From ABC News:
Security screeners at 40 major airports across the country will be trained next year to use casual conversation to flush out possible terrorists.
The Transportation Security Administration will first teach screeners what suspicious behaviors to look for in travelers. These can include nervousness, wearing a big coat in the summer or reluctance to make eye contact with law enforcement. Then, the screener will quiz passengers on their travel plans in hopes of spotting possible terrorists.
The security technique, called behavior detection or behavior-pattern recognition, is already in place at several major airports, including those in Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Miami and Houston. Behavior detection is a common practice among police officers and customs agents, who often engage arriving passengers they suspect in more detailed conversation. But the proposed program that will be put in place at airport security checkpoints nationwide adds a psychological dimension to the screening process.
[…]
Currently, the TSA screeners do the initial risk assessment and then hand over any suspicious passengers to police for further questioning.
George Naccara, the federal security director at Logan, called the program “a good use of taxpayers’ dollars.” Screeners have not found anyone with terrorist connections but by looking for suspicious behavior have found drug dealers, illegal immigrants and people with outstanding arrest warrants.
The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the screening technique could result in racial profiling.
“This is a code word for targeting brown-skinned males between ages 17 and 45 years. It’s not only racial profiling, it’s ethnic profiling,” said Timothy Sparapani, who oversees privacy rights for the ACLU.
Naccara welcomed the criticism.
“The ACLU is a good check and balance on us. … We welcome the scrutiny. But the essence of our program is based on studying behavioral characteristics rather than physical characteristics,” he said.
Psychologists recognize behavior screening as a legitimate tool that can be used in law enforcement, but caution it can be abused.
This program seems completely innocuous legally, and—as a screening tool—potentially very effective.
The objections of the ACLU rely on the bad faith assumption that screeners will use the program as a backdoor method (“code”) to racially / ethnically profile—which, ironically (when combined with age, gender, and attendant other bits of context such as the way a ticket was paid for, previous travel patterns, passport origin, etc) is precisely what counterterror investigators should be doing in the first place, and which is what law enforcement officers do all the time.
Often this procedure is called “detective work”; sadly, we as a culture have been so conditioned to fear charges of “racism”—even when race or appearance is used supplementally as a tool for increased vigilance—that we’ve surrendered potentially valuable law enforcement tools to the altar of political correctness.
Worse, we’ve begun to see every technique as a disguise for bad-faithed profiling based solely on racial or ethnic makeup. And that, it seems to me, is a shame.
I have no problem with ACLU scrutinizing the program; what I do have a problem with is this tendency on the part of the ACLU to preemptively tarnish programs by suggesting that those who use them will act in bad faith—which practically invites accusations of abuse.
Better they should find instances of bad faith and seek to punish those responsible. But then, that’s not quite so sexy as pretending you’ve cornered the market on the protection of civil liberties.
(h/t Stop the ACLU)
If I were to point out the obvious commonalities of the 9/11 perps or the Madrid bombers or the London bombers or…I think you get the drift, I suppose that is profiling.
In much the same way as pointing out the Enron crooks are middle-aged, WASPY white dudes.
Youngish, single, Muslim males are much more likely to fly airplanes into buildings filled with innocents people and WASPY whities are more likely to bilk us out of billions.
If you apply such findings to say, forest fire probabilities, its called science. To the ACLU, it’s profiling. I sure don’t see them standing up for Ken Lay, however.
El Al has used precisely this technique very effectively for years.
My father took my younger brother and I along on a business trip to Israel when I was in high school. While waiting in the ticket line, two extremely pleasant El Al employees came over to us. One started chatting with my dad and the other with my brother and me.
Very nice, very friendly – we had no idea they had just grilled us on the purpose and plans of our trip and managed to confirm the information with each other until after we were in the air. When done properly, it’s a remarkable tool.
Of course, then we went for the individual searches. That was remarkable in a whole new way.
t/w: method: as in, “Her pat-down method was memorable.”
Word. Especially in light of past intercepted AQ docs that show their eagerness to exploit exactly that sort of ACLU-style lunacy to diminish our ability to detect and protect.
Sillies!!!! We will be able to tell who the terrorists are because THEY will be the ones at the center of the big explosions. Until then, it’s all racially biased speculation.
I disagree. We do not look upon every method as a covert attempt to introduce racial/ethnic profiling. Certain extreme leftists, democrats and the MSM do.
I think that we, as in the flying public and most loyal citizens don’t have any problem with this because we have nothing to hide and we don’t hate this country.
The ACLU’s objections are predictably stupid, but I don’t like the idea either, because this pointless exercise in traveler pacification means I can’t fly anymore.
I’m hypersensitive to disingenuityâ€â€concierges fill me with murderous rageâ€â€so some Fed coming up and fake-chatting with me will make me all edgy and “suspicious,” and I’ll wind up being firehosed in a cage in the airport basement (I exaggerate from repeated experience) while Mo’ Al-C4belt is casually shootin’ the shit with the cops on his way to Raisin Heaven.
It might catch some amateur drug smugglers trying to sneak a decent foreign eight-ball into the U.S. under a fat-roll, but it won’t catch any terrorists. One-man-show shoe-bombing flakes always make crazy spectacles of themselves and get busted. The real guys can’t be rattled by this TV-cop psychic-profiler junk.
Dumb all over.
I disagree Zion. That is how they caught the Millennium bomber. I would hope that the screeners would be taught a bit of a more sophisticated system of behavior detection than “question the guy who is sweating.” And, no I don’t want to hear more about it, because I don’t want the terrorist to know more about it as well.
TSA= Thousands Standing Around
El Al has used precisely this technique very effectively for years.
True, but don’t expect TSA to ask you what your bar mitzvah parasha (Torah portion) was. That question is a lot like the Babe Ruth question supposedly asked of suspected spies in WWII.
Paul is right on the money. El AL may be the safest airline in the world for those familiar with it. I remember reading interviews with security for El AL and they couldn’t seem to understand what the problem was with racially profiling arab men and women who were trying to kill them.
Wake me when a 65 year old Irish grandma blows up a US flight.
I can confirm that whole Israeli questioning deal…double. I was completely excited to go through it and anticipated that it would be a great way to see their security from the user perspective. ..kind of like the Learning Channel up close and personal.
When it actually got down to it and about half way through, I was ready to bolt out the door screaming my innocence. I was actually quite unnerved by the whole process.
If I actually had some nefarious purpose the flop sweat would have looked like a flood and I’d have been shaking like a leaf…maybe that says something about me, I don’t know….all I know is that they were MASTERS at it!
Hm.
1) I like it, on first blush. I’m concerned that in order to be used effectively, we might need to hire some intelligent people for these jobs.
2) I presume/hope that these people will be able to adjust their techniques to account for fear of flying/fear of heights/claustrophobia/travel anxiety, all of which will be manifested in potential passengers.
3) I can only fly because a) I’m on Prozac, and b) I usually have a Bloody Mary as my on-flight drink, because my claustrophobia has gotten worse as airplanes have gotten more cramped and crowded. Seriously, Zion: would Prozac or maybe a flight-day Valium help? (No offense intended.)
4) Cops tend to look for what’s out-of-place. I once got stopped because I’d left my purse at work, and sharp-eyed Burbank policeman saw me pass by him three times (on the way to the freeway, on the way back to the office, and back toward the freeway). I understood immediately that it looked odd, and why–and simply explained that I was exhausted after a 12-hour shift and absent-mindedly left my bag behind.
I liked it much less when I was driving a dented old mint-colored Datsun 710 in the 80s, and got stoped now and again for a combo of “looking poor” and “making sharp turns” (it was never phrased that way, of course). But overall I think profiling works.
As a matter of fact, I suspect that sometimes some black people assume they are being stopped for “DWB” when it’s just some other circumstantial thing like what I’ve gone through time after time.
Law enforcement are supposed to be nosy. Yeah, they shouldn’t act unless they can articulate some kind of probable cause, but once in a while intuition is likely part of the probable cause gestalt.
I used to enjoy flying, back in the days when you could sit in the airport bar and drink beer and smoke cigarettes to prepare. And then sit in the back of the plane and drink beer and smoke cigarettes to make it through.
Nowadays, not so much. Sure, I’d feel better if they’d let me carry a sidearm, but not enough to overcome the lack of beer and cigarettes.
I must be getting old.
Customs already does this (where have you been? who were you with? do you mind if I look through your bag?).
Immigration already does this (why are you here? how long are you staying?).
It only makes sense for the pre-flight screeners to do it as well. That is, if we are trying to protect planes while they are in the air and to cover domestic travelers.
I think the ACLU feels obligated to put in a perfunctory objection whenever the government proposes interacting with civilians. Imagine the fun they’ll have if the government ever takes over health care.
Its worth a try, but too many false positives and it should be discontinued.
Hell, you can’t get any of ‘em to say hello to you, much less chat you up. (“Small world, isn’t it? I once had a box cutter that looked like that…”)
Todd Olson- what might a false positive look like? They are already going through your bag, making you take off your shoes, wanding you, and patting you down if they deem it necessary. They can already call the police over to talk to you.
Furthermore, if this had been done in Orlando, Rigoberto Alpizar might be alive. A screener trained to recognize odd behavior might have questioned him and discovered he was mentally ill and not carrying a bomb.
attila girl—The Beverly Hills PD calls that “violating Municipal Code BBBH” (Being Black in Beverly Hills.)
And we’re going to fight terror with conversation? I can see the ACLU lawsuit now.
“And what did TSA agent Dinsdale do to you, sir.”
“He used…” *gulps convulsively* “…sarcasm…”
As incisive and pithy a critique of the ACLU as I’ve ever read. Now imagine the ACLU actually setting out to find instances of abuse of civil liberties wrt this screening process. Where would they start? Would they possibly begin by canvassing the brown-skinned folks in a given queue in order to determine who among them felt put-upon? I’ll bet that as lawyers they would do just that. It’s Ambulance Chasing 101. Thus demonstrating both the ACLU’s assumption of bad faith and the value of profiling in real-life detective work.
I’m starting to like where this is heading. And if the screeners catch one, they get to chain him to a tank and take him for a scrape. And G_d help him when he reaches the mosh pit.
tw: price… Yeah, I’d pay to see *that*.
Atilla-
They didn’t ask questions of my Judaism (which being, even then, a 6’+ slab of German/Irish Roman Catholicism, would have been fairly useless). It was all questions of where we were going, what hotels we’d be at, people we’d be visiting. Then they checked with each other that the info held up. They were great at it “Oh, I’ve heard that’s a nice hotel” and “Be sure to visit this part of Haifa”.
Let’s face it, if you and your colleagues are planning on hijacking a plane, you might not keep your cover stories straight. It’s not the be all and end all; but it’s a step.
t/w: business: as in, “What business is it of yours why I am getting on this plane with a dozen box cutters? What are you, a racist?”
This is just plain bureaucratic bloat and mission creep. By their own admission they’re catching drug runners, illegal immigrants and those wanted on outstanding warrants. Hell-o? These outcomes are NOT the responsibility of the TSA, and those caught using psychological profiling are not terrorists bent destruction of the aircraft, therefore TSA should not be expanding their techniques on the justification of such secondary effects.
This also looks like a blatant effort to raise the pay of airport screeners, i.e. more training equals more pay, and put them on a level (pay and prestige) equivalent to police officers and other law enforcement personnel–“See the results we’re producing?”
The intrusiveness of being fondled, patted-down, removing clothing is bad enough, now I need to submit to a “conversation” with a baggage screener because cops also use this technique? Absurd.
Cops use the technique when suspicious behavior induces them to investigate further. Merely traveling on an airplane should not be considered suspicious behavior requiring further investigation.
Terrorists are predominately male muslims aged 17-35. Why should TSA expend new resources only cast a wider net to catch the non-terrorist targets of law enforcement?
Thousands Spent Absurdly sounds more like it.
I’m trying to image how they would do this.
“So, how’s Allah treating you?”
“How about those virgins?”
“I don’t know about you, but 72 seems like an awful lot. Heck, 6 or 7 would be fine for me.”
“What are you planning to do after landing?”
So long as they keep it subtle …
Why is the police force allowed to profile serial killers in order to catch them, while it is racist to profile terrorists in order to catch them?
Paul, I suspect that ask questions to verify the Judaism of people like my cousin Attila (of Pillage Idiot blog), who actually present themselves as Jews.
In your case, they might just want to verify your Roman Catholicism, although I’m sure many fewer potential terrorists claim to be Irish Catholic than Jewish.
“The objections of the ACLU rely on the bad faith assumption that screeners will use the program as a backdoor method (“code”) to racially / ethnically profileâ€â€which, ironically (when combined with age, gender, and attendant other bits of context such as the way a ticket was paid for, previous travel patterns, passport origin, etc) is precisely what counterterror investigators should be doing in the first place, and which is what law enforcement officers do all the time.”
where would anyone get the idea that government needs oversight?
Was e’ wearing a large jacket? Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, say no more, know what I mean? Y’know, furtive glances and heavy sweating? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, Guvna.
Yeah, I guess it could result in racial profiling. But the ACLU’s statement is equally applicable to the mere existence of law enforcement entitites. “A shocked ACLU noted that the establishment of law enforcement agencies could lead to racial profiling.”
Well, horrors. And last time I checked, most of the folks in the ACLU camp are all in favor of racial profiling when it comes to handing out government contracts, seats in universities, and jobs in the private sector. I don’t know why the national security context should be any different. It’s not quotas boys, it’s just a thumb on the scale…
My feelings on the issue are a bit more complex than that but it’s good to see the gander getting a bit of the goose’s sauce.
So…as long as a terrorist doesn’t behave in a way that includes:
…then he’s OK? He escapes scrutiny?
This sounds like another Christmas stocking-stuffer for the terrorists. Now they can print ABC News’ checklist off, label it “Evasive Airport Procedures” and append it to their “How to Kill Americans” manuals.
Way-da go ABC!
-Steve