The men who stare at airline passengers | Hacker News Reader

The men who stare at airline passengers

economist.com

74 pointswglb26 comments

He says he now avoids peer-reviewed journals because they're read closely by scientists in countries that America considers to be threats.

Wow. Terror as an excuse for draconian policy, I have come to expect. This is the first time I am seeing terror as an excuse for flawed and unscientific 'research'.

The military has its own classified, peer-reviewed journals to provide an outlet for people with legitimate analysis that they'd like to keep out of the hands of foreign agents.

His excuse is remarkably thin.

A few years ago when I was about to board a flight to London from Boston, I was grabbed by the arm by a plains-clothed security type immediately before the airline scanned my boarding pass at the jetway.

He flashed his badge and I was pulled to one side, and he asked if his partner could look through my carry on. As she did this, he asked me about where I had been eating in Boston. He asked many, many questions about Santarpio's, saying he'd never heard of it, asking what they sold, etc.

Given that Santarpio's is immediately next to the airport and sells amazing pizza, it's extremely unlikely that someone who worked at Logan was unfamiliar with it.

At this point, the lady looking at my bag said "he's clean" or similar, the first guy lost all interest in Santarpio's, and they put me back in to the front of the queue.

That's that joint in Eastie, right?

It's basically the last non-airport thing you see before you get to the airport (erm, depending on which of the 4 or so approaches you use to get to the airport, I suppose).

EDIT: it's really good and worth a visit. Get there early and/or be prepared to queue.

Cool, thanks! Will do :) When I'm in Boston, I stay in Southie, so I'll have to get over there.

That's a technique used to gauge your alertness/nervousness and truthfullness. He probably does know a lot about it.

"... a technique used to gauge your alertness/nervousness and truthfullness ..."

Baseline response.

...yeah, I figured out that's what they were trying to do, as he kept asking the same inane questions repeatedly in rapid fire.

Turns out my baseline for him was a quizzical "Are you serious?" look on my face.

(I guess maybe that looks different to a "OMG THEY'RE ON TO ME!" reaction.)

A very strange little encounter.

And if it was just "security theatre", I can't imagine the passengers behind me were comforted by someone being snatched from the line, having their bag riffled through and then put back in line just before getting on a 7 hour flight.

Kudos to the person who came up with that title. Those of you who haven't seen the similarly titled movie or read the book are probably baffled, but I assure you, it very nicely sums up the ridiculousness of this particular program of the TSA (a cynic might even go so far as to say it describes the TSA as a whole, but none of us here are cynics, right? Right? Guys...?)

The economist has always had a good eye for titles and frontpages. Some of them are just amazing.

Also their image captions are nicely done.

As a student of English as a second language, I find it rewarding whenever I spot the references.

Given their reliance on titles and pullouts as design elements it makes sense that they would pay more attention to them.

This reminds me of part of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which talks about "trained" employees at Staten Island (or other points of entry for immigrants) in the nineteenth century, who could spot mental deficiency by looking at the shape of the head (craniometry, but without measurement, just eyeballing). I'm writing this from memory, so I can't go into detail, and I don't have a link to this particular passage. But a significant number of immigrants were put on boats back to Europe just because of the snap judgment of these spotters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man

Paul Ekman's METT and SETT Microexpression Training Tool and Subtle Expression Training Tool, have been in use by many government agencies not just the TSA. http://www.humintell.com/about-us/

From a washington post article: "But the day I spent at Logan confirmed for me that SPOT violates no one's civil rights. Few people were identified. Nearly always, the answers to initial questions made further investigation unnecessary. No record was made, and the passenger lost no time.

Observational techniques are not a substitute for all the other techniques we now use to catch would-be terrorists. But they add another layer to transportation security. They are now being used at fewer than one in 10 major U.S. airports. We need to use them everywhere." How to Spot a Terrorist on the Fly http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10...

"But they add another layer to transportation security."

That's not the point. The question is whether the efficiency of that layer in any way justifies the cost and hassle.

Tangent: does anyone here have experience using Ekman's microexpression training products?

Kind of like the 'divining rod for explosives' used in Iraq: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04sensors...

To figure this out all you have to do is follow the money. :) I love the last part of the story:

During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.

“You need more training,” the general said.

...would achieve similar hit rates if they flipped a coin...

...No scientific evidence exists to support...

...the TSA is "unsure" whether SPOT has ever led to the arrest of an actual, real-life terrorist.

Which probably makes this program fit in perfectly with everything else that TSA is doing.

Israel puts heavy emphasis on human behavioral screening and it's fantastically successful. It seems SPOT is a heavily watered down version. I'm sure all the expensive technology vendors will love to point out SPOT is a failure.

http://www.forward.com/articles/122781/

Thankfully we have very few attempted attacks in America so we don't have the will to implement racial profiling.

If it gets ever gets bad enough we will and it will probably work.

I wouldn't equate the Israeli security with racial profiling. That's a part of it but it mainly involves asking passengers questions and looking for things that are out of the ordinary.

I got stopped leaving Israel once and it wasn't because of racial profiling. I gave them my family's phone number and they called around and it all got resolved.

I'd like to know how much money is invested in this.

Since inception the DHS has been a huge money pit of questionable efficacy. This level of incompetence smells like corruption to me.

40 Billion dollars in funding for 2010. http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

Realizing the costs associated with TSA security theater are frustrating. We all fund it.

I have a vision of a bunch of officials in ill-fitting uniforms giving passengers the Larry David Stare.

It reminds me of China, where they have armed guards at train stations "randomly" questioning anyone they "think" might not have the necessary documents to be moving to (living in) that particular city.

The interesting thing about this technique is that unlike most security techniques it actually might work better the more the enemy knows about it.

Imagine the expression on the face of the terrorist as he's thinking "Must not make suspicious-looking micro-facial movements... must not make suspicious-looking micro-facial movements..."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com