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**Jiro** · 11-16-2010, 08:14 PM

The Truth about Behavior Profiling

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PROFILES IN TERROR: A LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE BEHAVIORAL PROFILING PARADIGM
While Screening Passengers by Observation Technique's (SPOT) scientific basis lies in FACS, its more immediate precursor lies overseas in Israel. Israel conducts mandatory full searches and interviews of every passenger, with an average time spent of fifty-seven minutes per person. These interviews focus not just on the passenger’s verbal answers, but on their behavior and expressions. Behavioral profiling for airport security emerged in Israel and made its way to the United States via a program run by Massachusetts state officials at Boston’s Logan International Airport in 2002. In England, the British Aircrafts Authority (“BAA”) has also implemented behavioral profiling at the Heathrow Express rail service. The trials were so successful that “the BAA was considering training all frontline staff at its seven airports, including 6,000 at security checkpoints.”

There are, however, significant differences between behavioral profiling in U.S. airports, which (at least initially) relies on observation, and the use of behavioral profiling in Israeli aviation security, in which observation is carefully combined with in depth questioning of all passengers. Moreover, the difference in air passenger volume between Israel and the United States is substantial. In 2007, just over ten million international passengers passed through Ben Gurion International Airport and just four hundred thousand domestic travelers. The number of scheduled domestic and international passengers on U.S. airlines during the first eleven months of 2007 was 706.6 million. To implement an aviation security program in the United States that paralleled the Israeli model would present massive logistical difficulties and significant financial costs. And spending an hour interviewing and scrutinizing each passenger, as the Israelis do, would make airport travel even more cumbersome and slow.

The training of security personnel differs significantly between the U.S. and Israel. As outlined above, BDOs are typically culled from the ranks of routine security screeners at TSA and need only a high school degree or GED equivalent. The Israelis select officers––the vast majority of whom have military backgrounds—and subject them to tests in order to select those with above-average intelligence and particularly strong personality types. The Israeli recruits then benefit from nine weeks of training in behavior recognition where they practice identifying terrorists who may have been trained to evade behavioral pattern recognition. These highly trained Israeli aviation security agents develop advanced skills in order to recognize the precise behaviors exemplified by potential hijackers or terrorists. By contrast, BDOs receive just four days of classroom instruction and analysis––which relies in part on watching videotapes with known visual cues of deception––and twenty-four hours of on-the-job training in an airport security checkpoint environment.

so.... bottom line -

Ben Gurion International Airport security guard's qualification

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-military background
-college education (above-intelligence and strong personality type
-9 weeks of training in behavioral profiling

Requirement for TSA agent's qualification

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Applicants must be a citizen of the United States or a U.S National and have a high school diploma, GED or recognized equivalent. If you do not possess the education component, you can still apply if you have at least one year of full time experience working as an X-ray technician, aviation screener or security officer. In addition to these two basic requirements, applicants will be required to meet the following employment conditions:

Demonstrate physical fitness to work on a daily basis without the aid of medication.
Work irregular hours and shifts, including holidays and weekends.
Pass drug and alcohol screening tests.
Pass background, criminal and credit checks.

-4 days of training