I recently ran across an article talking about new “behavioral targetting” techniques being tried out by the TSA at different airports across the country and figured mutineers would be quite interested in the story.
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A moment of truth for many a brown man… |
This is a pretty meaty discussion so I’ve decided to break this up into 2 parts… In this part, let’s take a look at what behavioral targetting entails and some discussion of the Israeli experience with it… in a later post, I’ll go into some of the statistics on how to “prove” Flying While Brown.
First, how does it work? –
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.
…the 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.
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p>Israeli airport security is predicated on this system and doesn’t ask you to remove shoes at the checkpoint; instead, your travel profile is built up based on observation and Q&A. A great case study of these techniques can be found in the difference in the way the Israeli’s handled Richard Reid –
[Israeli Sky Marshal] Dror asks how Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was ever allowed on that American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami.
Too Many Micro-Expressions…
“The first thing: Where is your suitcase? You are not going to the United States without any suitcase,” says Dror. “How, where are you going to spend your time? Are you, are you going to sleep naked in the Central Park? What are you going to do over there without suitcase? So, this is the first question and that (will) raise a lot of red lights.”
In fact, the Israelis got a chance to ask Reid a lot of questions, because he flew El Al last summer. They didn’t like the look of him, so they checked everything in his bags, and everything he was wearing, and then put an armed sky marshal in the seat right next to him.
Dror adds, “I can tell you more than that, I am sure that even the time that he spent here in Israel, we know exactly when he went, where he (had) been, who he meet with.”
The GoodNews / BadNews is that, in the Israeli case, the system works. At least when it comes to providing airline security… Does it cause other problems? Well, lots of folks assert various forms of blowback and swap cause & effect…
In the US, the risk that Behavioral Targetting will devolve into Ethnic Profiling is well recognized –
“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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p>And in fact this is a problem in Israel –
THERE IS no arguing that security officials scrutinize Arabs, including Israeli Arabs, much more carefully than they do Jews. Less risky than Arabs but riskier than Jews, in the eyes of security, are non-Arab gentile passengers. An airport official admitted as much to me off-the-record, while “Jackie,” a former airport security examiner, states plainly that this is the policy.
“Ultimately, it’s a question of [ascertaining a passenger’s] loyalty to Israel,” says Jackie, who worked at Atarot, Ben-Gurion and Eilat airports as well as Israeli airline terminals abroad for a few years during the last decade. “A Jew would only be coming here because he loves Israel, and he wouldn’t commit a terrorist act. You can’t make that same assumption about Israeli Arabs or non-Jews.”
He adds, however, that according to policy, an Israeli Arab who’s served in the IDF is considered no higher a security risk than a Jew. Furthermore, he says, the level of suspicion – and thus the rigor of the airport examination – varies according to the individual Arab or gentile, with the greatest suspicion falling on males between their late teens and mid-30s who are traveling alone.
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p>So a certain level of singling out by ethnicity is at least implicit in the system (as well as by age and sex – but folks don’t seem to get worked up over those 2 as much). Both the defense and the prosecution arguments on this issue boil down to the inherent statistical uncertainties involved –
[An] undeniable fact is that a hijacker or bomber of an Israeli or Israeli-bound airplane is extremely likely to be an Arab or Muslim, while the chance of his being a Jew is infinitesimal. So as long as human judgment is required in airport security, at least some measure of ethnic profiling is probably going to be unavoidable.
But there is still one more undeniable fact: All those countless Arabs and gentiles who get the third degree from Israeli airport security examiners are at least 99.9999% guaranteed not to be hijackers or bombers.
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p>For Browns in the US, the problem becomes that rather than the relatively binary question of “the metal detector beeped”, the criteria for being pulled aside now becomes a softer “you flashed a micro-expression when I asked if you had any fruits or veggie’s in your bag.”
In a second post, I’ll get into more detail on the stats & my (admittedly inconclusive) thoughts on the issue.. For now, back to work 
The only time I ever got asked strange questions was flying within India. I was traveling with my Indian mom and white boyfriend, neither of which had problems. Yet when I got to security they immediately asked me if I was traveling with masala (which I suppose could be a weapon). Perhaps I looked like a terror-fob that day?
How did the person who took that picture of the metal detector not get nailed to the ground for that action?
Screening potential troublemakers using micro-facial expressions? Excellent idea, bit it could be difficult with one section of desis.
M. Nam
What about the fact that many of us are already completely freaked out/annoyed/angry about the way we’re treated at TSA checkpoints in the first place?! Maybe they should just make a special brown line and funnel all of us into it?
If you want to see something funny and disturbing go here.
http://www.break.com/index/indian-guy-has-panic-attack-on-plane.html
This video is going to set Indians back 10 years in terms of plane usage.
Anyone know why this guy is so pissed?
3 · MoorNam said
Actually Moornam, it wouldn’t be. Start at paragraph 2. It’s not just what registers on your face. It’s an entire set of reactions that involve, looking at eye movement, certain lines around the eyes and the forehead. It may be more difficult for the novice trying to use the technique but it would be possible. Additionally, by now, TSA should have realized that most of the people they see flying in the US with a turban and beard are Sikhs and not Islamic extremists. Further, the thought should eventually cross TSA’s mind that Islamic extremists come in all shades. Chechens, anyone? I could see the danger of some false positives being registered with this system, what if someone registers fear simply because they don’t trust a uniformed figure or perhaps, an undeclared item in luggage such as Johnny Walker or bringing jewelry for a wedding. Though that would probably happen after exiting a plane. If applied across the board to all people, it would be a valuable tool, I just don’t see that happening.
I don’t have a problem with them narrowing the application of this technique to persons who have driver’s licenses that were issued in the last 5 years. (excluding of course teenagers nd young children) I use this as an example because when one goes through a security line, one is required to show ID. That would seem to be a non-racial method of profiling. Your average terrorist wouldn’t seem to have been “sleeping” in this country for that amount of time. But that’s just my spec.
I for one think the system needs a lot of refinement – out of 70000 people referred to advanced screening, only about 600-700 were actually guilty of something !! That might seem a lot, but that’s only < 1% effectiveness. I’m sure that if those officers had no training but instead just picked 70000 people due to the slightest suspicion – you’d get the same percentage.
don’t know why my previous comment got cut off…
That might seem a lot, but that’s only < 1% effectiveness. If those officers had no training but picked 70000 people based on the slightest of suspicions, I have a feeling we’d get about the same percentage.
JJ,
Good point. Eyes are equally indicative of emotion as jaw-line. However, the two of them together would give closer results.
Here’s another view on airline security…
M. Nam
5 · ShallowThinker said
The stewardess tried to pass a Red off as Black.
I’ve think I’m onto something – apparently the less than sign causes the rest of the comment to be chopped off, but I swear it looked ok in preview. 😛
anyway – as I was saying that’s less than 1% effectiveness. If the officers had no training but picked 70000 people based on the slightest of suspicions, I’d wager they’d get about the same percentage.
Moornam,
It’s an interesting article. However, I suspect that if left to the market, there would be more racial profiling than is currently conducted by the government. Imagine, airlines one-upping each other in terms of security by taking greater scrutiny on anyone who is brown. Or perhaps, requiring arabic sounding or brown persons to undergo more thorough checks in full view of other passengers simply to give their non-brown passengers a sense of security, justified or not. Oh wait, that already happens.
i’m testing crimson’s theory. He is right < No! He’s wrong.
11 · crimson said
Because it’s part of HTML tags. Same reason why people enclosing something in [i]these[/i] don’t get an italicized word.
I think they should have fenced areas of the plane inside which all brown people sit.
I’ve flown El Al before and they definitely scrutinized the hell outta me even though I was traveling with a group of 25 employees, was born and brought up in America, and had all of my credentials sent in advance. El Al is down right racist when it comes to the Brown. Every piece of underwear in my luggage was taken out. The only good part of the story is that I refused to repack and let the officer do it for me.
I flew El Al to Israel as well… I probably had marginally more Q&A than the white/American guy ahead of me but beyond that, not much else to report. The Q&A was mostly “where do you work”, “show me some of the stuff you work on”, (pulling out one of my tech documentst) “what does this diagram explain?”, etc.
Then again, I was working with the Israeli branch of a US tech company so the security officer was probably more familiar w/ the biz situation that brought me to Haifa….
Travelling without suitcase is not a valid flag IMHO. Regular biz folk travel LA – Tokyo for a day’s work and back. And given the frequcney with which folks travel to India to see family, im sure folks have a whole set of trousers and T-shirts in the Godrej. Saves the hassle of suitcases. MAkes this check very subjective.
Oh and btw, Israeli backpackers do sleep out in the Indian equivalents of Central Park. Go see for yerself.
5 · ShallowThinker said
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxtyisoNBaI
It is funny and pathetic. I guess the fear of being on the plane in flight triggered previous panic attack situation memory. Was he held up at gun point while working as a cab driver/store owner? Was he arrested and threatened with death by shooting back in his home country?
Any deep panic/amygdala reaction will flood the brain with chemicals that will activate memories of previous traumas/fearful situations associated with that chemistry. That’s what post traumatic stress is.
I don’t know the legal issues but I think they should have given him a shot, no pun intended, of propranolol/Inderal.
Or maybe in his case some Heroin.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece on behavior profiling and “microexpressions” several years back. It’s good reading.
There’s very little overlap between “racial profiling” and “behavioral profiling.” The idea of behavioral profiling is that you do not focus on the “obvious” and frequently misleading traits of a person (which is what racial profiling does, and is part of why it’s totally ineffective, and nevermind the civil rights issues).
Behavioral profiling is a very subtle yet effective tool. For further reading, check out Paul Ekman (the guy mentioned in the Gladwell article).
Implemented effectively, I don’t think there’s a great danger of behavioral profiling degenerating into more racial profiling. The danger is in training security personnel poorly, or disregarding preexisting prejudices in your security personnel, not in learning how to read microexpressions and tell-tale behaviors.
Oh, and the comments on that video of the brown guy freaking out on the plane? Some of them were far more disturbing than the video. It’s nice to see that the general public still has no problem with racial profiling…or calling people “dot head” or “terrorists” based on the color of their skin.
Reading about this makes me want to intentionally throw the TSA off guard. Where can I learn how to micro-express myself?
the problem, of course, is that Al Qaeda & their sympathizers also want to flood the system with false positives… So, if I were in charge of the TSA, I’d
1) work hard at finding ways to fight fakers 2) make sure the guys who intentionally fake pay a big price (anything ranging from “hold till you miss your flight” –> rubber glove treatment –> prosecute)
i wouldnt put much stock in what’s essentially an entertainment channel. furthermore anonymity brings out the worst in people, and anonymous sign-on’s is like giving a megaphone to the id. by extension, it makes no sense ot get into an internet debate because one never knows the depth to the blog posture.
The training needed to effectively “fake” microexpressions would almost definitely put that person out of the “suicide bomber” category of terrorist. He or she would be far more useful for infiltration and espionage than for just blowing him/herself up. And nevermind the cost and effort and know-how needed.
Microexpressions are just very hard to fake, mainly because they’re happening at a preconscious level–before your “conscious” mind can get control of your face.
Also, it takes some time to really train someone to do detect microexpressions across the board. The security training is simplified and focuses on key behaviors and traits as a quick-and-dirty way to get the job done, but one presupposes that with time and practice, a good behavioral detector will learn to expand his or her sensitivity and see other things, and probably work faster.
That’s why you are not a security guy at an airport. Travelling without a suitcase, in itself, may not be a major flag. However, I remember descriptions of this Reid guy after the shoe incident. There were plenty of other flags to go with it.
To echo Ros, I just came back from India about two weeks ago and did a solo return trip. The person checking my passport and papers said my passport picture wasn’t an identical picture to my actual face (?). Just for your reference, my passport is nine years old. I was a young teen at the time and now am in my 20s…obviously I wouldn’t look the exact same! He then made a sarcastic comment about me being a woman and ‘going to gurdawara often’ and asked why a woman would ever wear a turban….sad to say, that has never happened to me in a US airport terminal. The only reason they let me through is because his colleague insisted so, since my signature on my passport matched the one on the landing papers I had with me. It was absurd.
indeed. in this case, the guy’s beard in this case is a dead giveaway. he looks a little shady to me to be flying around.
khoofia,
a dead giveaway would be that the guy’s shouting, “Tonight we dine in hell!”
This is not normal behavior for an airline passenger who’s just trying to get home for (from?) the holidays, especially since most airlines stopped serving food of any sort a long time ago.
26 · SkepMod said
Huh? I said – is not a valid flag. You said – may not be a major flag. What’s the BFD?
Naah, he’d be fine. We all know it’s the Persians who’re the bad guys.
I have a whole different kind of problem when I pass through airport security in the US – and it is not from the TSA screeners but the reaction of the average American.
I have a pacemaker and so I have to be frisked each time since going through the usual detector could cause my pacemaker to malfunction. The screeners are fully aware of this – after all, they deal with a lot of passengers who have pacemakers. But the reaction of other passengers at the sight of a brown guy being frisked and checked out thoroughly is one of mild consternation and suspicious glances towards me – and doubtless they hope that I am not on their flight!
28 · khoofia said
Thats why Fidel stays put.
You obviously haven’t been to Delhi airport, international departure after Kumbh Mela OR Goa airport, charter departure after Oakenfold played New Year’s.
I think the lack of clothing, sword and large spear might be the reason he gets flagged …
Lack of clothing? Naah. Not even if you’re dressed in a see-through plastic bag. Or even if you have a suspicious-sounding name.
Air India ?
On a more serious note – is a brown airline a legal / viable business model for international flights. Only brownz allowed – ie those with an OCI card (Overseas Citizen of India) or Indian Passport holders. With BYO lunch. Anyone reckon that this would work ?
In response to why the guy in the video freaked out Kevin G said:
I was thinking more along the lines of “he was drunk as hell”, but your response sounds way cooler.
For a lighter look at flying vhile brown… vatch LMOTP* [1][2][3].
*to be fair guys – go buy the dvd, or at least ask your local store to get a copy. good karma and all that sort of thing.
Why has this been publicized such wildly? So much can happen because of this that it makes me question their intentions. Now the entire news-following public knows of this screening method. Won’t that make regular people more anxious when being screened, resulting in them trying to control their expressions, which might make the narc (sweet! first time I get to use the word literally) more suspicious. Won’t terrorists be able to learn how to properly lie and not trip the TSA lackeys’ powers of überobservation of nanoexpressions? Or, have the TSA already been trained to detect covered-up good and bad expressions?
Great! Now I’m worried that I’ll be taken aside for extra screening because I would be uncontrollably smirking when being screened because I would be thinking of all this stuff.
Sorry to intrude, but this all seems like utter BS to me. We have declared war on nail clippers, water, and books in unfamiliar scripts, not to mention the UK’s variations on the theme of ‘thought-crime’. Now, since only children and the very simple believe that all the security theater is doing anything useful other than training people to obey arbitrary authority, we have invented a class of mysterious beings with super-powers. The mixture of psycho-babble, SF premises, and TV thriller logic is absurd.
Of course, since we are dealing with SECURITY and 911 (what’s the HTML tag for awful, scary, make-me-safe?), we should suspend all critical thinking with respect to premises, efficacy, and long term results. We obscure the program, hide the “results” behind a cloud of authority and secrecy, and lie about anything else that requires it.
First, what is the population of people who are boarding an aircraft with the intent to commandeer it or destroy it? Can anyone offer convincing evidence that it is not a vanishingly small number? (for example 19/676,000,000) Given that premise, the tool used must be extraordinarily acute, the number of false positives statistically huge, or the definition of the quarry changed. Well two out of three is not bad. We see in the article that the definition morphs from an undefined term “terrorist” to “anyone some authority is seeking for some reason”. If one dropped a dragnet around Times Square and “checked the papers” of everyone there, I suspect that you would also turn up a lot of folks with outstanding traffic warrants, bond jumpers, behind on alimony or taxes and the like. If you could also claim them as security successes, what a wonderful addition to our “security” that would be. Further, the article makes no documentable claim that any of this voodoo actually works any better than random intrusions. It’s a secret. Trust us. Do exactly as you are told to do. We are keeping you safe from the boogieman.
We already have a pseudo-scientific device for discovering evil doers. “Lie detector” tests are not admissible evidence in U.S. courts for the simple reason that no one has ever been able to demonstrate that they actually work as advertised. That does not stop the state or corporate authorities from using them as an instrument of coercion. Now we would like to base the decision on whether or not one travels on the whims of a person with unknown qualifications, using a secret system of mind powers, with no effective recourse on the part of the suspect all wrapped in security goobledigook.
Vinod, if you notice in the text and comments, the Israeli authorities essentially divide the world into Jews and non-Jews (not, you will note, non-Israeli citizens). So if your “white” fellow traveler was not a Jew, then the fact that you and he received the same amount of attention does not mean very much. For that matter the suggestion that the U.S. model its air travel system on that of the Israelis makes less sense than demanding that we model our government structure and elections on that of Switzerland.
So end of rant. I look forward to the next installment.
CT.
So on the one hand is my declining metabolism; on the other, I will soon pass through and out of my mid-thirties and thus be less suspicious when I travel. I guess my aging has a bright side after all.
Regarding the comment that “A Jew would only be coming here because he loves Israel, and he wouldn’t commit a terrorist act.”: I think the Hebron massacre of 1994 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs_massacre] provides (only the latest) evidence that that’s not uniformly true — unless, of course, we let everyone define “terrorist” and “patriot” as they wish.
Personally, I think much of what TSA does is essentially “make-work” designed to assuage panicked Americans after 9/11 that the government is actually doing something. And yes, screening the baggage for guns and explosives is a reasonable precaution. But does anyone seriously think that things like plastic knives and box cutters constitute a threat now? Before 9/11, we were operating under a paradigm that hijackers of a plane simply wanted some form of ransom (money or released prisoners) or wanted to flee to some other nation; passengers were more willing to simply wait it out. But now that paradigm has changed; given that the passengers now believe that they will simply die if they don’t do anything, any hijacker on board a plane is likely to be swarmed and beaten to a pulp by a mob of passengers.
The question, of course, is with a 99% false positive rate, with only minor criminals (and not terrorists) being caught, and with the possible creation of thoughtcrimes, is behavioral targetting worth it?
I’m glad I don’t live in Israel. They don’t much believe in privacy.
Patrick Smith recently wrote an excellent summary of the Orwellian comedy that is U.S. airport security.
http://tinyurl.com/2qjyb2
“Americans can now pay to have their personal information put on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security. As cynical as George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens offering up money for their own subjugation…How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.†Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but security spectacle.”
-SG
I had just landed in Atlanta from Heathrow, where I had a miserable time, standing in long lines to get searched. I was sitting down at my gate, waiting to catch a flight to LAX. I covered my face with my hands trying to take a short nap, hoping and praying that it would take care of throbbing headache. Then this annoying middle-aged white ‘lady’ suddenly wakes me up and asks me, “Are you praying?” in a very serious manner. She then proceeds to ask me a bunch of questions. I am thinking to myself, “Lady! Get Lost!”, but being the sensible, diplomatic desi that I am, I decided to play along. She explains that she is an air hostess catching a flight back home. In the guise of making polite conversation, she was obviously trying to find out if I was a terrorist. After she was satisfied and left me alone, my headache disappeared.
That’s what I was going to say. I get so nervous now around people in uniform. I’m sure I’m emitting some sort of fear-amones (ha ha, get it?).
When I flew into Tel Aviv when I was 17, I was asked all kinds of questions (What languages does your father speak? Uhm Marathi?) – this was before 9/11 (duh). I had never, and have never, felt that unwelcome anywhere.
10 · Manju said
OMG..Thats the funniest comment..i broke out laughing like a maniac in my office…i guess ill be shouting “you mu%%^%^F’in people shoot me” if they gave me red label instead of black..
Just returned from my first post 9/11/2001 trip with the lowest number of special security checks (only one). Yaay! I think this has nothing to do with my appearance though, although it might have something to do with my age and country of birth.
This micro-expression stuff sounds good if executed properly, but as others noted earlier, it might simply devolve into racial profiling.
Let me be the first, apparently, to complain about Vinod’s egregious abuse of apostrophes. For shame, man!
I’ve flown El Al twice and I didn’t feel discriminated against. The standard array of questions “why are you coming to Israel?” “who packed your bags?” “do you have any weapons?”, etc. were asked to both Jews and non-Jews. I was a young brown male traveling alone, and the whole questioning process took all of five minutes. the only extra procedure i had to go through was the anthrax swab, but all the other Gentiles faced this too, including a blonde haired blue eyed woman and her child.
it doesn’t hurt either that the girls asking the questions are all good looking 😉