Next time you're at the airport, be sure to act natural

Local security personnel at Hobby and Bush Intercontinental airports will be trained to screen passengers by watching their behavior and facial expressions, the Chronicle reports — though the program may already be in place at one of the airports. The screening is part of a federal program called Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (that's a bland name, sure, but the acronym is SPOT, which must have pleazed dozens of people in Washington), which was announced for the nation's largest cities in May.

"A facial tic, the quickening of the pulse in the jugular vein, a change of complexion," are some of the kind of discrete indicators airport staff will be looking for, according to Mark Mancuso, the Houston Airport System's deputy director for public safety and technology.

But that doesn't mean screeners will stop you just because you're a naturally nervous or shifty-looking person. Or at least they're not supposed to:

"We are able to tell the difference in someone who may be stressed simply because he doesn't like to fly, and someone who is contemplating a terrorist or criminal act," [TSA spokeswoman Andrea] McCauley said. "It goes beyond just identifying facial clues. We are looking for involuntary physical and psychological reactions."

The government touts the program as race-neutral, but local ACLU President Randall Kallinen said it could lead to a new kind of unfair profiling: people who look like they're up to something. He pointed to the case of King Downing, the national coordinator for the ACLU's Campaign Against Racial Profiling, who was picked from a crowd a Boston's Logan Airport while making a phone call. Police demanded Downing's ID and he refused to turn it over without knowing why he was being targeted; eventually, officers threatened to charge him with failure to produce ID, so he did give them his driver's license, but he also sued the Massachusetts Port Authority.

A federal official told the Chronicle that SPOT is already in place at one Houston airport, but no sources would confirm that report. So the next time you're at the airport, we recommend acting like you're not up to anything at all — we find whistling to be a universal indication of innocence. And you know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?