The essential McClatchy:

Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside baggage attendant.

They’re called Behavior Detection Officers, and they’re part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described them as “a wonderful tool to be able to identify and do risk management prior to somebody coming into the airport or approaching the crowded checkpoint.”

Hey, I gotchyer wonderful tool right here…

Anyhow, here’s how it all works, and this is the kicker:

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.

A behavior specialist may decide to move in to help the suspicious passenger [“help” is rich, isn’t it?] recover belongings that have passed through the baggage X-ray. Or he may ask where the traveler’s going. If more alarms go off, officers will “refer” the person to law enforcement officials for further questioning.

Jeebus, I hope I never get “referred.” It’s hard to sleep on those wooden benches, ya know?

But seriously, here’s the scenario:

1. I see the (putatively now civilian) Karl Rove online at the airport.

2. I react as any normal human being would: With fear and disgust.

3. When I’m in fear, a mysterious stranger moves in on me and asks me where I’m going, or tries to help me with my luggage.

4. Again, I react like any normal human being, and courteously respond “None of your business. Why do you ask?” or “Get your paws off my bags, asshole. What the Fuck do you think you’re doing?”

5. Things go rapidly downhill from there. I miss my flight, and that’s just the beginning…

And I’m the one that gets frog-marched, and not Karl Rove?

NOTE Of course, when the RFID chips are in our National ID cards, and we’ve got a system of internal passport controls in place, I probably won’t be traveling much anyhow, but until that point…

UPDATE Marcy Wheeler has a chilling little tale about being detained by “behavior detection” when flying home from the Scooter’s trial. The TSA guys asked her about her book, when they had no evidence that she’d actually written one. So, it wouldn’t be like they’d put any of us on lists, and then pull us aside for “flying while liberal,” would it? As the saying goes, we’re all niggers now…