SDR Negates Ethnic Profiling
In 2003, the Transportation Administration Agency’s (TSA) Screening Passengers by Observation program, SPOT, began to operationally test behavioural techniques to screen air passengers. Once the SPOT program was out of the testing phase and was fully implemented in 2007, the program was used to allow more than 3,000 behaviour detection officers (BDOs), deployed in 176 United States airports to look for preselected facial expressions, body language, and appearances that the program lists as suspicious. However, as the program grew throughout the US, there was little to no evidence that the program truly worked. Instead, by 2011, there were numerous profiling allegations, namely allegations of racial and ethnic profiling. The program was called to be terminated as “beyond SPOT’s cost and inefficacy, we are deeply troubled by its embrace of racial, ethnic, and religious profiling as a way to identify potential terrorists,” the American Arab Institute (AAI) wrote in its letter to Former United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. The program was deployed without being validated scientifically and had not identified a single terrorist in any of the airports in which it had been implemented. Rather than SPOT being utilized as a means of gathering information on potentially suspicious behaviours, the program often led to racial profiling of travellers.
How is SDR a Solution?
In the wake of the failings of the SPOT program in the United States, there is a huge need for a behaviour analysis program to be implemented in airports, train and bus stations, as well as in other locations to keep travellers, passengers, and citizens safe. The SDR program enables police and security entities to recognize cases of potential violence, public disorder, illicit activities or lethal attacks, based on the training the program provides through behavioural analysis. SDR inherently negates ethnic profiling from which programs like SPOT suffered. As SDR relies on behavioural indicators and analysis to identify threats, the program and training does not simply red-flag people of a particular gender, age, race, or religion. SDR prevents illicit activities from minor crime to large-scale attacks by searching for abnormalities of suspects. Unique SDR operational tools such as the Bar of Normality™, the Artificial Gut Feeling™, and the SDR Fishnet Matrix™ embolden trainees with a nuanced understanding of human behaviour that allows them to detect deviant behaviour in varying environments. SDR provides security and police professionals in any environment to keep citizens safe. The program affords citizens the comfort of knowing their rights are being protected while also ensuring that their security professionals know how to detect what may devolve into deviant or threatening actors.
