I got this directly from the tsa.gov site:

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/story.html?id=9ab9a6eb-78e1-4a6f-8581-fce2e8c08675&k=37479

Two men in their mid-twenties emerge from a cab and head to the airport check-in counter.
Both are neatly trimmed, sporting new clothes and carrying new luggage. Multiple scars on hardened hands suggest they're mechanics or welders.

One has a small, cherry-coloured burn on the back of his left hand - it doesn't look like a heat burn, but more like a liquid chemical burn.

His companion, meanwhile, appears to have dyed the tips of his hair.
A plainclothes security agent watches.
Why are they both in new clothes? And that fresh burn? Maybe it was some spilled car battery acid. Maybe something else. What about the dyed hair?

That's not something working-class men generally do. Hair discoloration, the agent knows, can be caused by prolonged exposure to chemicals.

She decides the men will be quietly pulled aside and asked a few questions.
As the questioning begins, a second agent studies the men's facial expressions, body and eye movements, even vocal pitches.

The men will be taken to a secure area and questioned further by police, have their names run through a criminal records database and government "watch/no-fly" lists.

Airport surveillance cameras will feed passenger images into a computer program capable of detecting 10,000 separate facial "microexpressions," including signs of fear and deception and, reportedly, even an individual's skin temperature.

This is seriously getting out of hand, and quick.

The problem there is that TSA employees are in charge of the equipment. Every time I fly somewhere I just want to walk up to them, smack the donut out of their hands and tell them to wake the fuck up and get back to work. And stop harassing people and start looking for real shit, not throwing away those evil coffee cups!

But just how effective is spying on people's expressions and body movements?
The U.S. boasts that between January and December 2006, SPOT stopped 70,000 people for questioning, resulting in upwards of 700 arrests.

But that 1-in-100 hit rate involved alleged money-laundering, drug and weapons possession to immigration violations and outstanding arrests warrants.

None were terrorism related. The TSA notes some did lead to counter-terrorism investigations. But the results are not known and TSA officials did not respond to requests for interviews for this story. "

"My guess is that close to 1 out of every 100 people who go through airports have committed or are committing some kind of offence," Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida Levin College law professor, said in an interview. "In other words, random selection might produce the same hit rate, without bothering with the expense associated with the program. Since we already subject all passengers and luggage to technological and occasional physical searches, why is such a flawed program needed?"
Emphasis mine.

Boasting about being as good as random? Where can I apply the job?

Hey, don't forget, it's technology and highly skilled security that caught Cat Stevens attempt to board a plane, fly across the atlantic, and do something really evil like sing "Peace Train" or "Father and Son".

Airport surveillance cameras will feed passenger images into a computer program capable of detecting 10,000 separate facial "microexpressions," including signs of fear and deception and, reportedly, even an individual's skin temperature.

Yep, I never get nervous when speaking to a border agent. What if you have a facial tick? I guess you don't get to travel ;).


Cheers,

Hey, don't forget, it's technology and highly skilled security that caught Cat Stevens attempt to board a plane, fly across the atlantic, and do something really evil like sing "Peace Train" or "Father and Son".


You meat that ISN'T evil?