Airport screening to focus on body language

Ottawa: Beginning next year, some air travellers are to 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 (CATSA) said Thursday. The budget is about $400,000.
If successful, “behaviour pattern recognition” or BPR 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 bodies 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 CATSA, 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 BPR for several years.
But just how effective is spying on people’s expressions and body movements? Especially when measured against the invasiveness of grilling them because they’re sweating on a cold day or sneering at a screening officer. Would it have stopped 9/11? Air India?
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 one-in-100 hit rate involved alleged money-laundering, drug and weapons possession to immigration violations and outstanding arrest warrants.
None were terrorism related.
The TSA says some did lead to counter-terrorism investigations, but so far has not elaborated.
Opponents of BPR suggest close to one out of every 100 people who go through airports have committed or are committing some kind of offence, and that random selection might produce the same hit rate.
Perhaps the best example of a tragic missed opportunity with behavioural profiling is the case of “M. Singh,” the mysterious passenger of doomed Air India flight 182.
A man using that name checked in a suitcase at a Canadian Pacific ticket counter at Vancouver International Airport and insisted it be tagged for Flight 182 out of Toronto even though he didn’t have a confirmed seat. The expensive ticket had been purchased at the last moment in cash; the passenger name had subsequently been changed; and “M. Singh’s” manner in demanding the improper transferring of his bag was aggressive and bullying.
The bag went on to Pearson and was loaded aboard the Air India flight, which exploded June 23, 1985, off the coast of Ireland, killing 329 people.
13/08/09 Ian Macleod/The Ottawa Citizen, Canada

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Categories: Airports Aug 2009, New Aug 2009, Safety Aug 2009