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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.""
Do you Americans realize that you are heading towards a totalitarian regime?
Play more poker.
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."
-- 1984 by George Orwell
Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
"Don't FACE me, bro!"
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
"How are you today?"
"Where are you heading?"
"Is this all your property?"
"It's almost irrelevant what your answers are..." That's because I'm not a black grandma carting a bunch of grandkids around.
This holiday, every person that I saw pulled out for secondary screening was an elderly black woman with a bunch of little kids. "We're looking for behavior indicators that show a certain level of stress, fear or anxiety above and beyond that shown by an anxious member of the traveling public." Wow! What a fantastically detailed legal threshold for a full body search! The TSA considers the program a powerful tool to root out terrorists, but also an antidote to racial profiling. ..."Not!"
Solution: Stay away from America ... if they keep going the way they're going that probably wont be such a sacrifice!
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
Honestly this is awful. From TFA -
... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."
"When someone lies or tries to be deceptive,
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.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Like every good /.er I didn't RTFA. But this reminds me of something that happened to me recently.
I was walking down the street late at night with a friend of mine. All of a sudden he yells out, "Crap!" and starts getting all agitated.
"What are you doing", I asked.
"Don't look! It's the police", he replied. "I always have trouble with them. Every time I see them they follow me and then I end up getting into a hassle."
I looked at him. Then I looked at the police. Then I waved at the police and they drove off.
"How did you do that??", he asked incredulously.
It never occurred to him that his nervousness was the only thing that way attracting the police's attention. For some reason he thought they had it in for him or something.
I suspect that there will be a lot more people being detained if nervousness is a reason to detain someone. There are just people who are nervous around authority figures. And since that nervousness usually gets them into trouble, they become even more nervous. Welcome to longer lineups at the airport...
I couldn't hear you over the latest TV gossip program.
Besides. I feel safe.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I WANT the airport security looking for people acting odd. There's only so many ways someone can put themselves into a position where they can injure or kill the other passengers on a plane and having security folks check for people acting odd seems to be an obvious procedure to follow. Someone acting nervous needs to get greater scrutiny. Profile all you want 'cause I'm thinking a blue haired Grandma ain't the best candidate for security to detain and search.
/.
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
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Anyone seeing my facial expression as I pass through a US airport will immediately see someone pissed off at the delay, disruption and unbelieveable hassle involved with TSA controlled air travel.
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
where did you get that bullshit?
If you can't see people's eyes, it's very difficult to interpret their expressions. Obviously sunglasses-wearing travellers have something to hide. Just to be sure, ship 'em off (modern day transportation of criminals?)
Just as a side-bar, how many of the errrr... ZERO terrorist attacks in the last couple of years would this measure have prevented?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Do you really think someone who is willing to hijack a plane and then fly it into a skyscraper doesn't already have a poker face? I'm also sure the would-be terrorists already travel regularly so they be well accustomed to the different facets of airport security.
First it's facial expressions, next it will be the thought police.
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 to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"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 /."
/. 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...
/. 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.
Oh me too. We all want bad guys doing bad things to be caught. But here on
You might also find the roots of the more prevalent anti-authoritarian attitude here on
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.
For the last five years I have been doing the following when I fly: From the moment I step up to the TSA agent checking id's and boarding passes I look them in the eyes. I would say nine times out of ten they check my id against my boarding pass and initial the bp without ever looking up at me. I want them to do what I did when I ran a cash register at a liquor store, check the picture, check the face, check the picture again. I'm to scared that they'll ruin my day to ever point out to them that they never checked my face against the one on my id. About time some of them are at least being taught to look at our faces.
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!!!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
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?
I pick the line with the female screener and just stare at her tits the whole time.
I'm pretty sure I show all those emotions in the course of a trip through security:
Fear: I'm afraid that these idiots are the ones in charge of "making air travel safe"
Anger: That so many millions of people buy into the farce that is the TSA
Surprise: That the 85 year old lady in a walker ahead of me in line seems to be the biggest prospective threat of the day
Contempt: Take your pick.
I guess I should stop traveling by air?
That's because the terrorists were done messing with airports as of September 12, 2001. Once a battle is won, why keep fighting it?
>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
First and foremost, they are screening for suicide bombers and hijackers.. I think it goes without saying that it's difficult to become a seasoned, experienced suicide bomber. Likewise, with a few notable exceptions, hijackers have a pretty long track record of getting busted on their first go-round.
While I'm sure the TSA would be perfectly happy to catch slippery international career criminals, it's the disposable cannon fodder which most concerns them. Just a guess, but I suspect that the TSA officers receive considerably more training in detecting the behavior of these types, than the criminals themselves receive in suppressing the same.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Get botoxed before travelling.
Yes, you are mistaken.
The Million Man March was held on the Mall in DC in 1995, with somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people.
This garnered a lot of attention and the "Million * March" naming scheme was borrowed by a number of later groups, such as the:
- Million Mom March, May 2000, about 150,000 - 200,000 women advocating for gun control laws
- Million Worker March, 2004, about 10,000 people protesting globalization and free-trade treaties
- Million Family March, 2000, tens-of-thousands of people
Furthermore, there have been an enormous amount of anti-war protests against the war in Iraq, starting in 2002 and continuing to today
There was also a lot of coverage for the 1999 Anti-WTO protests in Seattle, WA that brought out an estimated 50,000-100,000 people.
And, of course, there were so many protesters when Bush was inaugurated into Office in 2000 that he was the first President in over a hundred years that couldn't walk from the capitol to the White House after being sworn-in. He had to be taken there in an armored car.
And you'd be surprised about the proximity to the White House. Nearly all marches/protests are held on the Mall in DC, which is a huge expanse that runs between the US Capitol on one end and the Washington Monument on the other end, with the White House right in between. It's set back a couple hundred yards from the mall, but the protests where abutted right against the White House gate.
You know.. I'm so sick of arrogant Europeans talking trash about how ignorant Americans are, when so many show that same ignorance about Americans themselves. I mean, no offense, in a country like America, with 300,000,000 people and, as the only remaining "Super Power", LOTS of things to protest, to assume that we've had no "major" protests in 30 years just shows an alarming bias/ignorance of our culture.
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.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
To my shame and discredit, I was a TSA Security Officer for about four years (Somebody had to pay the bills while my wife went through med school). If this new program follows any of their other training procedures, it's essentially worthless. They introduced a position for a specially trained "Bomb Appraisal Officer" whom you call in when you see a potential explosive device on the x-ray screen or in a bag search, and this officer's job is to decide whether to call the Bomb Squad. The intense training regimen for this position was two thirty-minute CD-ROMs sent from headquarters. How that is supposed to turn an average screener into an explosives expert, I couldn't say. Aside from a handful of improvements, mostly in terms of physical security (locks, fences around airfields, reinforced cockpit doors) TSA is just window dressing--an elaborate and expensive sleight-of-hand to make the public think that their government is "doing something" about terrorism. But I was obscenely overpaid to do a very simple job for a few years, so I guess I shouldn't complain.
The plain and simple fact of the matter is that all of the proposed mandatory health insurance plans are just that: mandatory health insurance. The government is in no way going to "take over" healthcare and start running hospitals and put all doctors on government payroll. It is ridiculous to think we would just throw out our entire healthcare industry, as it is one of the biggest parts of our US economy.
What the government would do under some of the proposed plans is make health insurance mandatory. That means that every American will be insured. If they can't afford to pay the premiums, they get government help to pay (your tax dollars at work), but if they're working their premium is usually paid partially by their employer and partially by themselves.
The healthcare system stays the same. You can still pick your doctor, pick your hospital. The coverage is mandatory.
Quit spouting the republican FUD about the government taking over all healthcare. It will never happen. The republicans are trying to sell this image of countries like the UK who actually run their own hospitals and hire doctors. This is pretty inefficient, as we've already proven that capitalism works for things like this.
Most reasonable Americans would agree that everyone should have health insurance. The current system for poor people, which is basically, you wait until you're really sick, almost dead, then go to the emergency room for unscheduled, extremely expensive ($$$) healthcare, which you'll never be able to pay the bill for, doesn't work. What does work and is much less costly ($) is to have everyone insured, so that the poor people have the option of going to a regular doctor who might be able to find and resolve health issues early, before they become major emergency room operations that we all have to pay for indirectly (unpaid emergency room bills increase hospital costs, which increases the rate of all healthcare).
But far be it from the Republican and right-wing controlled media to tell you what the healthcare plans are really about. It sounds much more scary and gets more viewers to show some dingy DMV office with lines out the doors and say "POLITICIAN A WANTS TO TURN YOUR HOSPITALS INTO THIS! STORY AT 11!"
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Dude, catch up with the times. The 80s and 90s have passed with the 90s posting 1 hijacking of a US flight. (Out of the tens of thousands of flights a year.) So, obviously, it's time to start detaining people based on some behavioral traits that are sure to be kept secret by those doing the watching. (Can't let the terrorists know what we're looking for.) After all, just like with the No Fly and Watchlist there's no way this will be abused...
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?