A new screening system that made its debut in 2006, and that
can purportedly identify suspicious airline passengers, is being
used and expanded in airports around the country. It's patterned
after an Israeli model, but the technique was developed 30 years
ago by a former professor who studied the facial movements of
people talking.
Paul Ekman from the University of California at San Francisco
and Maureen O'Sullivan noticed and catalogued various facial
expressions when people tried to conceal their emotions or told
lies. They did this with a video camera, and had to slow down
the film speed in order to see it. They noticed "Flickers"
of expressions, lasting no more than a fraction of a second,
that supposedly give insight into a person's real intentions.
Stemming from this research, the TSA effort is based on the
idea that if a passenger's face registers fear and disgust,
then they are likely to be engaged in some form of deception.
The passenger, then, is under immediate suspicion.
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Working in teams and disguised as regular airport employees,
these new behavior detectors will be scrutinizing passengers
for micro-expressions, social interaction, and body language,
and doing it all with a grand total of sixteen hours of instruction
and training. If the behavior "specialist" decides
that a traveler seems suspicious, they will casually ask them
about their trip, or belongings, and if "more alarms go
off," such as an increase of nervousness, or apparent heart
rate increase, or even sweating occurs, these agents "will
'refer' the person to law enforcement officials for
further questioning."
Amy Kudwa, a TSA public affairs propagandist, says the 2006
pilot program was "very successful" and had netted
"drug carriers, illegal immigrants, and terrorism suspects,"
but she had no documentation or evidence of said "success."
Jay M. Cohen from Homeland Security says they're even looking
toward automating passenger screening through the use of videocams
and computers that will measure and analyze heart rate, respiration,
body temperature and verbal responses as well as facial expressions.
It doesn't take a genius to see that this is bound to fail.
Even the developers said there are inherent problems with the
so-called detection system, as expressions and body language
are easy to misread, particularly among cultures other than
Western. This disclaimer of sorts has not deterred TSA, with
one spokesman, Kip Hawley, describing it as "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 premise of the entire theory is lacking any sort of scientific
basis via long-range studies or cross studies; a grade-schooler
could discern that it is disingenuous. When most people's
faces register fear or disgust, it's because they are fearful
or disgusted — commonplace emotions in airports these days due
to any number of reasons, from delayed and cancelled flights
to the intrusive guilty-until-proven-innocent "security"
searches. The rate of false accusations with this scheme will
probably be close to 100 percent, with most "suspects"
thoroughly innocent of any criminal plans or behavior.
But perhaps that's the point. If I'm a nervous flyer,
or I've just come from a funeral, or I am disdainfully disgusted
with having to disrobe in public, and my face registers this,
will I be whisked off to a back room where constitutional rights
are barred? Will I then be incarcerated with no recourse to
legal representation? And, what's next — truth serum to
determine whether I am a domestic terrorist because I defend
"the U.S. Constitution against [the] federal government
and the UN," or "make
numerous references to the U.S. Constitution?"
Obviously, this is an Orwellian-style infringement on our rights
by the ever-more-powerful federal government. This is the thought-police
in action and control through intimidation and fear.
