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.