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Onboard Counter-Hijack System IDs Fishy Passengers As They Blink, Fidget, Whisper the Koran

The Onboard Threat Detection System is still in the development stage, but the ACLU and CAIR must be experiencing palpitations at the mere suggestion of such a wanton intrustion.

Tiny cameras the size of a fingernail linked to specialist computers are to be used to monitor the behaviour of airline passengers as part of the war on terrorism.

Cameras fitted to seat-backs will record every twitch, blink, facial expression or suspicious movement before sending the data to onboard software which will check it against individual passenger profiles.
...
They say that rapid eye movements, blinking excessively, licking lips or ways of stroking hair or ears are classic symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something.

A separate microphone will hear and record even whispered remarks. Islamic suicide bombers are known to whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.

Thanks to modern technology, the seat back staring you down throughout the flight will be able to distinguish between radicalized neredowells and the merely secularly fidgety.

The software being developed by the scientists will be so sophisticated that it will be able to take account of nervous flyers or people with a natural twitch, helping to ensure there are no false alarms.

But... but my liberties?! you protest.

Mrs Neary said that under the Data Protection Act, all video, audio and other recordings would be destroyed at the end of every flight so that passengers' civil liberties were not infringed.

Still...

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: "Watching people constantly on aircraft and trying to work out patterns of behaviour is a difficult road to travel.

"I suspect that it will put people off flying because they will feel uncomfortable if their every blink and twitch is being monitored."

I somewhat ambivalently tend to agree.  The monitoring system seems unlikely to be well-received, even outside the realms of liberty crusaders and Islamic relations counselors.  Then again, we've rebuilt a lot of sanguinness over the last 5.5 incident-free years.  Nothing would put people off flying quite like another spate of hijackings.  If the system turns out to be effective and reliable (and if it manages to avoid triggering false positives every time a passenger gets jumpy, enters REM sleep, or mutters angrily to himself), maybe submitting to constant "terrorist or not" facial evaluation is something we could learn to live with.

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Onboard Counter-Hijack System IDs Fishy Passengers As They Blink, Fidget, Whisper the Koran

The Onboard Threat Detection System is still in the development stage, but the ACLU and CAIR must be experiencing palpitations at the mere suggestion of such a wanton intrustion.

Tiny cameras the size of a fingernail linked to specialist computers are to be used to monitor the behaviour of airline passengers as part of the war on terrorism.

Cameras fitted to seat-backs will record every twitch, blink, facial expression or suspicious movement before sending the data to onboard software which will check it against individual passenger profiles.
...
They say that rapid eye movements, blinking excessively, licking lips or ways of stroking hair or ears are classic symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something.

A separate microphone will hear and record even whispered remarks. Islamic suicide bombers are known to whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.

Thanks to modern technology, the seat back staring you down throughout the flight will be able to distinguish between radicalized neredowells and the merely secularly fidgety.

The software being developed by the scientists will be so sophisticated that it will be able to take account of nervous flyers or people with a natural twitch, helping to ensure there are no false alarms.

But... but my liberties?! you protest.

Mrs Neary said that under the Data Protection Act, all video, audio and other recordings would be destroyed at the end of every flight so that passengers' civil liberties were not infringed.

Still...

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: "Watching people constantly on aircraft and trying to work out patterns of behaviour is a difficult road to travel.

"I suspect that it will put people off flying because they will feel uncomfortable if their every blink and twitch is being monitored."

I somewhat ambivalently tend to agree.  The monitoring system seems unlikely to be well-received, even outside the realms of liberty crusaders and Islamic relations counselors.  Then again, we've rebuilt a lot of sanguinness over the last 5.5 incident-free years.  Nothing would put people off flying quite like another spate of hijackings.  If the system turns out to be effective and reliable (and if it manages to avoid triggering false positives every time a passenger gets jumpy, enters REM sleep, or mutters angrily to himself), maybe submitting to constant "terrorist or not" facial evaluation is something we could learn to live with.