re: #311 Slumbering Behemoth

Visual cues, facial expressions/ticks, body language, subtle hints in responses to questions. This kind of profiling does work, and has been used successfully for centuries by those who know what to look for.

Whether or not TSA agents can successfully be trained to employ such techniques is another question.

Hiring intelligent people with an interest and aptitude for human psychology (at the minimum), who are empathetic enough to pick up on a person’s mood requires lots and lots of money and time. On the other hand, you can pay someone $12 / hr to follow the script.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that we, as a nation, have any interest in training TSA agents to do anything other than follow the script. It’s just a matter of time before we get our ass handed to us again (to the tune of who knows how many dead), and it will happen in a way that completely bypasses all the backscatter x-rays and genital groping in the world.

To be quite honest, I’m really having a hard time understanding why LGF denizens are so accepting of current TSA procedures. To me, it’s completely ineffective theater, nothing more. I’m comfortable asserting that there’s not a chance in hell that a backscatter X-ray will ever thwart a terrorist plot in progress.