Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'? & Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Baby Milk?

[align=left]what kind of wacko science is this? i'm sorry sir, we have to arrest you because the machine says you're a terrorist.[/align]

[align=left]Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'?
Biometric Device May Have the Answer
JONATHAN KARP and LAURA MECKLER / Wall St Journal | August 14 2006
At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.[/align]
With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.
The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.

Neither the TSA nor Suspect Detection Systems Ltd., the Israeli company, will discuss the Knoxville trial, whose primary goal was to uncover the designated bad guys, not to identify threats among real travelers. They won't even say what questions were asked of travelers, though the system is generally designed to measure physical responses to hot-button questions like "Are you planning to immigrate illegally?" or "Are you smuggling drugs." The test alone signals a push for new ways to combat terrorists using technology. Authorities are convinced that beyond hunting for weapons and dangerous liquids brought on board airliners, the battle for security lies in identifying dangerous passengers.
The method isn't intended to catch specific lies, says Shabtai Shoval, chief executive of Suspect Detection Systems, the start-up business behind the technology dubbed Cogito. "What we are looking for are patterns of behavior that indicate something all terrorists have: the fear of being caught," he says.
Security specialists say such technology can enhance, but not replace, existing detection machines and procedures. Some independent experts who are familiar with Mr. Shoval's product say that while his technology isn't yet mature, it has potential. "You can't replicate the Israeli system exactly, but if you can incorporate its philosophy, this technology can be one element of a better solution," says Doron Bergerbest-Eilon, chief executive of Asero Worldwide consulting firm and a former senior official in Israel's security service.
To date, the TSA has more confidence in people than machines to detect suspicious behavior. A small program now is using screening officers to watch travelers for suspicious behavior. "It may be the only thing I know of that favors the human solution instead of technology," says TSA chief Kip Hawley.
The people-based program -- called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT -- began undergoing tests at Boston's Logan Airport after 9/11 and has expanded to about a dozen airports. Trained teams watch travelers in security lines and elsewhere. They look for obvious things like someone wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indicate someone is trying to disguise an emotion.
TSA officers observe passengers while consulting a list of more than 30 questionable behaviors, each of which has a numerical score. If someone scores high enough, an officer approaches the person and asks a few questions.
"All you know is there's an emotion being concealed. You have to find out why the emotion is occurring," says Paul Ekman, a San Francisco psychologist who pioneered work on facial expressions and is informally advising the TSA. "You can find out very quickly."
More than 80% of those approached are quickly dismissed, he says. The explanations for hiding emotions often are innocent: A traveler might be stressed out from work, worried about missing a flight or sad because a relative just died. If suspicions remain, the traveler is interviewed at greater length by a screener with more specialized training. SPOT teams have identified about 100 people who were trying to smuggle drugs, use fake IDs and commit other crimes, but not terrorist acts.
The TSA says that, because the program is based on human behavior, not attributes, it isn't vulnerable to racial profiling. Critics worry it still could run afoul of civil rights. "Our concern is that giving TSA screeners this kind of responsibility and discretion can result in their making decisions not based on solid criteria but on impermissible characteristics such as race," says Gregory T. Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office.
Mr. Shoval, the Israeli entrepreneur, believes technology-based screening is the key to rolling out behavior-recognition techniques in the U.S. With experience in counter-terrorism service and the high-technology industry, Mr. Shoval developed his Cogito device with leading former Israeli intelligence officials, polygraph experts and computer-science academics.
Here is the Cogito concept: A passenger enters the booth, swipes his passport and responds in his choice of language to 15 to 20 questions generated by factors such as the location, and personal attributes like nationality, gender and age. The process takes as much as five minutes, after which the passenger is either cleared or interviewed further by a security officer.
At the heart of the system is proprietary software that draws on Israel's extensive field experience with suicide bombers and security-related interrogations. The system aims to test the responses to words, in many languages, that trigger psycho-physiological responses among people with terrorist intent.
The technology isn't geared toward detecting general nervousness: Mr. Shoval says terrorists often are trained to be cool and to conceal stress. Unlike a standard lie detector, the technology analyzes a person's answers not only in relation to his other responses but also those of a broader peer group determined by a range of security considerations. "We can recognize patterns for people with hostile agendas based on research with Palestinians, Israelis, Americans and other nationalities in Israel," Mr. Shoval says. "We haven't tried it with Chinese or Iraqis yet." In theory, the Cogito machine could be customized for specific cultures, and questions could be tailored to intelligence about a specific threat.
The biggest challenge in commercializing Cogito is reducing false results that either implicate innocent travelers or let bad guys slip through. Mr. Shoval's company has conducted about 10 trials in Israel, including tests in which control groups were given terrorist missions and tried to beat the system. In the latest Israeli trial, the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists, meaning that 15% got through, and incorrectly identified 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats, according to corporate marketing materials.
The company's goal is to prove it can catch at least 90% of potential saboteurs -- a 10% false-negative rate -- while inconveniencing just 4% of innocent travelers.
Mr. Shoval won a contract for the Knoxville trial in a competitive process. Next year, Israeli authorities plan to test Cogito at the country's main international airport and at checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank, where the goal will be to catch genuine security threats while testing the logistics of using the system more broadly. The latest prototype costs about $200,000 a machine.
Even though his expertise is in human observation, U.S. behavior-recognition expert Dr. Ekman says projects like Cogito deserve a shot. He expects technology to advance even further, to devices like lasers that measure people's vital signs from a distance. Within a year, he predicts, such technology will be able to tell whether someone's "blood pressure or heart rate is significantly higher than the last 10 people" who entered an airport.

[align=left]Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Baby Milk?
British Government Says Mothers With Babies New Terror Threat
"You're either with us, or you're with the babies."
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 14 2006
British government security advisors and the national media are doing their level best to strike rampant irrational paranoid terror into the hearts of UK citizens by identifying the latest targets of the war on terror as pregnant women and toddlers.
Absurd delirious fearmongering continues in the British media with the Sun tabloid, Britain's most braindead and unfortunately also most popular newspaper screaming, "HATE-filled mums willing to sacrifice themselves and their BABIES are being hunted in the war on terror."
Yes that's right you haven't slipped into an upside down parallel universe - pregnant women and mothers with young babies are the new Al-Qaeda.
The evidence?
"The nightmare is that mums carrying tiny tots would provide â??very good coverâ? and not raise suspicions among even the most alert security guards."
The Sun cited a "senior Government security adviser" as their source.
So let's ignore that guy with the turban who looks like Mohammed Atta and instead focus our magic screening wand on Mrs. Smith and her newborn infant.
Extra pat downs for young mums and making toddlers take their shoes off - boy do I feel safer now.
What's the next threat? Barney the purple dinosaur?
Of course we know what this is all designed to accomplish - it's about broadening the terrorist definition to the point where everyone's a suspect and everybody's behavior is under preposterous and suffocating scrutiny.
The implication that the most benign, harmless and innocent members of our society could in actuality be terrorist suicide bombers is a sick ploy crafted to ensure that absolutely no one is allowed to escape the self-regulating stench of being under suspicion.
It is also intended to brainwash the population that terrorists are potentially hiding under their beds, that they are everywhere and that only by a system of reporting suspicious behavior and unquestionably trusting the government will they too avoid the accusing finger.
This is classic Cold War style behavioral conditioning and the Neo-Fascist architects know exactly what they're doing.
Despite the status of alert returning to previous levels in both the US and the UK, ridiculous restrictions on travelers remain in place. Every time a new bout of fearmongering washes over a stupefied public, they are more pliable to new ways of being shoved around by government enforcers, even after the alleged plot has been foiled.
The fearmongering never subsides, it is always ratcheted up another peg in anticipation for future manufactured threats.
The future of airport security?
Why don't they just ban any luggage, clothing or personal accessories whatsoever and have done with it? Better yet - why not strap every passenger into a straight jacket from the moment they enter the airport?
In Knoxville, TSA officials are testing a biometric scanner device which interrogates passengers about their 'hostile intent' by asking a barrage of questions. If you thought the current delays and blanket 'everybody's a criminal terrorist' attitude were annoying enough, you ain't seen nothing yet.
In a similar example to the mothers and babies mindlessness, the London Guardian reports that located in the tranquil and peaceful rural surroundings of the British Lake District and Yorkshire Dales are terrorist training camps where Al-Qaeda devotees are preparing for their next big attack.
What's next? Bomb making factories under the Atlantic Ocean? Islamo Fascist brainwashing schools at the North Pole?
The sheer stupidity implicit in the Guardian article is bewildering. If the police haven't even questioned the alleged terrorists, allowing them to gather evidence of terrorist activity, because they're conducting covert surveillance of the group then why in God's name have they told a national newspaper, who in turn have splashed the story all over their front page?
If these supposed terrorists didn't know they were under surveillance before then they sure do now!
I live on the edge of the Peak District nearby the kind of areas being fingered as terrorist training areas. The closest thing to Al-Qaeda like activity up here is when a discourteous rambler leaves a farm gate open.
Again, it's about people who live in the country being smothered with the same raving paranoia and cockamamie fearmongering city-dwellers are subjected to. Woe betide anyone living in a converted barn house in the middle of miles and miles of wilderness think they can escape the war on terror - it applies to anything!
Baby formula, lip gloss, mothers and toddlers included.[/align]