New TSA unit focuses on suspicious behavior
Aug 24, 2006 11:37 AM
"Behavior pattern recognition techniques implemented by trained security and non-security personnel have proven to be a valuable measure in the detection and prevention of terrorist attacks in public facilities," security specialist Rafi Ron, president of consulting firm New Age Security Solutions, McLean, Va., told GOVERNMENT SECURITY following the London transit attacks last year.
Ron helped train the officers at Logan in a technique called Behavior Pattern Recognition (BPR). Training in BPR aims to give people objective ways of evaluating behavior and identifying what is suspicious. "It is a methodology for identifying suspicious people that you want to pay more attention to," Ron says. View a detailed description of BPR, and how it is being used at Logan and other places like the Statue of Liberty.
The technique has produced at least one lawsuit, filed in Boston. The state police at Logan Airport there happened to pick out, based on behavior observations, the national coordinator of the American Civil Liberties Union's Campaign Against Racial Profiling.
According to the New York Times report, the coordinator, King Downing, who is black, had just left a flight when he stopped to make a phone call and noticed that a police officer was listening in, the lawsuit says. When the call ended, the officer demanded Downing's identification, asking again as he approached a taxi and then telling him he would be "going downtown" unless he provided it. Downing was let go after he showed his identification, but the encounter led to the lawsuit.
TSA officials, who were not involved in the incident with Downing, say they recognize that people at airports are often agitated -- they may be late for flights, taking an emergency trip or simply scared of flying.
TSA says it's committed to ensuring the program is not discriminatory and would be monitoring the work of the SPOT teams to ensure that the officers were acting upon the established indicators and not any racial or ethnic bias.
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