialog with me try to sound thoughtful and informed... simply quoting Keith Olbermann at me doesn't impress.
With all that it takes to get TO the airport, what it's like to get THROUGH the airport, having to negotiate wildly unpredictable delays, and after they've confiscated anything you have to drink, any food that's not dry, told you food on the plane will cost you $3 per candy bar and $5 per sandwich... After being questioned by several 90-day-wonder employees, most of which no longer speak English suitably, we're supposed to be perfectly calm and cheery and watch as another 90-day-wonder gives us the Larry-David-One-Eyebrow-Up treatment? There has to be a better way than all this.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Put more of the professional, highly trained security personnel up at the beginning of the process before people board the airplanes. Not in the customs area, after they get off. It appears to me that this whole game is just an exercise to squeeze the last few dollars of duties out of travelers and perhaps to protect US markets.
Have gnu, will travel.
*looks around*
that's gonna be a tough day when the air conditioning goes out at DIA during the summer when it's 104 degrees outside
Flew out of Tel Aviv air port a week ago with a bottle of mineral water in my carry-on. No problem.
I've been warned (and I actually saw a sign in the air port in France to that effect) that my return trip will not be so lenient.
Shachar
Ekman's research is based primarily on the theoretical principle that facial emotional displays are an automatic, uncontrolled process -- in other words, that you smile reflexively because you're happy. In this paradigm, attempting to restrict the display of a facial display will produce a strange expression that'll be easily recognized as fake.
Obviously, that doesn't explain everything. Much to my chagrin, I actually do research in this messy field, and what we've found is that the Ekman approach isn't as good as one would think. One of the issues of Ekman's research is that it's typically done on staged photographs. When we use emotion raters trained on Ekman's Facial Action Coding System to judge the emotional displays in videos of real people making real displays, the inter-rater reliability falls through the floor. (It's even worse if you split off from Ekman's "basic emotion" categories, which are of dubious utility in the real world anyway.) It's not as bad as untrained raters, but it's still not great. This evidence suggests that there's something else going on besides an automatized process. Russell, another researcher in this field, purports an alternative explanation: that emotional displays are in many cases controlled social processes, and can't really be interpreted outside of a social context.
In any event, the parent is right. The claims on "micro-expressions" and Ekman's FACS in general are not nearly as defensible as their proponents in the TSA would like you to believe. From a signal detection standpoint, the problem isn't so much that you'll have misses, but that you'll have false alarms. More worrying, though, is our line of research shows that the miss and false alarm rates are in many ways a function of individual differences. In other words, some raters err more towards too many identifications (high FA rate), and others err towards too few (high miss rate).
As boring as it sounds, more research is needed before this is implemented -- "this" being any security measure based on Ekman's research.
The Freelance Wizard
So does this mean you are going to vote for Ron Paul now?
Libertas in infinitum
Let's just hope they don't get swamped with false positives.
Lets hope they DO get swamped with false positives and stop with this nonsense. Damn. What a bunch of fascist crap.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This kind of shit makes me ashamed to be an American.
Decades ago the US started training federal law enforcement in the same sort of stuff, taken from "neurolinguistic programming" (NLP). The idea was that when answering a question, your eyes go to one side or another according to whether you're telling the truth or not (or using a memorized answer vs. arithmetically calculating a sum, etc.) because the part of the brain nearest where the eyes point is involved.
This was obviously pseudo-science. There was never any evidence that the eyes know what part of the brain does what kind of work, or more precisely, that occular orientation supports or reacts to brain localization. There is, however, ample evidence that the brain holds to traditionally accepted left/right differentiation (called laterality) less than 3/4 of the time. One quarter of right handed females have undifferentiated laterality and 10% have reversed laterality. It's 10% and 5%, respectivley, for rigth handed males. Left handed of both genders are even more likely to violate the "standard". So even if it did work, they'd need to do a brain scan on each person identified using the technique to validate the observations made.
If the new technique (if it *is* a new technique, and *if* it "works") could be foiled by botox or local anesthetic injections to partially paralyze, or TENS unit (electrical pulse) stimulation to tire out, some facial muscles and/or capsacin injections to stimulate some. My preferred techniques for overcoming this observational stuff through conscious control also work for physiological testing (polygraph): biofeedback and yoga. That's hardly news either. Some federal officers were also taught these.
Note that commonly known NLP is not the same NLP taught to the cops. They came from the same people, but the former was created and released later, and differs significantly in many respects. IMO it was created as an "ineffective" smoke screen for the latter.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
You also insinuate that Israel was founded by terrorists, when in fact David Ben Gurion and his party, founders of the State, were socialist leftists and were severely opposed to terrorism in general and the Irgun in particular (look up "Altalena"). Leaders of the Irgun (which was a terrorist organization) such as Menachem Begin, who continued into politics, were in the minority for decades.
Security, laws, and social behaviour rules seem to increase wherever the population density is high, or in other words when lots of people share limited resources.
Perhaps we could increase safety by keeping the population density low and ensuring everyone has access to sufficient resources.
You treat all countries the same so that someone could not use Canada as a 'launching pad' to get into the US if the security was more lax.
This is one reason why some want to crack down on border security. Not because we don't want Jose to come and work for his family, but because someone with something more nefarious in mind could slip into Mexico and then into the US extremely easily.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
As one person pointed out, McV "converted" from christianisty to agnostisism in jail. So I'd say "NRA nuts prefer trucks loaded with explosives parked beneath daycare centers." Yes, NRA nuts are almost alyway crazy Christians but not always. My point was more that American "suicide bombers" would necessarily be crazy Christian.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
"Arabs" != Muslims.
Even non-Muslim Arabs can be Israel's enemies, like Christian Arab George Habash, founder and leader of the PFLP; while some members of the Knesset are (apparently) loyal Arab Muslim Israelis.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
people who were put to no fly list just because they published a pathetically small excerpt criticizing bush & co on their personal blogs were explicitly named here in other media outlets. maybe you are rather uninformed, or choose which information you want to keep ?
Read radical news here
(or people who appear to be Muslims)
...idiot.
instead of trying to 'secure' this and 'secure' that; why not address the heart of the islamic world's grievance with the West? "islamic" terrorists have only surfaced about 55 years ago. hmmmm....what happened 55 years ago?
but oh i guess that's not going to happen, since you'd have to 'give up' what you've illegitimately taken. oh, then you'll let the terrrists win!
anyways, it's resources well spent. we don't need to worry about obesity, cancer, heart disease, car accidents, hurricanes, global warming, pollution, oil depletion, murder, sharks, falling from the stairs, lightning..etc.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
I suspect that one of the most notorious behaviors detected and promptly investigated by the ever watchful TSA will be the attempt to conceal a large pair of breasts.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Evidently you haven't read today's news about a hijacking in Turkey.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Yes, so?
"Arab" is not equivalent to "oil baron" either, but the parent post didn't mention Muslims (or oil barons) at all.
The parent claimed that Israel's enemies are Arabs, and I think that's a reasonably fair characterization.
To make a long rant short: As someone who is a life-long "false positive", I am annoyed by the way things are going to say the least.