Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Watching you watching me

WASHINGTON — Next time you go to the airport, there may be more eyes on you than you notice.

Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers 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 the one next to the curbside baggage attendant.

They're called Behavior Detection Officers, and they're part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described them 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 officers are working in more than a dozen airports already, according to Paul Ekman, a former professor at the University of California at San Francisco who has advised Hawley's agency on the program. Amy Kudwa, a TSA public affairs specialist, said the agency hopes to have 500 behavior detection officers in place by the end of 2008.

Read the rest, from McClatchy.

Have a nice day.

4 comments:

  1. Behavior Detection Officers: Usless against terrorists, but they'll sure keep the general population guessing!

    Nothing and no one is a greater threat than the government itself. Seriously.

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  2. Haik, thanks for commenting. I agree with you. I kinda cackle at these euphemisms (BTO's, what a joke!)Did you happen to attend the racial profiling forum at the UU last night? I was knackered after a long work day and needed to slow down a bit, so decided not to go. These issues are important to Greens (hell, to all of us), but my feeling is, if I go, I want to get involved. I already have enouth to say grace over with my other community work. :-)

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  3. I rarely go out or do anything these days that isn't work or family related. Wasn't at the UU, probably won't make it to McKinney either. I wish I could but the wife and kids need me from 5-10 every night. Having kids isn't necessarily easy, I'm finding.

    Do you have Dutch citizenship? I'm 1/32 Dutch. The Netherlands is an enlightend country.

    ReplyDelete

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