The Men Who Stare At Airline Passengers, Coming To the UK

An anonymous reader writes, "The Economist's Gulliver reports on a story in Nature that questions the current airport security regimen," excerpting: "Over the past four years, some 3,000 officers in America's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been specially trained to spot potential terrorists at airports. The programme, known as SPOT, for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, is intended to allow airport security officers to use tiny facial cues to identify people who are acting suspiciously. The British government is currently launching a new screening regime modelled on the Americans' SPOT. There's just one problem with all this: there's no evidence that SPOT is actually effective. The whole thing is mostly based on pseudoscience, Sharon Weinberger reports in Nature." Happily, Nature's original article is available in full, rather than paywalled.

Comments

Pseudoscience?

[Vinegar Joe]

there's no evidence that SPOT is actually effective.

Seems it works pretty go for El Al.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23795196-heathrow-staff-taught-new-way-to-spot-a-plane-bombers.do

There's just one problem with all this..

[qwerty8ytrewq]

Just one problem? This system is like parapsychology clairvoyance crossed with plain old applied gut-instinct prejudice. These SPOT crews are using humans in a pyscological 'sniffer dog' role. Sniffer dogs cannot be called to testify, and can be trained to 'find' things anywhere. The only upside seems to be as a redundant fail-safe system that might be a little independant from tech.

Re:Effective...

[Interoperable]

Reminds me of this.