Orwellian Behavior Detection Officers Roam Airports

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

-- George Orwell


Since 2006, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration employs a technique know as (SPOT) -- Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique. According to TSA's 2006 Federal Security Director, "This system is conducted by trained personnel and closely monitored by supervisors."

TSA Website:

The SPOT program utilizes behavior observation and analysis techniques to identify potentially high-risk passengers. Individuals that exhibit suspicious behaviors, such as physical and physiological reactions, may be required to undergo additional screening. The SPOT program serves as additional layer of security and is highly beneficial to all modes of transportation security in that it maximizes the effectiveness of TSOs already deployed, and requires no additional specialized screening equipment. The SPOT program has been deployed to an initial number of airports. A nationwide rollout is planned for the near future.

Three years ago, Time's Sally B. Donnelly described it this way: "Select TSA employees will be trained to identify suspicious individuals who raise red flags by exhibiting unusual or anxious behavior, which can be as simple as changes in mannerisms, excessive sweating on a cool day, or changes in the pitch of a person's voice. Racial or ethnic factors are not a criterion for singling out people, TSA officials say. Those who are identified as suspicious will be examined more thoroughly; for some, the agency will bring in local police to conduct face-to-face interviews and perhaps run the person's name against national criminal databases and determine whether any threat exists. If such inquiries turn up other issues countries with terrorist connections, police officers can pursue the questioning or alert Federal counterterrorism agents. And of course the full retinue of baggage x-rays, magnetometers and other checks for weapons will continue."

In 2007, SOP Newswire claimed "TSA's SPOT-trained security officers are screening travelers for involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered...Individuals exhibiting specific observable behaviors may be referred for additional screening at the checkpoint to include a handwanding, limited pat down and physical inspection of one's carry-on baggage."

Last Thursday Ian MacLeod, with Canwest News Service reported that beginning next year, some air travellers will be scrutinized by airport "behaviour detection officers" for physiological signs of hostile intent -- in other words: screening for dangerous people rather than just for dangerous objects.

Planning for the training and deployment of the plainclothes security officers is to begin this fall, with a pilot project expected to roll out at a major airport in 2010, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority said yesterday. The project's budget is about $400,000.

If successful, "behaviour pattern recognition" could land at major airports across the country.

Similar programs operate in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel, which pioneered spying on people's expressions and body movements for involuntary and fleeting "micro-expressions" and movements suggesting abnormal stress, fear or deception.

"This might indicate a passenger has malicious intentions," said Mathieu Larocque, spokesman for the security authority, which is responsible for pre-board screening of airport passengers. "It offers an additional security layer for the aviation system."

The largest pilots' union in the world has been lobbying the federal government to adopt these procedures for several years.

"We're very, very pleased," said Captain Craig Hall, Canadian director of the national security committee of Air Line Pilots Association International.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration says its "Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques" program has been so successful, it now has more than 2,000 behavioural detection officers patrolling concourses and departure lounges for unusual, anxious or otherwise "suspicious" passenger behaviour.

Without revealing details, the U.S. agency said the officers are trained to discount the typical nervousness, anger and confusion that many travellers experience.

It insists the officers do not use racial, ethnic or religious profiling.

An independent panel of security and aviation experts that reviewed Canadian Air Transport Security Authority operations cautiously recommended to Transport Canada in 2007 that behavioural profiling might work in Canada.

The panel attached some conditions, including that the concept must be planned and implemented so that offensive forms of profiling by front-line personnel are minimized, if not eliminated, and that it not be a substitute for pre-board screening of carry-on luggage.

The U.S. boasts that between January and December 2006, their behavioural screening program stopped 70,000 people for questioning, resulting in upwards of 700 arrests.

But that one-in-100 hit rate involved everything from alleged money-laundering, drug and weapons possession to immigration violations and outstanding arrest warrants. None of the incidents was terrorism related.

The Transportation Security Administration said some did lead to counter-terrorism investigations, but has not elaborated.