-Caveat Lector-
http://eeng.net/CS/blogs/smileycoyote/archive/2007/08/21/627.aspx
?Behavior detection officers? are keeping a close eye on travelers
By KAITLIN DIRRIG
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON | Next time you go to the airport, more eyes may be
following you than you notice.
Reading your body language. Studying the facial cues of the passenger
in front of you. Scanning for signs of bad intentions, the watcher
could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the
one standing behind the ticket checker. Or even curbside with the
baggage attendants.
Called behavior detection officers, they are part of recent security
upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an
aviation industry group in Washington last month, ?a wonderful tool to
be able to identify and do risk management prior to somebody coming
into the airport or approaching the crowded checkpoint.?
The officers are working in more than a dozen airports already, said
Paul Ekman, a former professor at the University of California-San
Francisco who has advised Hawley?s agency.
Amy Kudwa, a Transportation Security Administration public affairs
specialist, said the agency hopes to have 500 behavior detection
officers in place by the end of 2008.
Kudwa described the effort, which began as a pilot program in 2006, as
?very successful? at identifying suspicious airline passengers.
Terrorism suspects have been apprehended, two independent sources said.
At the heart of the new screening system is a theory that when people
try to conceal their emotions, they reveal their feelings in flashes
that Ekman calls ?micro-expressions.? Fear and disgust are the key
ones, he said, because they are associated with deception.
Behavior detection officers work in pairs. Typically, one officer
sizes up passengers openly while the other seems to be performing a
routine security duty. A passenger who arouses suspicion, whether by
micro-expressions, social interaction or body language, gets more
serious scrutiny.
A behavior specialist may decide to move in to help the suspicious
passenger recover belongings that have passed through the baggage
X-ray. Or he may ask where the traveler is going. If more alarms go
off, officers will ?refer? the person to law enforcement officials for
further questioning.
The strategy is based on a time-tested and successful Israeli model,
but in the United States the scrutiny is much less invasive, Ekman
said. American officers receive 56 hours of training.
The use of ?micro-expressions? to identify hidden emotions began
nearly 30 years ago when Ekman and colleague Maureen O?Sullivan began
studying videotapes of people telling lies. When they slowed the
videotapes, they noticed distinct facial movements and began to
catalog them.
The Department of Homeland Security hopes to dramatically enhance such
security practices.
Jay M. Cohen, undersecretary of homeland security for science and
technology, said in May that he wants to automate passenger screening
by using video cameras and computers to measure and analyze heart
rate, respiration, body temperature and verbal responses, as well as
facial micro-expressions.
Homeland Security is seeking proposals from scientists to develop such
technology. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 31.
It faces hurdles, however.
Different cultures express themselves differently. Expressions and
body language are easy to misread, and no one has cataloged them all.
Ekman noted that each culture has its own specific body language, but
that little has been done to study each individually.
Also, automation won?t be easy, especially for the multiple variables
a computer needs to size up people.
Finally, the extensive data-gathering will raise civil-liberties concerns.
?If you discover that someone is at risk for heart disease, what
happens to that information?? Ekman asked. ?How can we be certain that
it?s not sold to third parties??
SOURCE: Kansas City Star
*
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