Pubdate: Mon, 14 Aug 2006
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Authors: Jonathan Karp and Laura Meckler
Cited: American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office 
http://www.aclu.org/legislative/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

WHICH TRAVELERS HAVE 'HOSTILE INTENT'?

Biometric Device May Have the Answer

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.

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. [The Israeli-developed system 
combines questions and biometric measurements to determine if a 
passenger should undergo screening by security officials.] The 
Israeli-developed system combines questions and biometric 
measurements to determine if a passenger should undergo screening by 
security officials.

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. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake