Next time you're at a TSA checkpoint, put on a happy face
The TSA has been watching people in airports and profiling them based on body language, responses to questions, and other odd behavior. This practice is nothing new, but it's receiving media coverage due to the TSA's plans to roll out the behavior profiling program to several other airports in the next few months.
From USA Today:
Carl Maccario noticed it the instant he watched a tape of three Sept. 11 hijackers going through security at Dulles International Airport.
Not one of the men looked at security guards.
"They all looked away and had their heads down," Maccario says.
Avoiding eye contact with authorities is the kind of behavior that could indicate someone may be planning a terrorist attack, says Maccario, a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program analyst at Boston's Logan International Airport. "The fear of discovery changes people's behavior and body language," he says.
Next year, the TSA says it will train screeners at 40 airports in behavior analysis. The screeners will join a growing number of police officers learning to detect the subtle, often unspoken clues that terrorists and criminals could display.
The technique is called behavior detection or behavior-pattern recognition. It's rooted in the notion that people convey emotions in subconscious gestures, facial expressions, speech patterns and answers to simple questions such as what flight they are taking.
But, of course, the ACLU has rode into town, lawsuits a-flyin' like bullets.
Another USA Today article:
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the technique leads to racial profiling and has sued to stop a behavior-screening program run by the Massachusetts State Police at Boston's Logan International Airport. That program, the first at a U.S. airport when it began in 2002, was challenged last year after a black ACLU official said he was questioned and threatened with arrest if he didn't show identification.
"If you're going to allow police to make searches, question people and even make arrests based on criteria rather than actual evidence of criminality, you're going to have racial profiling," says Barry Steinhardt, a privacy law specialist at the ACLU.
There is no way for this "black ACLU official" to know why he was stopped and questioned. According to the article, all this guy was asked for was some identification. It's highly unlikely that he was stopped because of the color of his skin. I speculate that he was probably resenting his search, the TSA official reacted, and things escalated. But of course, that is speculation. I wasn't there, and the article did not provide any details.
But thank you, Google! Here is a summary of the incident :
The [ACLU] filed the lawsuit on behalf of King Downing, national coordinator of the ACLU's Campaign Against Racial Profiling. According to the lawsuit, Downing was approached by law enforcement officials after he arrived at Logan more than a year ago to attend a meeting on racial profiling. A state trooper stopped Downing, a black man with a short beard, and asked to see identification. When Downing declined to show identification without first knowing why he was being stopped, he was told he would have to leave the airport. But when Downing tried to leave, the trooper followed him and again demanded identification. Downing was then surrounded by three other troopers and told that he was being placed under arrest for failing to show identification. Downing finally agreed to show his identification and travel documents, and was allowed to leave. No charges were filed against him.
And here:
The ACLU's national coordinator for racial profiling says police harassed him at Logan while he made a phone call.
King Downing says police had no reason to ask for his I-D. He refused to show it until he was arrested, but was then released. Downing says he was not acting suspiciously and thinks he was the victim of racial profiling because he is black.
State police insist they focus on behavior: loitering without luggage, wearing heavy clothes on a hot day and watching security methods.
Was he targeted because he was black? Or was he acting and behaving in a strange and suspicious manner?
Some airport and transit police already look for people acting oddly - ”such as wearing a heavy coat in the summer or appearing to be doing surveillance” - and question them about travel plans.
Massachusetts State Police Sgt. Peter DiDomenica calls the program "an antidote to racial profiling" that focuses on "objective behavioral characteristics." He says the program has curbed racial profiling "because we've educated people."
This program looks at people and how they act, not the color of their skin. If we can't make foreign Arab males or Arab-American males between the ages of 18 and 30 the targets of increased scrutiny, then let's try to target suspicious behavior. How are we going to fight the war on terror with both hands tied behind our back?
The national ruckus the ACLU helped stir up has made it almost impossible for security personnel to use their brains proactively to uncover potential terrorists in airports, at our national borders, and at visa offices abroad. That is a tactical error, and as we allow anti-profiling crusaders to stop law enforcement officials from carefully and appropriately using profiling tools, Americans will be needlessly exposed to potential re-runs of September 11th.