PREDICTIVE PROFILING is a method of situation assessment designed to predict and categorize the potential for inappropriate, harmful, criminal and/or terrorist behavior that leads to the deployment of procedures and actions necessary to confirm, reduce and/or eliminate such threats.

This approach is at the core of successful and efficient security systems, and has enormous applicability for a full range of both open and closed environments.

Click here to view a demo of Chameleon’s Predictive Profiling Online course.

A client of ours, a Security Training Supervisor at a federal financial institution in the Midwest, called to chat.  They have been using Chameleon’s Predictive Profiling Online course as part of their curriculum for about a year now, and he called to tell me how pleased he is with the program.

Tell me more, I begged.

This is what he liked:

• The course information is taught using actual events and real situations via videos or in abundant reference materials.  The students aren’t given purely hypothetical scenarios but (more…)

A story I heard from a client the other day confirms the simple power of security questioning as a really effective tool.  I’d like to share it with you.

A security officer who works for a large U.S. company had taken our Predictive Profiling and Security Questioning course.  Let’s call him Mike.  Mike was working the access control checkpoint at their main headquarters where both a metal detector and screening machine are in place.  These are located in a large lobby with a good deal of people traffic and activity.

A visitor to the facility approached to be screened and was flagged by the operator as having a questionable object in their bag.  (more…)

This month, some five years after his abduction by Hamas terrorists, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.  Commentators from outside Israel are trying to puzzle out why Israel agreed to this swap.  Why was this lone soldier so important?  Some bloggers hypothesized that Shalit must come from a very powerful family.  (In fact, the Shalits are nondescript middle class folks from a tiny rural town.)  Generally, it makes little sense to many observers why a low ranking soldier would be exchanged for such a disproportionate number of convicted murderers.

In the context of national security, it really seems a dumb move.  (more…)

Since 9/11, the role of law enforcement has shifted with ever larger numbers of officers now working in counter terrorism.  Over 1,000 NYPD officers are engaged in CT; and 700 officers of the LAPD work directly in CT.  The effort includes community outreach to (for example) Muslim populations to develop positive ties and establish communication and trust.  The CT effort also involves the gathering, analysis and dissemination of intelligence.  CT HUMINT is an efficient and effective addition to the job description of law enforcement officers who are already working on the streets and intimately familiar with their communities.  Homeland Security is a national effort made better (more…)

Chat Downs is the term used to describe the TSA’s latest behavioral detection procedures currently being tested at Boston Logan and Detroit Metro airports. ‘Chat Down’ has a nice ring to it.  When done correctly, this kind of purposeful questioning should indeed be as casual and friendly as a chat.

Up until recently at the TSA, behavioral assessment was conducted by a Behavioral Detection Officer (BDO) looking for observable physical signs whether it be a facial twitch or an unusually sweaty body.  The chat takes assessment to a new and I think more effective level.

(more…)

The U.S. has been struggling since 9/11 to develop an effective anti-terrorism policy.  One issue that has hindered success on this front to date is the reluctance to fully accept that a good, threat-oriented security policy is driven by destructive intent – not by searching for the destructive means.

While there are many examples of why intent is critical to the security policy formula, let’s begin by considering 9/11 for just a moment.  What destructive means were the terrorists carrying?  Essentially they had no destructive means other than box cutters and fully fueled airplanes.  They were armed only with their malicious intent and the skill to fly jets into buildings.  Indeed, no incriminating evidence would have been found on the terrorists until the moment they (more…)

Not everyone applauded the targeted assassination of Anwar al Walaki last weekend in northern Yemen.  There was outrage, in some quarters, about the fact that U.S. forces had killed a U.S. citizen no less, without due process.   But I see citizenship as more than a document stating one’s place of birth, or other official facts.  Citizenship is an affiliation with a society whose goals and fate you share.  Given that Al Walaki’s proclaimed goal was to kill Americans and infidels wherever on the planet they might be found, and that he stirred many to action via his writings and speeches, how relevant is his having been born in Las Cruces, NM?  He was basically an English-speaking Osama bin Laden. (more…)

Here’s another reason (aside from its being unethical, discriminatory or illegal) not to use racial profiling:  it’s harder to do right than other kinds of profiling.  On its face, it may seem simple, but it’s really not that easy to do – well.  Racial profiling requires sensitivity to often subtle characteristics.

I was raised mainly in the U.S., lived in many different corners of the country and have experienced it from border to border.  Given this experience, if I pay close attention to a fellow American’s accent, I can often detect the state from which they hail.  Show me a local restaurant menu and I can identify the culinary region if reflects.   Drop me in a shopping mall, and given the type of shops, manner in which shoppers are dressed, and more, I probably could at least detect whether I was on the West or East coast, in the Midwest or on the Gulf.

Subtle differences not only in appearance but in l (more…)

I go to a local Meetup for French conversation about once a month, just to keep my language skills well oiled.  What’s a Meetup, you ask?   For those of you unfamiliar with the organization, it’s a mechanism for bringing together people with common interests:  car repair, history buffs, hikers, politicos, almost anything.  There may be other such social organizations; I mention this one only because it’s the one I know about.

Recently I learned that the Meetup organization had its inception in the wake of 9/11.  In the days and weeks following the initial attack, the co-founder and CEO Scott Heiferman began meeting neighbors and members of his community whom he had previously avoided.   Suddenly, people were getting together to talk and share information, help one another and just reach out.  He and other founders decided to launch a new business whose mission was essentially, the growing of communities.  Ten years later, ten million people are Meeting Up across the U.S.

This happened in uber urban New York City but I think to a degree with the rise of media and internet usage, more people are (more…)