McClatchy Washington Bureau | 08/14/2007 | New airport agents check for danger in fliers' facial expressions
Is this Big Brother, or what? Now some bozo who is supposedly an "expert" in judging body language and facial expressions, based on a whole 16 hours (!) of training, can hassle you and even keep you off a plane. And the key emotions are "fear and disgust." Great. I'm always afraid I'll miss my connection because the planes are always LATE, and that makes me disgusted. Am I the only one? I don't think so.

At the heart of the new screening system is a theory that when people try to conceal their emotions, they reveal their feelings in flashes that Ekman, a pioneer in the field, calls "micro-expressions." Fear and disgust are the key ones, he said, because they're associated with deception. Behavior detection officers work in pairs. Typically, one officer sizes up passengers openly while the other seems to be performing a routine security duty. A passenger who arouses suspicion, whether by micro-expressions, social interaction or body language gets subtle but more serious scrutiny.