TSA to punish fliers for facecrime

TSA screeners are learning to recognize set of secret, forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken off and given a thorough, secondary screening:

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program -- called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) -- that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.
But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions -- a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.
"In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip," said Maccario from his office in Boston. "When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, ... there are behavior cues that show it. ... A brief flash of fear."

Making Light's Avram Grumer draws a vivid parallel to Orwell's facecrime:

He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, Chapter 5)

It's a complicated issue: on the one hand, this beats racial profiling (as the article notes). On the other hand, the penalty for wearing the wrong face is nigh-unlimited. We've all heard stories of screeners detaining people, forbidding them to fly, and so on, in a kind of bottomless expression of authority without oversight. I'd feel a lot better about this if the TSA would publish the forbidden faces (look, if it's peer-reviewed science, that means terrorists can just look it up in the damned journals, and if it's not science, why should we believe it works?) so that we can all verify for ourselves whether this actually works or whether it's just a bunch of hooey; I'd also feel better if the TSA acted as though the Constitution mattered to them, securing us from unreasonable search and seizure, being answerable to us as their tax-paying employers, and maintaining the presumption of innocence throughout our travelling experience. Link (via Making Light)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Teapunk

Sounds like total science fiction to me. How could this even work? Every time I fly I look angry, tired, aggressive, annoyed and afraid (of not catching my plane because I’m stuck in security and the gate hasn’t been announced yet).
And so does everybody else.
So that would mean nobody is allowed to board a plane who isn’t really good at poker.
Krisjohn

Next up, phrenology.
cyberself

I also fly in and out of Israel a lot and they use this method regularly. Although it can be scary and intimidating (I’ve been stopped and pulled aside a few times), they are really just looking for people that look like they’re trying to hide something. If you’ve ever been someone trying to hide something then you know what I’m talking about. If, for some unfortunate reason, your natural disposition is to look shady, nervous, and or guilty looking you’ll probably hate this new technique, but as previous posters have said, it has been very successful in properly identifying and dealing with potential red flags.
remmelt

@ #62, the 1% makes it sound like 1 in 100 passengers want to blow up planes. This is so ridiculously far from the truth that it’s not even funny. I think it’s very important to point what the real numbers are, or the TSA could use this as implied justification of their methods and existence.

I know you weren’t implying that though, just saying.

Leaves me wondering what those 700 people were arrested for… I guess it must have been a test in the wild, not with planted bogeys.
Quibbler

I’m pretty sure customs have been doing this for many years. They lurk behind those half-silvered glass windows. Try looking at these windows with a shit-scared expression on your face and see if you don’t end up being butt searched.
danegeld

I love Gerry Adams take on the whole affair: he’s someone who might rightly be considered a terrorist threat – heading the political wing of the IRA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/aug/24/travelnews.g2
jamie

From the article: “In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip,” said Maccario from his office in Boston. “When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, … there are behavior cues that show it. … A brief flash of fear.”

Oh, i’ve totally had this happen to me at Logan.

The airline gate agents had just swiped my boarding pass at the top of the jet bridge and someone grabbed my shoulder and asked me to step aside.

Two TSA people took me out of the line, a meter or two away, and proceeded to have a nice little chat to me about my trip for 5 minutes.

“Why were you here? Who were you visiting? What is your job?”… the usual sort of stuff. Towards the end it got weird… “What did you do for fun? Yeah, ‘fun’, you must have done something for fun? Did you eat out? What sort of restaurant is that? What topping did you have on your pizza? Was it any good?”

He completely lost interest and told me to go when I was in the middle of my endorsement for Santarpio’s pepperoni pizza.

But, yeah. A series of rapid-fire questions, seemingly unrelated, and nothing to do with security, and then they get bored and walk away. Sheesh, if you’re going to ask a question, at least wait to hear the answer.
stevew

#17 has it. The one thing that the TSA can’t do is surprise; but fear anger and contempt (for them), I feel it every time. In Seattle last July the TSA told an 85 year old, blue eyed woman (mine) with a long braid that she’d never fly again for not taking her shoes off. They forgot to get any names just quick with the threat of banishment from the skies.

Fifteen years ago leaving Frankfurt the German security team did a thorough pat frisk of every single passenger of a 747 quickly and efficiently. No one had any cause for complaint. The TSA looks like a clown fantasy camp in comparison.
FredicvsMaximvs

All this is assuming that “the terr’ists” are actually going to be frightened or feeling guilty at the security line. If they feel like they’re doing a good thing for their cause, and they’ve been promised a glorious afterlife replete with heaps o’ virgins at their disposal, they might be more on the happy and excited end of things, doncha think?
MHotel

I’m sorry, Axel, what I said was rude. Still, I don’t think it’s particularly good etiquette to complain that an article on a site which is largely populated and maintained by, as you call us, Usaians does not explicate acronyms with which a majority of its readers are familiar, especially when there’s about 4,010 articles a month about the circus of stupidity that is the TSA.

I encounter acronyms I don’t understand every day. When I do, I quietly check out what they mean (takes, what, five seconds? especially if you already know a site offhand), go “oh,” and continue reading. No reason to make a stink over something so small when you can rectify the problem yourself. It’s not like this site has a secret language.
jackie

It seems like they would end up catching alot of people looking suspicious for non terrorist reasons- like lying to a spouse about a ‘business trip’ as they fly off to meet a lover or people in slightly altered states of consciousness. My last international flight, I was coming off of mushrooms, hadn’t slept in a couple of days, and was obsessively looking for a bathroom to rinse the coating off of pain killers that were legal in a country I had just been in, though not the one I was flying out of. When my flight got canceled, and I missed my connecting flight to Tokyo, I’m sure my face showed panic, fear and paranoia, but I certainly wasn’t a danger to anyone on the flight.
DebbieS

What about transsexual people? they live in constant fear of being discovered. Standing in line whilst being closely scrutinized by the TSA is’nt going to be a comfortable experience for them.
risser

My problem is, whenever I’m in these situations, I get real nervous because I’m afraid I’m going to look nervous and set off some sort of detection mechanism. It’s like a weird form of stage-fright.

Now I’m even more nervous.

Peter
grey not grey

The whole idea that you have nothing to be nervous about if you have nothing to hide attitude is incredible, but hardly new. To be fair, border guards have been doing this for decades, and the technique is the same – quick, fairly random yet detailed questions asked in an aggressive manner to try to make you nervous. If you happen to be nervous by disposition, expect to get hassled every single time. The face scanning is the only part of this “technique” that is new.

I fail to see how making people feel nervous then yelling “Aha! So you’re nervous about something, eh?” is helpful or informative. I imagine a real criminal would be practiced at keeping their cool around aggressive cops, where your more average citizen would be more easily rattled. Considering how many terrorists the TSA has caught, I cannot help but question their methods.
strider_mt2k

Terrorists FTW apparently.

They have us chasing our own tails to prevent an attack that happened seven years ago.
jamie

Does anyone know how good Heathrow is at catching people going through the ‘Nothing to declare’ customs line which is unstaffed except for unseen people behind two-way mirrors?

Last time I was going through there, they’d stopped two guys with large suitcases. The suitcases were open on some tables, and they were absolutely stuffed full of cigarettes and nothing else.

So it would seem they get at least some people just by reading their expressions…

I can’t find a reference to it now, but apparently those mirrors are slightly distorted, like in a house of mirrors funhouse sort of thing, so that they make you look a little taller. Apparently seeing yourself looking taller makes you think you look good and you let your guard down and they can read your expression and come out and ask to have a chat.

Or maybe they just stop the people who jump in the air, click their heels and yell “Haha! I’m totally getting away with smuggling this contraband!”

Other fun Heathrow stories: first time I ever went to the UK and was going through immigration they sent me to a door off the side where they had a bunch of x-ray machines. Apparently they were looking for TB. Apparently only long-haired backpacker hippy types get TB, based on the people I saw waiting to get x-rayed. This was at 5am or something in the morning.

Also my traveling companion was stopped from reentering the UK at immigration, being told she’d worked illegally on her last visit and they were going to deny her entry and things were looking real bad and to sit down and wait for 45 minutes while they figured out what to do. While she had been working, it was within the limits of her visa, and we knew this. I’m sure they were just making us sweat it out to see if we burst in to tears and asked for mercy. In the end they just came back and told us to continue on – no other explanation or apology was offered.
dougrogers

Relax… it’s just a way to guarantee everyone has a happy flight :-)
Jeff

Adventure said, “Look, if you think the TSA is bad, you should try the security out of Tel Aviv.”

Exactly. When your culture is under attack you start to build a war mentality. My advice is to not be a jerk when you go through security. Just do what they say and everything should be okay. We have to remember how short the human memory can be, and if we let our guard down because we think everything is the way it “used to be”, then if we are wrong we will only have ourselves to blame. Again. BTW, I HATE going to the airport, so I’m not happy about any of it.
klg19

#27: What about transsexuals? What exactly do you think they’re in fear of having discovered? A male-to-female transsexual looks like a woman. A female-to-male transsexual looks like a man.

Are you thinking of transvestites?
Anonymous

“I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Give me Liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
“Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” – Gen. John Stark
tfield98

Here is an eye-opening article on this technique:

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm

Apparently, if you cared to, you could study this and become skilled at reading these cues.

Fascinating.

Tom
ill lich

This kind of technique is just asking to be abused by self-righteous TSA screeners. I guarantee it will lead to far more false-positives, arguments, maybe even fights and arrests and even death (consider the Polish guy who was tasered to death simply because he was confused and couldn’t speak English).

Really, I don’t know if it has some basis in actual scientific study, but everything about it sure seems like junk-science. And when you consider how many thousands of TSA employees there are, there’s no doubt that some will be unsure of how the technique works and just pick people whose only crime is being hung-over, or even “ugly.”

“Hey lookit that guy. . . his eyes are too close together, clearly a criminal!”
Baldhead

They were already more likely to give advanced screening to people who voiced complaints. IMO, this just gives them an excuse to harass people who MIGHT voice a complaint.

The TSA hasn’t introduced a single useful measure. They’re just making stuff up to look like they’re doing something.
Delaney

The important thing to remember is how under trained the TSA is, these are just kids. When I fly I’m often going there via commuter rail early in the morning at the same time as a bunch of TSA kids. They look like they’re all 19, never considered going to college and act like it.

I think the comparison to Israel is unfair. Israeli security isn’t just for show, those folks are highly trained and there are real rebels trying to get through.

If the TSA is being taught to recognize facecrime it is probably from a video that lasts a half hour. As always, this is a smoke screen in more than one way. On the one hand they can start telling people they are engaged in some really advanced psychological screening techniques and look how much we’re doing to prevent another attack….and on the other hand they suddenly get a great cover for pulling out of line anyone they want. They can engage in racial profiling or any other kind of profiling (or, based on the intelligence of these kids, it’s just as likely to be “hot girl who you wouldn’t mind spending 30 minutes talking in a small private room to” profiling) and have a perfect cover. If somebody complains about what the hell they are being detained for they can just be told…well you had a bad expression when we looked at you. “What are you kidding, my daughter was telling me a joke I was laughing hysterically and very happy because we’re finally taking the vacation we always dreamed of.” “Well yes, that’s true, but for one instant I saw a tell-tale tic.”

And presto…you’ve lost the argument, because who could defend against an assertion like that? Hell, I rarely notice when I give huge sighs that make other people think something is wrong…let alone some kind of tic or momentary scowl.

The important thing to remember is that it is all bullshit. If they were serious about this (and there is a myriad of reasons not to be serious about this) they would use smarter, better trained scary people. Unfortunately, they use those people elsewhere where they can do real damage.
Mista Spakuru

It’s been done => Blade Runner.

Now we’re finally gonna find out how many replicants are running around among us.

May I suggest starting with POTUS?
riku

Comment #11 (about the implications of this system for autistic individuals) makes me laugh, although of course it’s really not funny at all, since tragic outcomes are all too possible.

My mom and my ten year old son are both autistic spectrum, and all I can say about this type of system is that an interview with either of them will be neither pleasant for the interviewer nor a “conversation” in any traditional sense of the word. Of course, my first feelings are fear and anger for the suffering this type of system is all too likely to bring to my family members should they ever be arrogant enough to think they have the right to get on a plane and go somewhere like everybody alse does…

But I have to admit that following closely on the heels of that fear and anger is a nasty little pleasure in the knowledge that mistreatment of this particular segment of the population will bring it’s own just rewards. Frightening an autistic person and then trying to get them to make sense is a lot like interacting with Borat. He seems so sweet and easy to control at first. Good luck, dudes, you’re gonna need it.
ToddBradley

@Adventure Books of Seattle:

I think the TSA is bad largely because I HAVE flown out of Tel Aviv. The Israelis have a system that makes sense, works, and is efficient. The US system fails on all three counts.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but it was easier for me (an American citizen) in 2007 to fly from Tel Aviv to Atlanta, than it was to fly from Kansas City to Omaha. And not only was it easier on me personally, but I also felt significantly safer.

So I applaud this so-called “facecrime” approach. If the US can do it as well as the Israelis, it’s a good thing. But that’s a mighty big “if” since – as others have pointed out – Israeli security is done by real professionals and not Wal-Mart rejects.
Spatch

Two TSA people took me out of the line, a meter or two away, and proceeded to have a nice little chat to me about my trip for 5 minutes.

“Why were you here? Who were you visiting? What is your job?”… the usual sort of stuff. Towards the end it got weird… “What did you do for fun? Yeah, ‘fun’, you must have done something for fun? Did you eat out? What sort of restaurant is that? What topping did you have on your pizza? Was it any good?”

I had a similar experience in September, flying home from Los Angeles. I got “randomly picked” for a nice chat with two TSA guy. I got to show them the insides of my shoes and one of them got to pat me down while the other guy asked all the Good Cop questions.

“So, flying to Boston, huh? Are you going for business or pleasure?”

“Actually I’m going home,” I said.

It wasn’t until I was in the plane and waiting for takeoff did I realize the TSA guy had asked me why I was going to Boston when he was staring at my driver’s license which clearly states my Boston address. I figured either I was being tested (which it seems now I was) or that I’d been questioned by Sid Dithers or someone equally slow on the uptake (“San Francisky? So how did you came, did you drove or did you flew?”)

Just as well the sarcastic streak didn’t emerge or I probably would still be hanging around LAX.
bitworksmusic

How about we all just have a complete Botox makeover! No expressions, no problems.
Ryan Waddell

Wow… Fear, anger, surprise or contempt – not like those are common facial expressions while waiting in a security line at an airport. Why not add in tiredness? Terrorists up all night making bombs and what have you.
rrsafety

I’ll be flying at the end of January. The TSA is welcome to give me a secondary screen. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Good luck to the TSA and I, for one, appreciate what they do.
knifie_sp00nie

So what happens if you choose not to answer any of their friendly questions? Doesn’t the 5th amendment gives us that right. I don’t think I want to be the test case though.
RagManX

On the plus side, they can contract out their face-readers to the agencies doing polygraphs, saving money for those agencies. This would eliminate the need for expensive machines that don’t actually detect lies and expensive screeners who believe their machines do. The TSA has an extra income stream, while we taxpayers save money. And I’m sure they’ll be so much better at catching folks telling lies than the polygraph machines and screeners were, right? :)
Steaming Pile

I’m not afraid of flying as much as I just plain hate it. The whole process sucks, from check-in to boarding to the actual flight to de-boarding to luggage pickup, it just sucks from end to end. I’d rather drive two days on the most featureless Interstate highway in my little buzzy subcompact car (nicknamed “the bumblebee”) than fly for two hours.
tomic

OK, Israeli’s doing this, fine. It’s a subjective process, at best, but if you actually do real feedback on your results, it probably works OK.

But TSA, there’s no real system, it appears to be a simple reactive top-down money-spend bureaucracy with no clear goal. They’re basically trying to stop something that already happened. (“George Bush brung us ta Eye Rack ta fix nahn eleven” seems to be the goal.)

If it was done intelligently, with the assumption that some techniques will fail, some will work, we’ll measure and tune as we go along, and keep in mind that — oh yeah, citizens! they’re who we’re trying to protect! — they are supposed to accomplish *some task* and not *some image*, well it would be a lot better.

Fat f’ing chance of anything sensible coming out of TSA. My prediction is, it will be closed down in 5 – 10 years and all the allocated money will be spent somewhere less obvious.
Cpt. Tim

I’ll go through all the comments later in case someone already touched on this. but telling people this system is in place is self defeating. any terrorist just have to put on a big goofy smile and hold it for a half hour while they go through the checkpoint.

unless they’re brown and they’ll get randomly screened anyways.
jamie

It wasn’t until I was in the plane and waiting for takeoff did I realize the TSA guy had asked me why I was going to Boston when he was staring at my driver’s license which clearly states my Boston address. I figured either I was being tested

I had US immigration do that to me.

“So this is your first time in this city?”

“Yes.”

“Ahh! Welcome! Where are you staying?”

“Hotel Blah”

“And that’s where you usually stay when you come to this city?”

“Ummm… No. It’s my first time here.”

He made two further mentions of what I usually did when I visited that city, despite me telling him it was my first time there. It’s quite disorientating have weird conversations like that – particularly when you add some jetlag to the mix – I guess that’s what they do it.
Santa’s Knee

@#43: “Prosac and patriotism will see you through!”
Fnarf

Freebeets @6 says: “A big problem with TSA is that they aren’t the most educated of workers. The requirement is a high school degree.”

No, it’s worse than that. There was a PROPOSAL to require a GED, but it was scrapped. TSA screeners do not have to have graduated from high school.

That is after all the real purpose of TSA screening: to teach us to obey the commands of uneducated boobs earning minimum wage. A real police state with real police costs too much money.
dannysland

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions — a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt…

Just great. A look of contempt is my face’s default setting.
Tom

One hardly knows where to begin.

1) Those citing a 1% “success” rate are mistaken. The data presented support a 1% arrest rate. There are two problems with counting arrests as successes for this technique. A) How many of those arrested were convicted? B) What is the arrest rate for people randomly pulled from line and subject to similar inspection?

B) is the real issue: without a control for comparison the 1% arrest rate means exactly nothing. It could as easily be lower than the rate of arrests from random screening, meaning that the facecrime screeners are actually missing possible criminals who are skilled at being relaxed while enhancing the rate of detection of angry/upset or just plain weird fliers.

2) For the person who suggested that “if you just do what you’re told you don’t have anything to worry about”, I have two words: Maher Arar.
Ethan

Yikes, Fnarf#73! I thought you must surely be wrong, so I went to tsa.gov to check it out. You’re right… this is from the list of screener job qualifications:

2. You must have a high school diploma, GED or equivalent; OR at least one year of full-time work experience in security work, aviation screener work, or x-ray technician work.
Brian Carnell

Someone back there mentioned that this technique is based on the research of Paul Ekman. Ekman wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701478.html) advocating his techniques, but I’m not so sure he’s the best advocate for his own ideas,

The man in the cheap brown jacket stood slumped in line, staring at the ground. His hands were fidgety, reaching repeatedly into his inside jacket pocket, or patting it from the outside. A momentary look of anguish, just 1/15th of a second or so, occasionally flashed across his face — the inner corners of his eyebrows would go up, so that his brows sloped down from the center of his forehead, his cheeks would rise, and the corners of his lips would pull down slightly. He was exhibiting what I call a micro-expression, a sign of an emotion being concealed.

The question was: What was he concealing? And why?

To the behavior-detection officers I was with at Boston’s Logan International Airport, his combination of mannerisms — the micro-expression, the slumped posture, the pocket-patting — was unusual enough to raise a red flag. They called a uniformed state police officer, who asked the man the purpose of his travel. It turned out that he was on the way to the funeral of his brother, who had died unexpectedly. That was the reason for the bowed head. The frequent chest-patting was to reassure himself that he had his boarding pass. The micro-expression was an attempt to conceal his grief.

Unless we harass people during their time of grief, the terrorists have won!
Blackbird

Tom,
Thanks for mentioning Maher Arar (who is still on a no-fly list).

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned about how this type of screening doesn’t work, you need TIME with the person to establish a baseline for their natural behaviour. This ‘could’ be those random questions, but if so, they’re many questions short of anything that would be useful.

On top of not having enough baseline to ask ACTUAL questions, this ALSO changes based on whether your left or right handed. When Law Enforcement uses this technique, they’ve seen the suspect for hours (so its NOT just the face they look at…it’s the WHOLE PICTURE). BTW – the guys that were caught with cigs at Heathrow…likely GAVE themselves away by looking like they were smuggling something, not some tiny facial expression.

I believe this technique is useful…just not at an airport, and definatly not with someone who has zero experience in psychology, or college for that matter.
Axel

MHotel #82, you’re right, I don’t read BoingBoing (BB as you call it) regularly. Oh no! The internets! There are actually people on them who surf to get different viewpoints! Even worse, they’re not all familiar with Usanian acronyms!!!
Axel

Point well taken, MHotel.
agoodsandwich

I’m obviously late to this party, but I just have to say: They’re detecting for “contempt” in air travelers? While going through TSA security? Need I say more?
mikeef_134

Someone touched on this earlier, but these terrorists believe that what they are doing is the will of Allah, and they are embarked on what they believe is the most important event in their lives. Shouldn’t we be looking for someone with a calm demeaner and a deep sense of purpose and clarity. What if I’ve just come out of the men’s room and I double-streamed at the urinal and got pee on my pants, and I don’t wan’t anyone to see it. Does that make me a terrorist suspect? Meanwhile, the real terrorist has problably memorized and rehearsed the TSA questions so that they don’t show whatever it is they are supposed to be showing on thier faces. This is just another type of racial profiling because if you are an Arab, then you are already scared that someone is going to think you are a terrorist so you would want to hide your identity, plus you are already angry at the whole system for making you feel that way to begin with.
Dizbuster

I wonder if there are any obese terrorists. I bet you the terrorist bosses require all of their murderers to be in good physical shape. Perhaps the TSA could ease the burden on their vigilance by giving a free pass to obese people since they’re obviously not in good enough shape to be terrorists.
cha0tic

From the film ‘Team America’
Chris: Susan Sarandon.
Susan Sarandon: [bound up with rope, sitting on a small bench] Oh thank God. We have to stop the ceremony! Kim Jong Il is mad! Here, let me loose. I’ll show you where the theater is!
Chris: All right.
Gary: No! Chris! Stay away from her!
Chris: Fuck you, she wants to help us!
Gary: No, Chris. She’s acting….
Susan: I am not. The others tied me up because I wouldn’t go with their plan.
Gary: Your skills are fading with age, Ms. Sarandon.
Susan: [her facial expression darkens] You shall die a peasant’s death! [bends down and breaks out of the rope that bound her and whips out and begins firing semiautomatics at Gary and Chris] YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! [Gary quickly fires back and keeps the bullets coming as he backs her up against a balcony. She tumbles over it and falls to the ground at the main palace entrance. Her body parts splatter all over the place. Chris and Gary walk up to the balcony and look over and down]
Chris: Jesus Titty-fucking Christ, I …could’ve sworn she was telling the truth.
Gary: That’s why they call it acting. [turns around to leave] Come on, we’ve gotta find Lisa.

Maybe Terrorists will now take acting lessons? :)
kaminariko

I’ve heard that when a police officer shines his flashlight in your face after he’s pulled you over, he’s actually checking whether you will force yourself to look into the glare assuming that is how you should appear innocent or whether you will naturally look away from the glare.

With this in mind, the TSA random facial check is a Catch-22 situation.
Village Idiot

Eventually, when you meet Officer Jellyfinger, just remember that the first time is always the hardest.

Some of my friends have met him, but as yet I have not. Mainly, I think it’s because when I see the TSA people trolling for facecrime or whatever, I just walk behind them for a while. Since they are the ones covering that area, you aren’t likely to get pulled aside and can even watch for patterns in who they do single out. I would also suggest being subtle when doing this.

At the fixed checkpoints, exhibit restrained annoyance or mild anger and dress to be invisible (specifics depend on locality). If they do ask you questions, keep eye movement to a minimum as you answer since the direction your pupils move toward when speaking are believed to indicate if it’s information coming from your from memory or if you are making it up. Also, be sure to always have an IQ a few points below that of your interrogator. I observe the methods and try to find the patterns of security not so that I can pull off some crime or even cause so much as a mild disruption, but so that I can go see friends and family who live far away without getting anal probed or detained or subjected to humiliation by the shaved apes who drank the DHS kool-aid. Pretending you are in the latest Bond film can even make it fun, which might even clear up your suspicious face!

I’m not afraid of terrorism as much as cancer or heart disease, so PLEASE don’t go creating a police state on my account! (Saw something similar to that on a bumper sticker recently…)
IRC

I used to get all worked up traveling from my home in Canada to the US. We clear US Customs on the Canadian side of the border in our larger airports and the thought of being detained by TSA morons in my own country really used to get under my skin. Last trip to the US, from Ottawa to Chicago, there was a sign up in the screening area letting you know that, unless you are charged with a crime, you a free to leave the area any time you like.

That was a nice touch. Made the screening area feel a little less like no-man’s land when it came to rights and civil liberties.

Returning home, on the US side, those screening areas still feel like holding cells where you’re guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
Takuan

Logical extrapolation: will willfully keeping an un-expressive face now be a crime since it defeats the system?
Standing in airport line-ups throughout most of Asia shows whole cultures based on maintaining a blank face before authority.
Americans are learning new things.
oregonrose

Several people have already commented on the TSA’s aknowledgment that people with Tourette’s won’t be arrested for having a tic, pointing out that people with Asperger’s and autism often have tics as well. Another group of people to consider in light of this article are those who are hearing impaired. My husband has a 68% hearing loss and is searched nearly every time he travels. On a recent trip, he experimented by making eye contact in one security line, and not making eye contact in another. Whenever he made eye contact with a TSA official, my husband was stopped and searched. If he didn’t make eye contact, he was waved on through.

The problem with his not making eye contact is that my husband doesn’t use sign language, he reads lips. Not making eye contact – i.e., using the entire face to discern what the speaker is telling him – seriously hampers his ability to know what is happening.

It seems that the TSA’s attempts at reading travelers’ faces is ham-handed. My general impression of TSA security officials is that they’re poorly paid, poorly trained people with little motivation to do anything more than exactly what they are told. This policy certainly doesn’t make me or anyone I know feel any safer.
Egypt Urnash

#34, KLG19:

What about transsexuals? What exactly do you think they’re in fear of having discovered? A male-to-female transsexual looks like a woman. A female-to-male transsexual looks like a man.

We may or may not pass as our revised gender all the time. And being stressed is one of the things that makes us more likely to fail to pass.

We’re afraid of the fact that our ID still has the old gender on it (I haven’t gotten around to human-engineering a F on mine) will get us dragged off for an intense search, and that someone will decide that photos of our friends lodged on our laptops are child porn.

We are afraid of “Are you a man or a woman?”. We are afraid of a bunch of stressed-out cops with deep-programmed hatred of THE GAY beating the crap out of us and throwing us in a cell with a bunch of equally-homophobic guys. I have never been clocked at a boarding checkpoint, but these are the scenarios that flash through my mind and get me more and more nervous ever damn time I fly since 9/11.

This is an undercurrent of fear that we can fall into every time we’re in public. It’s been a couple of years since I routinely started to get female pronouns from total strangers, and I’m still scared shitless of this sort of thing happening on some levels.
cha0tic

On a more serious note…
If anyone fancies a go at seeing how this system works and if they’re any good at it. They might want to try this quiz at the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

It’s based on the FACS system, which commentors seem to think is the sytem that might be used by the TSA.

Have a mooch about that part of the BBC site. there are some more interesting ‘Quizes’ there.
doggo

It seriously makes you wonder if some intern in the Whitehouse or something is taking pages out of 1984, like the quote above. Most people would hear this suggestions and recognize the similarity to 1984 and say, “That’d make us sound like fascists, it’s right out of 1984″. But not the Bushies, no, “Hey that there sounds like a fine idear.”

This technique may be valuable for experienced law enforcement personnel to use in interrogation, but not a spot check by a Wal-Mart reject TSA employee. C’mon.
psuliin

To #52: When I pointed out the 1% success rate I should have specified that I was pointing to a a rate NO HIGHER than 1%. It might well be lower, as you note. However even 1% is so utterly pathetic that I didn’t see any point in making that explicit.
Axel

BTW people, I had to go to acronymfinder.com to find out that “TSA” stands for Transportation Security Administration. We don’t all live in your benighted country or fly regularly, sheesh… Also BTW, #58, …there was a sign up in the screening area letting you know that, unless you are charged with a crime, you a free to leave the area any time you like. That was a nice touch. Made the screening area feel a little less like no-man’s land when it came to rights and civil liberties. Is it really nice? If charged with a crime, would you be tried in an Ontario court according to Canadian law or would you be kidnapped to some Usanian dungeon? Aren’t those customs areas technically Usanian territory?
gollux

And pathological liars and psychopaths will pass with ease. I’ve known con artists that can lie up a storm without betraying any emotional information whilst being so convincing that rather intelligent people were taken in. So, we’ll be passing the best of the best while detaining neurotics. That’s my prediciton.
nycjason

[Sarcasm on]

Easiest solution to just about every single travel-related problem: upon arriving at their departure airport, all passengers shall be anesthetized. They will remain unconscious until they arrive at their destination airport.

In one quick move we bring about the end of hijackings, gropings, drunk idiots trying to open doors mid-flight, complaints about food / delays, etc.

[Sarcasm off]

The scary part is there are plenty of sheeple who would think this is a genuinely good idea.
MHotel

BTW people, I had to go to acronymfinder.com to find out that “TSA” stands for Transportation Security Administration. We don’t all live in your benighted country or fly regularly, sheesh…

Or read BB with any regularity, apparently.

Oh no! The internets! I had to use them to look something up and learn things!
Adora

This is indeed an application of a small snippet of the Facial Action Coding System. http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/facs/description.jsp

I had the privilege to spend a few days working with the Emotional Coding Lab at Stanford last month and got just a small taste of the training required to actually use this. Let me tell ya…it doesn’t come very easy. To be certified to use the system in research, you have to undergo something like three hours of training a day for 30 days, and there are only about 500 of these trained researchers in the world. If a government employee is going to use this system to screen for and potentially accuse me of a crime, they’d damn well better be at least as experienced as that.

A good layman’s text on the topic of microexpressions is John Gottman’s Blink. http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316172324
Todd Sieling

> Too bad going through airport security is inherently scary and enraging. I feel like I probably show those emotions on my face every time I fly.

I was going to say something like this, that the conditions of the screening process seem engineered to bring out these emotions, but Lauren O said it better with the quote above. Tighter and tighter, turns the screw.
brightblue

Re: #s 11 and 38- As another person on the spectrum, this scares me. I already fail to look like the typical over-made-up female, large crowds stress me the hell out (looks of anxiety, anyone?), and I’m never really positive what my face is showing if I’m not actively concentrating on it. I mean, much of my time is spent re-playing and practicing social situations inside my head, and if I”m distracted, I’ll let the related emotions, facial reactions, and even spoken reactions surface- and I’m sure these all look quite out-of-place. How will these (tics?) be interpreted? I’m pulled over for extra examination nearly every time I fly, and it’s stressful enough as is without a bunch of morons trying to examine my emotions as well as my messenger bag.
EH

Obviously-flawed techniques like this are more of a special-interest subsidy to authoritarian-technology companies. They are not supposed to work.

That said, maybe everybody here doesn’t understand what they’re looking for. If a God- or Allah-driven terrorist (there’s more than one kind, don’tchaknow) is elated that he is about to join the Promised Land, perhaps the TSA is trying to make the flying experience as miserable as possible in order to flush out the people who are happy to be there.

It’s so crazy, it’s just got to work!
jahknow

HOLDEN: One one eight seven at Hunterwasser…
LEON: Oh… that’s the hotel.
HOLDEN: What?
LEON: Where I live.
HOLDEN: Nice place ?
LEON: Huh? Sure. Yeah. I guess. Is that.. part of the test?
Tavie

@ #6 –

My last trip to the US had me walking through a bunch of dumb fat people

What did their size have to do with it…?
frowelishnu

In theory this would be a better screening tool, in practice – the TSA could make this your worse nightmare.
How long till someone with facial tic is detained and tasered to death?
Adventure Books of Seattle

Look, if you think the TSA is bad, you should try the security out of Tel Aviv.

Flying is still safer than say, driving around on New Years’ Eve.
Lauren O

Too bad going through airport security is inherently scary and enraging. I feel like I probably show those emotions on my face every time I fly.
Blob

One more story that keeps me from visiting the US these years. It’s a pity what became of the former “land of freedom”.
Crash

#2 (Adventure/Seattle): It sounds like you had a bad experience in Tel Aviv. Would you like to provide more details? I found flying out of Ben Gurion to be a less painful and generally Kafkaesque experience than flying through LAX, though admittedly more annoying than SEATAC (where though the lines are long, at least they’re friendly).
IRC

@#58: Is it really nice? If charged with a crime, would you be tried in an Ontario court according to Canadian law or would you be kidnapped to some Usanian dungeon? Aren’t those customs areas technically Usanian territory?
You’d be charged, held and tried as a Canadian in Canada. They can only deny you entry into the US. That’s it. They’ll probably flag you in The Machine too so you’ll never travel through the US again. But hey, Canada is comfortable, so no love lost there. The customs screening areas are most definitely *not* US territory. The agents work on behalf of the US and only determine your eligibility to enter the US. You are still a Canadian on Canadian soil in those areas (hence the sign).
freebeets

A big problem with TSA is that they aren’t the most educated of workers. The requirement is a high school degree. My last trip to the US had me walking through a bunch of dumb fat people who were laughing and talking bout “how stanky it is up in here!” because everyone had their shoes off. They made a woman struggle to take a bracelet off because it kept setting off the wand. I kept thinking to myself – what a bunch of dupes. If they want to be serious about it, they need to hire people with brains.
Daemon

So… you ever get the feeling that the Department of Homeland Insecurity just makes stuff up as they go along?
EH

Is there any indication that the TSA knows what it’s even looking for?
Antinous

No offense, Cory, but if they’re stopping people for displaying contempt, wouldn’t you already be in Guantanamo? Or do you just force yourself to think about Disneyland when you’re being screened? Your Haunted Mansion face would get you through, but your DRM face – not so much.
Phelyan

I’m scared of flying anyway, so I guess the fear wouldn’t be a microexpression.
bekaye

Go here to see those faces of suspicious behavior:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/evil-intent.html
Mucking Fistake

Interesting. So, what about people with Aspergers, or other situations along the autism spectrum? One of the known symptoms is “inappropriate” facial expressions to different emotional responses. I can’t imagine singling out an autistic individual for a more intensive interrogation to be a pleasant experience for either party.
fullerenedream

Considering what happened here in Vancouver, I think there’s a significant chance the person with Aspergers would get killed.
mikelotus

This is what the Israelis do and its been 100% successful. Easy to bitch but better than checking old ladies, Ted Kennedy and myself for that matter. In fact as far as I am concerned, they never have to check Ted Kennedy or Joe Biden or Trent Lott, etc. Or Joe Montana or Joe Torre. Might seem unfair but that’s the reality in that its a total waste of time to screen people that we all know are not terrorists.
psuliin

Cory writes: “look, if it’s peer-reviewed science, that means terrorists can just look it up in the damned journals, and if it’s not science, why should we believe it works?”

The answer is we shouldn’t believe it works, at all. According to the linked article the TSA has gotten no more than 700 arrests out of 70,000 “referrals” under this program. That gives them a false positive rate of 99%. Or to put it another way, they’re right only 1% of the time.
Chickie Pants

@ #7

Lauren O, you read my mind AGAIN.
Agent 86

I would stick with #14, but 1% is probably better than they were getting.
tregenza

The TSA program is almost certainly based on the work of Dr Paul Ekman [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman ]. Its fascinating stuff and his work has really opened up our understanding about how expressions work. He has developed training programs for FBI etc to help them spot when suspects are lying.

However its effectiveness in this situation is doubtful.

It works when the person you are dealing with is likely to be up to something wrong. E.g. a driver who has just been stopped for speeding. He may just be late for a meeting but that fleeting expression of panic might indicate he is in a hurry to hide the body he has in his trunk.

This doesn’t mean its effective to stop all cars on the highway just so you can see their facial expressions during small talk.
Burns!

“…a flash of feelings..such as…fear, anger, …contempt…”

A flash? I feel all of those things every time I have to deal with TSA “security” screening. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Don’t tase me, bro!