(via Stupid Security)
Here is a security move that I want to praise. Rather than the other senseless screening precautions we’ve seen, such as by name (which resulted in Sen. Ted Kennedy having difficulty flying), we now have preliminary work being done to identify people for greater inspection based on how they are acting. I know that this is one thing customs agents do to help pick out which travellers need to be screened more carefully. And this is a smart way to work on improving security. Yes, these will be times when the wrong people get picked out due to issues like race or attire, but in general, this is a good way to increase efficiency of inspection. But it was an important part of the identification and capture of Ahmed Ressam in the attempted millenium bombing of LAX. Much like insurers use actuarial tables, identifying people by suspicious behavior generally works if the identifiers are well trained, and incorrect identifications tend to be minimally intrusive.
This is a good move by the government, and I hope more of this kind of thing is used in the war on terror (which, by the way, is a term I don’t like even though I get why it is used).
[tags]Behavior assessment profiling, Intelligent airline security procedures[/tags]