Face readers at the airport

[colemanshs]

So now apparently the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) have hired several "Behavior Detection Officers" to watch people in the airport and read facial expressions to see if they have dangerous plans for their flight. While I am all for increased security, I believe this may be a little extreme. What do you guys think?

Patti Davis: At the Airport, You Better Smile
‘Behavior Detection Officers’ are now watching passengers’ facial expressions for signs of danger. It’s a new level of absurdity for America.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Patti Davis
Special to Newsweek
Updated: 12:40 p.m. ET Aug 16, 2007
Aug. 16, 2007 - It was bound to happen. Now even a frown or grimace can get you into trouble with The Man.

“Specially trained security personnel” will be watching passengers for “micro-expressions” that will reveal treacherous agendas and insidious intentions at airports around the country. These agents, who may literally hold your fate in their hands have been given a lofty, Orwellian name: "Behavior Detection Officers."

Did anyone ever doubt that George Orwell’s prophecies in “1984” would arrive? In that novel, he wrote, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

In the study of “micro-expressions”—yes, it is actually a field of study and there are some who are arrogant enough to call it a science—it has been decided that when people wish to conceal emotions, the truth of their feelings is revealed in facial flashes. These experts have determined that fear and disgust are the key things to look for because they can hint of deception.

Let’s see, fear and disgust in an airport? I’m frightened and disgusted weeks before I have to show up at an airport. In fact, I’ve pretty much sworn off the whole idea of going anywhere by airplane. It’s bad enough that I might be trapped in a crowded plane with no food or water and nonworking toilets for hours; now there are security agents interpreting our facial expressions. The face police, in place at more than a dozen U.S. airports already, aren’t identified as such. But the watcher could be at curbside baggage, the ticket counter or near the metal detectors and X-ray machines. The Transportation Security Administration hopes to have as many as 500 Behavior Detection Officers on the job by the end of 2008.


But what about the woman who is getting on a plane to see a dying relative? Or the man who is traveling to another state to see a cancer specialist in a last bid for extending his life? What about the guy who just had a fight with his spouse and now worries that a plane crash would mean their last words were in anger? We’ve all had the experience of having a bad day, being in a rotten mood—especially at the airport, which has become a modern-day chamber or horrors. On those days, doesn’t it seem like everyone we meet looks sour and unpleasant? The opposite is also true. When we’re happy and joyful, we look at others and see happiness in them. Or even if we don’t, we look at them kindly and with compassion. It’s human nature to look at others through the lens of our own reality.

Here’s where it gets really absurd. Apparently, these Behavior Detection Officers work in pairs. One scenario is that an officer might move in to “help” a passenger retrieve their belongings after they’ve been screened. And then the officer will ask where the passenger is headed. If the passenger’s reaction sets off alarm bells in the officer’s well-trained mind, another officer will move in and detain them. Let’s be really clear here. If a stranger moved in on me like that, I’d tell that person to go to hell, throw in a few other expletives for good measure and probably give them the finger as I stomped off. Of course, I wouldn’t be stomping very far.

So while TSA employees are confiscating our scissors and water bottles, they’re going to secretly be staring at us, looking for some telltale sign of terrorist intent in a grimace, a sigh, a crinkled nose? Who knows what? In the end, the Behavior Detection Officers are the ones who are really acting suspicious. Which is the truth of the matter anyway.

 

[FPNY]

The feds can find more ways to waste our money than I can. Did you see that they paid alomost a million dollars to mail two $.19 washers to Iran. FACE WATCHERS? Gimme a break. However, if they start hiring crotch watchers, I'm applying!

 

[colemanshs]

fair dinkum

Be careful! This could be taken as a terrorist threat!

 

[HartfordGuy]

Typical media over reaction.

BDOs (Behavioral Detection Officers) are not "face watchers". This is nothing new. Your body language is being watched. And it's not just TSA officers who are trained to do this. State and local Police do this too. Don't forget you are on camera everywhere in the airport being watched by Airport personell too.

Basically this goes back to October 2001. Richard Reid, aka: the Shoe bomber, was observed acting very oddly and detained by airport authorities. He was detained so long that he missed his flight. Unfortunately he was let go since he had no prior record and wasn't on the watch list.

He rebooked his flight for another day and did make it onto a flight. Maybe he took a valium? Nonetheless, back then you didn't need to remove your shoes for xray, so he made it onto the plane with his shoe full of explosives.

Thankgoodness he got nervous as it was time to ignite his fuse. His feet sweated so much the fuse was too wet to ignite. A passenger nearby smelled the matches he kept lighting. She was a smoker who was pissed that he was trying to sneek a cigarrette, that is the only reason she alerted a flight attendant.

When the flight attendant tapped him on his arm to stop, he bit her! She screamed loud which triggered several men on the flight to jump the man. Had he sucessfully ignited the fuse the bomb would have brought the plane down over the mid Atlantic.

That is why you have to have your shoes x-rayed now. That is why BDOs work. Had shoes been required to be xrayed then, he would have been caught that day he was originally spotted by the BDO.

The media and public love to mock and bitch about airport security, but everything being done is being done because the threat is real.

As for the liquid restrictions? Go rent the movie DieHard 3. The one with Samual Jackson. The binary liquid explosives are real. A small quantity will bring a plane down. Go to Google and do a search on "Bojenka plot".

So stop yer bitching. Take your damn shoes off and buy your bottle of water after you have gone thru Security.

 

[trawler69]

Oh well those with a fear of flying will be ok, they won't be allowed to. It might just be easier in the secret services didn't arrange the hijackings in the first place. Never had a huge desire to go to the States, have absolutely none now, I trust the Government ever less than our own.

 

[Matthew-]

I think it might be a good thing, but I am not 100% sure.

 

[star-warrior]

Salem witch hunts all over again.

 

[backpacker]

Before the Feds took over security at the Atlanta airport you never had to wait in long lines. Once they took over, they kept staffing at the same level and still no long lines. Then some idiots decided that Atlanta had too many TSA agents, so now we have long lines. Worse than the other major airports. I want to know how reducing the number of TSA agents improved security? They are certainly charging enough fees to cover all the agents they had before. They seem to forget that Atlanta is the busiest airport in the country. Now they are going to people reading faces instead of helping process passengers. Give me a break!

 

[LarsVenice]

So stop yer bitching. Take your damn shoes off and buy your bottle of water after you have gone thru Security.

The complaint here is not about taking one's shoes off or a restriction on liquids that can be taken on board - the subject at matter here is FACE READERS - quite a different matter from shoes and liquids, which are inanimate objects. Faces can easily be misread - an X-ray of one's shoes most likely will be read correctly.

Stop trying to make this into something it isn't. Your analogy fails to make sense.

 

[dunno260]

The problem is that those micro-expressions often are so quick that they defy ordinary observation. It isn't until say the video is analyzed later with a slower pace that you can really observe them.

Clinton's infamous statement on Lewinsky contained two microexpressions of him smirking, indicating he was telling a lie. There is a great chapter in the book Blink about two psychologists who study microexpressions. They study couples having an argument and can predict with astonishing accuracy whether a couple will still be together in five years from 5 minutes of conversation by analyzing the microexpressions.

But despite my feeling that the field is legitimate (some pretty good studies to back the field up so far), I think that this is going to be an utter failure if the training doesn't include any other behavioral clues to watch for. As with a lot of stuff in psychology, a lot of this is fairly obvious stuff, but its nice to be able to offer explinations on those feelings we get about a situation when we aren't certain why we get that feeling. Crap, this whole field is very legitimate (ie you could go to harvard and get a PhD in it). But I think this is destined to be utter failure.

 

[looseliam]

Could we not, perhaps, train some existing TSA agents to do this?

I hate the way this country handles its money.