http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...0.html?cnn=yes
The most dangerous threat to commercial aviation is not so much the things bad people may be carrying, but the bad people themselves. That refrain heard constantly from airline security experts over the past three years appears to have finally been heeded by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Aviation sources tell TIME that the TSA plans to address the problem by launching its own passenger profiling system. The system known as SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) relies more on the human dimension in detecting threats, and is to be tested at two northeastern airports starting later this month.
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SPOT is instead based squarely on the human element: the ability of TSA employees to identify suspicious individuals by using the principles of surveillance and detection. Passengers who flag concerns by exhibiting unusual or anxious behavior will be pointed out to local police, who will then conduct face-to-face interviews to determine whether any threat exists.
I've called for something like this, so I won't be too quick to condemn it. Done correctly and with proper training, this sort of program would reduce secondary screenings of 85-year-old WWII vets and other such non-threats.
Of course, it will also increase accusations of racial/ethnic profiling of the racial/ethic groups that have committed the most terrorism against the US in the past 35 years. But hopefully TSA will resist the urge to randomly stop non-suspicious-acting people in other groups just to pad their stats. The LEO "interviews" must also be conducted in a polite efficient way that doesn't cause innocent people caught in the inevitable false alarms to miss their flights or feel harassed.
But we'll see. It shows some promise.