Airport profilers: They’re watching your expressions

PAUL SHUKOVSKY
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
December 25, 2007

If a pair of Transportation Security Administration officers strolling by a Sea-Tac Airport ticket counter wish you happy holidays and ask where you’re traveling, it might be more than just Christmas spirit.

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.

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program — called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) — that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions — a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

“In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip,” said Maccario from his office in Boston. “When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, … there are behavior cues that show it. … A brief flash of fear.”

Such people are referred for secondary screening, which can include a pat-down search and an X-ray exam. The microfacial expressions, he said, are the same across many cultures.

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.

Maccario will not say whether the teams have disrupted any terrorist operations. But he did say that there are active counterterrorism investigations under way that began with referrals from the program.

SPOT began spreading out to airports across the nation two years after initial testing began in 2003 in Boston, Providence, R.I., and Portland, Maine. It’s now at more than 50 airports and continues to grow.

Lynette Blas-Bamba manages Sea-Tac’s 12-officer behavior-detection team. Since the program started here in November 2006, more than 600 people have been referred for secondary inspections, she said. Of those, 11 were arrested.

The officers ask simple questions:

“How are you today?”

“Where are you heading?”

“Is this all your property?”

“It’s almost irrelevant what your answers are,” Maccario said. “It’s more relevant how you respond. Vague, evasive responses — fear shows itself. When you do this long enough, you see it right away.”

Maccario emphasized that the program takes into account the typical stress many of us experience when traveling, especially during the holidays.

Ordinary people who are feeling anxious are “much more open with their body movements and their facial expressions as compared to an operational terrorist (thinking) ‘I’ve got to defeat security,’ ” Maccario said. “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.”

The detection teams look for those indicators to spike when a traveler with something to hide approaches security checkpoints.

Blas-Bamba and her team were trained in fall 2006. She says she did behavioral detection of a sort in her last job as a probation officer. “We all do it to a degree. It’s just a matter of understanding and articulating what we see.”

Part of the training is a cultural awareness component, Maccario said. For example, in some cultures people don’t make eye contact with people in authority.

And to emphasize the sensitivity TSA is bringing to the program, he recalled a meeting with an association for people with Tourette’s disorder to assure them that having a tic will not result in a pat-down.

The TSA considers the program a powerful tool to root out terrorists, but also an antidote to racial profiling.

“We don’t care where you are from,” Maccario said. “It’s no longer subjective. If you are acting a certain way, that’s what is going to attract our attention.

“There is no reliable picture of a terrorist,” he added, citing American terrorists like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and “the fact that al-Qaida continues to recruit people that blend into society.”

The program, however, has raised privacy and civil liberties concerns.

“The problem is behavioral characteristics will be found where you look for them,” the American Civil Liberties of Massachusetts legal director John Reinstein told The Washington Post.

But Naseem Tuffaha, political chairman of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Seattle chapter, looks at the program as a potential step away from racial profiling.

“Our message in working with federal and local authorities has been to make behavioral-based decisions rather than ethnic-profiling decisions. Our message is to really focus on suspicious behavior rather than suspicious-looking people,” he said.

But Tuffaha warned that if the TSA “only looked hard when somebody is Middle Eastern-appearing … then you are still conducting racial profiling under a different name.”

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  1. George on December 27th, 2007

    A sarcasm detector, that’s a real useful invention.

    If they talk to you, say nothing. If they keep talking, respond ‘I’m not deaf, I’m ignoring you’

  2. Jean Bush on December 27th, 2007

    Oh please………….If a passenger is upset over personal problems, perhaps an impended divorce or illness in the family, they are going to be upset way beyond any “normal” stress experienced during travel. This is just another technique for getting people to get comfortable with more herding by the gov. Eventually, “they” will be able to herd us into detention camps without anyone “stressing out.”

  3. f'd on December 27th, 2007

    Hahaha. The idea that we are even discussing this issue speaks volumes about who and what we have become as a society. These human re-treads have been given the authority to have their way with honest, innocent travelers???

    It is over.

  4. Tom on December 27th, 2007

    They end up arresting about 1% of the people they move to “secondary screening.” They would probably arrest a similar percentage if they moved EVERYONE to secondary screening. The Nazis have taken over because we have let them.

  5. S. Wolf Britain on December 27th, 2007

    Amen, Guy and Doll! Is it any wonder I don’t fly? Heck, I never did like flying, and have hardly ever done it over my entire 51 year lifetime, but now they have made me not want to do it at all. With people like us knowing what we know about what they’re really up to, and what is very quickly coming down the pike, we are much more likely to be stressed out for fear of being targeted by these Gestapo, and end up being targeted by them for that very reason. No thanks!

    And, if as George suggests above, we ignore them, or tell them “under advice of legal counsel (and/or ‘my rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights’) I am not answering any questions”, which is what we ALL should say under those circumstances, because they are violating our Constitutional rights just by examining us without probable cause [”unreasonable search and seizure (of information and/or attitudes, etc., when we have a perfect right to completely dislike and to not cooperate with such police-state tactics)”], we will then most-definitely taken even more illegally to the next phase and they will probably seek to intimidate us, threaten us and/or humiliate us (because, as they’ve been trained to believe, we supposedly “have no rights”). The only answer to this is, don’t fly, period.

    Unless I absolutely have to, or have little choice, I’m not going to give them any opportunity(ies) to find my name on their evil target lists, and to put me through a “little” piece of their hell on earth, and/or perhaps worse, like “disappearing” me right then and from there, any sooner than it’s inevitably unavoidable. You think any of the public knows when people are taken to the third and higher levels, and that they are going to let Amnesty International and/or the ACLU know that you’ve been “taken away” even if they did know? In most cases, they’re not going to a damn thing; because most “‘Mur’kans” are brainwashed into believing that “you must deserve it”, and “I’m glad they took them way, they’re probably a terrorist, and the authorities probably just saved us from being harmed”. Presumption of guilt all around. Even people working for the ACLU are going to presume people guilty, like the Hollywood employees they sold out in the 1950s.

    Again, no thanks! I am not going to visit their processing and “herding” centers that airports have become. They definitely have DHS agents on passenger trains, and they probably have agents on every so many long-distance bus lines too. “Welcome to the ‘American-Nazi-Germany Socialist Republic’”, where freedom is a bygone thing, and everyone is supposedly a potential “terrorist”! “Enjoy your stay (if you ever get out of their clutches alive)!”

  6. Doug on December 27th, 2007

    It would be nice if Bush would just stage his Beer Hall Putsch then we could throw him in prison.

  7. Gregory F Fegel on December 27th, 2007

    Less than 1% found to be in violation of anything, and no Terrorists at all.
    Now what they should do is search an additional 70,000 people chosen completely at random, and see how many “violators” they apprehend. If it’s more than 1%, that would prove that their SPOT system is a waste of time and money, and they might as well search people at random. Unless, truth be told, they already know that, and SPOT is really just an EXCUSE to search people at random.

  8. Lisa on December 27th, 2007

    How about if we just respond to their questions with a simple “It’s none of your business where I’m traveling…or…I do not wish to discuss my travels with you”? Is that going to be considered signs of intent of terrorism. ‘Cause that’s what I’m going to say when they start asking me personal questions.

  9. Emmanuel Goldstein on December 27th, 2007

    It is reminiscent of 1984 when Winston is describing his life in front of the telescreen. Not even one slight facial twitch or the Thought Police will know and come and whisk you away to Room 101. What a bunch of nonsense. I do not believe that the TSA hires qualified people. Every test of the baggage screening system has shown corruption to rank incompetence. The quotes sited here show complete arrogance. It takes a well trained INTELLIGENCE officer to actually discern facial expressions. Nevermind the obvious evils of this program, it is flawed from an operational standpoint.

    I agree with S. Wolf Britain here (and Aaron Russo)–don’t fly. To hell with them. If people stopped flying, the airlines would lose money and they would back off or go under. THAT is the free market at work. As long as there are yuppies there will be “security”. Thank the old hippies for tuning out when it counted and then donning a suit and tie and screwing us all.

  10. Linda on December 28th, 2007

    My Brother-in-law is a Security officer in Boston or maybe it’s warwick, RI. Don’t talk to him, he doesn’t like me because I talk about Lovy Govy, he’s also a National Guard. And it doesn’t matter what Govts are planing, God planned this first and it’s Bible/Bable prophecy, so it is going to happen.So therefor I’m a mere mortal and must not know. None of his stupid, God will save me family, will talk to me. They called me Anti-American for talknig about their dear Country and if I don’t like it here, then I can be their guest and GO! Gotta LOVE the IN-laws. Fear drives them…not love. They are haters of the truth.

  11. S. Wolf Britain on December 28th, 2007

    Linda, God didn’t “plan” it, except for His responses to it of course, He just knows the future and knows what evil is going to do before they do it, and that’s how it got into the Bible. Also, the Bible is not “Babble”, please don’t be disrespectful of your Creator and His Word(s), Jesus the Christ. Thank you. Watch out for your counterfeit-”Christian” in-laws, they will be the first to turn you in to the government for supposedly being “subversive”.

    Yes, you’re right, they’re completely deceived, brainwashed and haters of the truth; and their lord and master is Satan or Lucifer, though they falsely think it’s Jesus the Christ. The government’s fraudulent, so-called “Christianity”, theocracy aligned with state, just what the Bible predicted would occur; and very soon they will make it “legally” mandatory to worship their false version of “Christianity” on pain of “or else”. I hope and pray you don’t throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater!

  12. GoodCitizen on December 28th, 2007

    What normal informed citizen who reads the news doesn’t have anxiety and fear when stopped/questioned by authorities who can do anything they want to you—remember, it’s your word against theirs.

    Whether travelling by air or by automobile, even if you have nothing to hide it doesn’t mean someone won’t “find” something to cover their excessive actions.

  13. George on December 28th, 2007

    Advice to ‘terrorists’, get Botox.

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