Airport Profilers Learn to Read Facial Expressions

nldavepc writes "There has been a rather scary development in airport security. Airport profilers are watching people's facial expressions for clues of terrorist intent. According to the article,"Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors.""

Comments

"behavior-detection officers"

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you Americans realize that you are heading towards a totalitarian regime?

Re:"behavior-detection officers"

[ATMAvatar]

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) -- A large mob of terrorists were gunned-down in front of the White House today, after an attempt to assassinate the President. White House officials called the move "an attack on freedom," while onlookers were not so sure.

"They didn't look like terrorists to me," said John Smith, a local resident. He explains, "these people seemed to be angrily protesting some new government policy. One of them was even waving around a sign saying 'Welcome to China'."

President Bush was unavailable for comment.

Re:"behavior-detection officers"

[jacksonj04]

Woah, hang on a second here.

"The government is employing state-of-the-art behaviour tracking and monitoring software? Totalitarian! They want to store all your biometric details on a chip on your passport? Totalitarian!"

Fair enough. Now look at this:

"Airport security are being trained to look for unusual behaviour and nervous looks on people's faces? Totalitarian!"

I would be quite upset if airport security *weren't* trained to look for these things. It's not a faceless computer doing the work, it's not a magical checklist in the sky, it's not invasive, it doesn't need strip search, it requires you to carry no more documentation, it won't slow down security. It will help spot people doing unusual things or looking out of place with a certain element of humanity behind it. Yes this may include a few errors, but overall I'm a lot happier with a real human being trained to better spot dodgy behaviour than any of the other stuff.

Not every change to airport security is a massive invasion of your privacy. Grow up and realise that.

Re:"behavior-detection officers"

[dryueh]

It's exactly the opposite: there are protests, large ones, every day in America. The problem is that they're all pre-approved by police and don't really affect any change. Nearly every protest/demonstration I've gone to (and yes, like many protestors, I went to a bunch when I was a sparkly-minded undergrad) takes the atmosphere of a party or some other social event. You'll see kids banging on drums, playing music, dancing, or whatever.

It would take something pretty extraordinary to elevate a protest to the 'angry mob' you're referring to, given how sanctioned demonstrations are these days.

Re:"behavior-detection officers"

[TheLostSamurai]

...got to wonder what kind of misinformed loonies are making all these decisions Well I think it's pretty clear what kind of loonies we have currently running the country, and it's by no means limited to the president or the republican party. All of congress is pandering to fear-monger tactics in order to attain or keep their spot.

The biggest irony of all is that we have gone down the path that 'The Terrorists', whomever falls under that category, would have wanted. Killing a few thousand people, albeit very tragic, is nothing compared to turning a government against it's own citizens and keeping an entire populous in constant fear. Which they could never have accomplished without the aid of said government.

Re:"behavior-detection officers"

[sacrilicious]

I would be quite upset if airport security *weren't* trained to look for these things.

A question: can these mindreaders detect the difference between "I'm scared of being found out about something illegal" vs "I'm surly and evasive because I don't feel I should have to impress secret police with my joviality"?

The article says that 70,000 people were referred for further screening, of which 700 were booked for some offense like drug possession, weapons charges, or outstanding warrants. So by those numbers, 99% of the people hassled by the program were innocent.

So this super duper collection of fear-detection techniques is (a) inconveniencing the sh*t out of a ton of innocents, and (b) producing results that a blind monkey could produce just as well through sheer statistical accident.

Color me impressed. Don't beat me, I'll smile! Go Amerikka!

America's getting scary

[tech49er]

Solution: Stay away from America ... if they keep going the way they're going that probably wont be such a sacrifice!

What is a terrorist facial expression?

[Nursie]

Honestly this is awful. From TFA -

"When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, ... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."

Now, creative editing aside (lotsa dots in there), what happens when I display a fear microexpression when I'm asked if I have any bomb?

Because that's what's going to happen, because with all this overhyped security I'm tense and slightly afraid when I'm dealing with these people anyway. Why? Because they have the power, on suspiciuon alone, to really ruin my day, my entire holiday, my business trip or perhaps even my life, depending on just how far they want to take everything.

So yes, when I get a grilling from a security agent, he's going to see fear. And the fact I now know (s)he's looking for it will make it even more likely.

Welcome the new world where paranoia becomes a self fulfilling phenomenon.

False positive much?

[Fnord666]

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

So what they are really saying is that this technique has a 99.9% false positive rate. Nice.

Re:False positive much?

[GigsVT]

Worse than that, if you take 70,000 completely random people in any public venue and search them, you'll probably get a few hundred minor drug posession, weapons, and outstanding warrants. So really this has 100% failure rate.

Re:Note to terrorist self

[st0nes]

Good one, but what about people like me who, due to bad experiences in the past are shit scared of authority figures? I always get stopped going through customs & immigration because I can't help looking guilty, even though I'm completely innocent. I've just resigned myself to putting up with the inconvenience of having my bags thoroughly searched and a grilling from uniforms every time I travel. I haven't been to the USA for a while, but I wouldn't be surprised to get a free trip to Guantanamo next time I go...

I wonder if this is evidence-based at all?

[dpbsmith]

Do they have any way of validating that these techniques actually work?

How did they do the experiments? Did they have a pool of real terrorists and anxious innocent passengers and a way of doing double-blind testing?

Or was it the training just done by some expert consultants who possess an air of authority and a confident manner?

Is this any better than using graphology on the passenger's signature... or having a computer run a quick horoscope... or following the methods of the Malleus Maleficarum?

Is there any, any, any reason at all to believe in the validity of these techniques?

How beautifully naive.

[Nursie]

"Then again, I don't insist on wearing tinfoil hats. I WANT bad guys doing bad things caught. I guess I'm in the minority here on /."

Oh me too. We all want bad guys doing bad things to be caught. But here on /. you'll find that people aren't quite as willing as average to submit to full body cavity searches in the name of their own security. Or being hassled for hours in an interrogation room because you looked at someone funny. Maybe because we're more socially dysfunctional than average and are always giving people funny looks by accident...

You might also find the roots of the more prevalent anti-authoritarian attitude here on /. have something to do with the constant flow of stories here on /. (and, to be fair, anywhere else people with half a brain gather) about bad legislation, bad policing, corrupt or transparently bought-out government.

I fundamentally do not agree with the current crop of legislators on who is a "bad guy doing a bad thing", and I also fundamentally disagree with using unreliable methods to detect said individuals.

Well spent money and efforts?

[flajann]

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

Out of 70,000 people that were harassed by these so-called "Airport Profilers", only about 700 of them were found to be guilty of anything at all. That's a pretty lousy false-positive rate of 99%, which means, of course, 69,300 of these people were needlessly bothered and harassed and humiliated and personally violated.

Of the 700 or so that was guilty "of something", none were found to be "terrorists".

Am I missing something here? When was the last time a "terrorist" was found by the TSA in the US? And how much money is being spent on the TSA?

How many people die in traffic accidents per year? 41,000 or so? How many people in the US die of terrorism in the US per year? Let's average over a decade to account for 911. Over the past ten years, an estimated 410,000 died on our roadways, yet only 3000 by terrorists. So nearly 137 times the number of people in the last 10 years died on the road vs. terrorism, and yet how much money is spent on traffic safety vs. Homeland (In)Security? Am I missing something here?

You wonderful hard-earned gun-extracted Tax Dollars being put to such useful and meaningful work!!!

100% fool proof plan to defeat terrorism

[Sir_Real]

Stop being afraid.

There it is. Can't get much simpler than that.

That sure didn't cost 500 billion dollars (a staggering number, no matter the value of the American fiat peso these days). Nor were uncounted lives wasted on the deployment of this plan, or the occupation that followed its deployment.

Now that the war is over, and that I've won it, can we fucking stop now? Can we have our airports back? Can we travel freely amongst ourselves without being scrutinized by the sigmoid wielding high school dropouts? Can we speak freely about liberty and freedom of speech without being branded as 9/11 accomplices?

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?

Re:Scary?

[Umuri]

Ok, here's your scenario.

Two people walk through airport security, one gets through, the other doesn't.

One person is a normal citizen, who hears about the horrid things that happen to detainees and people at the hands of airport security, cannot miss their flight home to visit their grandma who is about to die from cancer, and only has the bare minimum time to get through security and onto the plane.

The other is an actual INTERPOL top 100 criminal. They have survived for years by being able to control their outward appearance and are a master a social engineering in order to avoid security or police in localities.

Guess which one gets through?

There's an old saying, only the bad hackers get caught. That applies to criminals. 99% of anti-criminal measures in place such as this will only stop the poorly conceived, the unintelligent, or the unlucky. It will do nothing about people determined, intelligent, and with a plan, which is the attributes the supposed terrorists who want to blow up planes have.
I'm all for security measures that work, but these aren't it. And that is assuming you subscribe to the group that believes they really are supposed to help catch criminals instead of just promote a more.... federally empowered american government.

I'm not saying my stance, I'm just saying the sides you can view it from.

Re:Behavioural profiling

[iBod]

>Bear in mind you don't get shot for looking suspicious

Oh really?

In London you do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

Re:Predicted long ago

[nahdude812]

Read the article again. It is less than 1%:

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

The scary thing is that there is absolutely no way to oversight this. These officers could start plucking people for absolutely any reason they want, they are being asked to make a value judgment with an expected accuracy of 1%!! It would take thousands of abuses before an officer's abusive behavior could be successfully identified, and the outcome of that could then simply be, "He needs more training." Further, anyone he finds who really is acting fairly suspicious, he could also pluck, an keep closer to a normal success rate, perhaps close enough that the officer's behavior was never abnormal enough to warrant investigation, while he's actively abusing his power the whole time.

Government forces should never for any reason be given authoritative powers which are unable to be subject to external oversight.

Maybe you look like the guy who cut him off in traffic this morning. Maybe he decides to detain a large group just before he detains you, to guarantee that you miss your flight before they can process and pass through the previous group. The point is you simply cannot give unchallengeable power such as this to human beings without it being abused, and with such a small success rate, abuse is both certain and unidentifiable.

Counting catching people on outstanding arrest warrants against their success tally is all the more indicative of their low actual success rate. They want to make their numbers look as good as possible, so they include people they probably had prior knowledge of. These are people whose names and pictures are on a computer screen that morning, the officers know to watch out for them, and would be caught completely independent of this bogus system, but they count it as a win to this system in order to at least hit that 1% mark.

Also what do they mean by weapons violations in the above quote? Is this some guy who forgot he had a pocket knife? If it's something more serious like a gun, isn't he again going to get caught in existing security? I would like to see the number of people they caught who would have slipped through normal security. I'd be surprised if it beat 1 in 10 of the people they did arrest. Even fudging their numbers they can't offer a better number than 1% success rate. This program is a failure out the gate, and it is only an opportunity for abuse without oversight.

Re:And voting for "tax-and-spend" Dems helps?

[RoverDaddy]

Hmmm... the gov't does one thing badly, so the gov't shouldn't do anything? How stupid is that. Hey, I believe in small government, but there is no logic to your argument.

I guess we should all take care of our own roads, buy a fire truck to park in each driveway, take turns policing the streets, pay a local company to do medical research on diseases we don't have (and hardly anyone has), etc.

I have no idea whether government managed health care is a good idea. But politicizing the issue doesn't help us learn anything. If you must bring politics into it, I'll just note that the "tax-and-spend" Republicans haven't done much better at managing the country - the just spend the money on different things.

Re:Yes, you are mistaken...

[encoderer]

Your ignorance still astounds me.

First, I named 6 large protests. Not "4 or 5."

Second, I alluded to NEAR CONSTANT PROTEST of the Iraq War since 2002. Millions of people have been involved in these.

Third, It's a bit pedantic of you to assume that I, a mere mortal, was able to name EVERY LARGE PROTEST in our VAST nation over the last 30 years, isn't it? Especially considering I'm 25....

Fourth, what makes you think they didn't accomplish anything?

Fifth, I've heard your former Prime Minister Blair call the US the "last remaining super power" more than once. I'm not bragging, i'm just stating the facts. The measure of a "Super Power" is not how many nukes does one have. That's the measure of a "Nuclear Power." ..."Super Power" is about economic power, military might, and global influence. I'm seriously not interested in getting into a pissing match over this. I mentioned it only to illustrate that it's patently ABSURD to assume a country like the US has not had an enormous number of protests. You decided to fix upon those 2 words in my post, probably because you found yourself unable to say much about the crux of my argument.

And finally, most Americans haven't protested fuel prices because it's an inconvenience, not an atrocity. Most of us just drive less, drive slower, and drive more efficient vehicles.

Re:Could you speak up?

[LLKrisJ]

... Wait until the next disgruntled teen steps up to your favorite Wall-mart totin' a bigass shooter.

Anyways enough of the stupid talk,

I strongly feel that the US should focus more on taking away the causes of all this senseless terror. You might feel safe but the root of the evil is still there.

And this evil doesn't stem from some crazy ass muslims here and there who just happen to like offing people, just because there are crazy bastards or something.

No, these problems all arise because people, Muslims, Jews and Christians (and throw in some Hindus for good measure) alike are falling victim to injustice, thus making them susceptible to the warmongering of only a handfull of so called 'leaders'.

The Jews got killed in WWII, so the were a bit pissed (and reasonably so). So they went of and conquered themselves some Palestinian land, thus making these guys unhappy (again, reasonably so). You end up with a bunch of Palestinians having nothing anymore, living in the stone age and no discernible way out. In a situation like that it only takes one nut to step up and say 'it's them Jews ho did this to us, lets go out and kill a few...'

Palestinians kill some Jews, Jews blow Lebanon to pieces with some clusterboms and padabing padaboom, you have a full scale war on your hands.

Whose fault is this? Nobodies, except maybe the allies (I explicitly don't blame the US all on it's own) from WWOII who decided to try and create Israel in the way they did. This should have been done using more diplomatic ways I think, even if that would have taken 50 years. Hell, I'm no geopolitical expert, but even a child can see what went wrong.

Same deal with Afghanistan. Russians needed to go so Mujahedein got funded. Once the Russians were gone there was nobody to support the merging nation of Afghanistan. They ended up piss poor and frustrated, a feeding ground for extremists.

Saddam and the whole Iran vs. Irak story... same thing.

Why do you think North Koreans are so pissed?? Because they like to lob a nuke in our backyard and because they think this will make things better for them? NO!!!! Because they are piss poor (They were pawns in the cold war between USSR and USA) and because some Chateau-Neuf-Du-Pape drinking bastard tells them it is our fault and if we go away they wil magically become un-poor.

The problems mentioned here are global problems, caused by the whole world just looking on instead of taking reasonable action. They are not just the USA's fault but the USA is a big player on a global scale, economically, morally and military... They should behave accordingly and not let a bunch of extremists in their own country take over.

It's not 'them vs. us', it's not 'Christians vs. Muslims', it's about people having the right to live freely and not taking everything from them, making them blind with rage so they cannot think straight and do all kinds of stupid crap to eachother.

The US and Europe should do something about THAT instead of herassing me at the airport because I happen to look funny (and I do sometimes, really :) ... Just my two cents

Re:Could you speak up?

[Latinhypercube]

I agree with a lot of what you have written. But it is only part of the picture. You assume all this chaos and hatred has somehow been accidental and a knock-on effect. It isn't and hasn't. It is the result of a sustained effort by various empires (namely the US). The US has consistently entered a country and separated it into 2 regions or clans or whatever and then armed them both, before raping that region of everything. Divide and conquer. Over and over again. Guns and ammunition don't build themselves. It takes investment, planning and expertise to arm an army, and a constant input of ammunition and money. The fact is most people are kept oblivious to this because the truth is so repugnant.