[ars]

Every time people complain about the TSA and are asked how they should do security people say they should evaluate the person - look for signs of nervousness and things like that.

And now they do and you complain anyway. So - what's your preferred method of screening people?

[bcoates]

Bored minimum wage guy waving people through a metal detector and running bags through an x-ray machine without looking at the results? That worked fine for a few decades and did no worse than the gigantic TSA rigmarole.

[justin66]

> Every time people complain about the TSA and are asked how they should do security people say they should evaluate the person - look for signs of nervousness and things like that.

Putting aside the obvious falsehood ("every time") there's obviously a little critical analysis required to differentiate between people who are nervous because they don't like getting airplanes, people who are nervous because they're about to miss their flight, people who are just generally anxious, and people who are nervous because they're about to blow up an airplane.

[stephen]

Not sure why you're getting down voted--I remember seeing at least 2 articles go by in the last few years about the Israeli airport security.

Both times it was portrayed as super amazing (low hassle plus high security) precisely because they used behavioral detection techniques.

[Amadou]

The US version of behavior detection isn't even in the same league. The Israelis have guys on the other side of cameras who monitor people from the point before they get out of their cars. Their system is so comprehensive that it would be cost-infeasible to implement here. It also sucks to end up on the wrong end of, over the years there have been a few reports by people who have had that unpleasant experience too.

The TSA version is a guy walking around the terminal engaging people in conversation and looking for things like "micro-expressions." (which are themselves a farce)

[elpool2]

How about you search the suspicious guy thoroughly, and then once it's clear he doesn't have any weapons you let him on the plane?

[eruditely]

I don't know, the one that is the most empirically effective in assessing somewhere for being a terrorist?