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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.
Israeli security is the "gold standard" because it needs to be.
We Americans aspire to be something better.
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..."
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.
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.
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Get your psych on: http://psychcentral.com/
"Arabs" != Muslims.
There exist non-Muslim Arabs, and there exist non-Arab Muslim groups (Iranians for a start).
-b.
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.
Or a fear of a false positive... because god knows, those delays don't impact or affect you psychologically, nor do they fuck with your schedule and cause you to miss your plane...
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." :)
So, does that mean I can ignore them? I mean, if they're not police, they're just regular citizens. The most they can do is talk to the airlines and ask that I not be allowed to board. On the other hand, that's a great basis for me to sue the airlines. I mean, I paid them for a service, and they're denying it. The only way out of that is, of course, to have TSA screening as a part of the contract. Or are you willing to admit that the TSA is a federal police force, and so they do have authority to arrest you or force a search upon you?
Well, that's good to know. You do realize that a lot of people at airports are there to see other people off, right? And given that airport security will screen family that's seeing someone off, I can only imagine that the TSA does as well. So, sure, the TSA isn't "out on every street". They are screening people who aren't flying, though.
In short, because the TSA is unreasonable in its security, we should expect more unreasonable security procedures and not complain about it. Yea, that's *totally* logical...
Well, since it's a fairly new program, we'll just ignore the clear absurdity of it until it rears its ugly head. I mean, it's like if tomorrow there was made a law that every second born child under 12 should be executed on sighting. Since it'd be "a fairly new program" and there wouldn't instantly be "provide[d] any instances of real people encountering problems", we'll just have to wait until the body count grows to a large enough amount to start complaining. And even if the law gets overturned, if Congress kept passing new second-born-child-execution laws, carefully worded to be different yet do the same thing, after a while we'd just have to accept that that's how things are. I mean, it's not like they'd be killing adults or the first born. Irrational tradition beats Constitutionality or sanity.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h