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 real ones that help drive home the point that there are real threats out there.  The supplementary background newspaper and magazine articles and videos place the ideas in a real life context which helps bring the ideas home for the students.

• This emphasis on the need for increasing threat awareness, and the way the course breaks down the reasons, helps shift his security personnel mentality away from “it won’t happen here” to a more proactive attitude.

• The security methods provided in the course are from a security-driven point of view, rather than a law enforcement one.  Many members of his staff come from a policing background and while they are terrific, there are important differences in approach that are carefully explained in the course.

• The Predictive Profiling course challenges assumptions and culture-driven stereotypes, making for a more realistic view of the threat.

Feel free to contact me with your own comments about Predictive Profiling Online.  You haven’t seen it?  Check out the demo at the bottom of this page link.  It’s always nice to hear good things but also important to get feedback on how we can continue to improve the course.

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.  Mike was asked to come over to help and he began by questioning the person.  Mike had in mind to try and identify any weakness in the person’s cover story via questioning.  It went something like this:

Mike:      Good afternoon sir.  May I ask you the purpose of your visit here today?

Visitor:   I am here to submit a job application

Mike:      What position are you applying for?

Visitor:   Mmm…I saw an ad in the paper that you are hiring.

Mike:      Yes, but for what position?

Visitor:   I thought you had to come here to see the job listings.

Mike:      No, that is not the case, we only publicize specific job openings. In which paper publication did you see this ad?

Visitor:   Ah …. [stuttering and stumbling]

Mike then decided to move the visitor to a different corner of the lobby while having another member of his security team watch to see who in turn might be watching The Visitor.  Mike walked the guy slowly to the other side of the room and sure enough, Mike’s spotter detected a cohort.

It turns out that the company Vice President of Security had arranged a red team of the facility where a fake visitor would try to infiltrate a (fake) explosive device in order to test the checkpoint security.  Management was surprised but very pleased to see how quickly their security officers got to the heart of the matter.  The red team was defeated.  Mike was a hero.  Questioning as a simple, flexible and effective security tool was reaffirmed.  Good going, Mike.

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.  Amongst the 1,000 released prisoners was the likes of confessed killer Mona Awana.   January 2001, in the guise of an American tourist, she succeeded in seducing a 16 year old Israeli high school student via online chat.  He met her in Jerusalem for what he thought would be a romantic dinner.  He and Awana instead drove to a location prearranged with the Palestinian gunmen who shot and killed him.  Also amongst the thousand released were convicted terrorists directly involved in the planning and execution of attacks in Israel that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths.

Some people think that such exchanges set a bad precedent and that now Hamas and other terrorist organizations will kidnap more soldiers.  But the threat of such kidnapping hasn’t changed, it’s always on the agenda and I am certain that IDF vigilance against it is unchanged as a result of Shalit’s release.

Other folks interpret the exchange to mean that Israel calculates the human value of an Israeli soldier to Palestinian prisoners as 1:1,000.  As if Israel has a superiority complex.  But really, don’t you imagine that Israel would have preferred a 1:1 exchange?  The number is the product of negotiations where the Palestinians were going for the highest figure they could get.

The IDF is a conscripted army.  Prime Minister Netanyahu’s son is on active duty in the IDF.  Netanyahu’s brother was killed on a mission to save kidnapped Israelis in Entebbe.  For most Israelis, Gilad Shalit could be anyone’s son, brother, boyfriend.  One Israeli reporter ended his daily newscast over the last five years with a recitation of how many days Shalit had been in captivity.  In Israel, a small country, both the threat of annihilation and the soldiers tasked with defending against annihilation – are quite personal.  While there are differences of opinion within Israel on the subject, the majority of Israelis support the exchange while acknowledging that their communities are less secure for it.  For them, there was simply no other choice.

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 when played out locally.

COMINT and SIGINT offer amazing resources but sometimes no intelligence is as critical as that obtained via human interaction.  Having law enforcement take on this role naturally involves a job description adjustment that in turn requires new training.   A modified set of skills is needed for a law enforcement officer to be able to identify targets within an appropriate context.  What’s more, in order to recruit and cultivate sources, a HUMINT operator working on any level needs to understand the culture, politics and practices of the target community.  But perhaps the most important tool in the kit is being able to skillfully develop personal relationships.  Good HUMINT can’t be dictated.  It doesn’t arrive in a neat package.  It is up to the officers in the field to develop the excellent communication and observation skills needed to bring well corroborated, actionable intel to the table.  It is not easy but it is critical to our broader success in the war on terrorism.

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.

In a procedure similar to that of El Al Airlines, the TSA document checker asks passengers questions before they move on to the screening checkpoint.  The questioning takes on average 30 to 40 seconds. Those passengers who refuse to chat are assigned to undergo additional security measures.

The reason a verbal assessment trumps the observational one is that it can go in any direction the officer chooses to take it.  The chat is a versatile skill and an excellent offensive tool.  There are dozens of behavioral signs to look out for but there are an infinite variety of questions and topical directions to which a good questioner can go.

Since mid August, BDOs at the TSA have engaged over 130,000 passengers at Logan in this conversational screening effort.  One of the more vocal criticisms of this technique is that it would just take too long.  Yet, according to the TSA, it seems that overall wait times have not increased as a result of this program.  What’s more, suspicious behavior that came to light as a result of a chat led to over 10 criminal arrests.

Catching a terrorist among millions of travelers is a daunting task.  Questioning is a tool used successfully in many countries.  Why not add it to the TSA arsenal?  In any event, I for one would rather have a chat with a TSA officer rather than get frisked.

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 rose from their seats that September morning and started to slit throats and hijack airplanes.

Part of the reason the U.S. tends to focus on means and not intent is the U.S. legal system.  This may be true in other Western countries.  In a democratic society that strives for fairness and justice, proper criminal evidence is indeed important.  In order to prosecute a criminal, the means – a weapon needs to be identified.  We require tangible evidence to prove guilt.  For example, the second war in Iraq started with the objective of “finding Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction”.  The debate about the justifiability of the war did not revolve around the fact that there an evil and dangerous regime intended to harm the United States.  Instead, for months and then years U.S. troops turned over every stone in Iraq to find incriminating evidence against Saddam and his regime – WMD.  Saddam was considered “not guilty” until a weapon of mass destruction would be found in his possession.

Unfortunately the criminal justice system was not built for terrorists or terrorism.  We need to prevent the terrorist from acting before he becomes a criminal.

Besides, the effort to find destructive means lies on the range between difficult to daunting, often akin to finding a needle in a haystack.  Those of you who are security experts (or for that matter, professional terrorists) know that to uncover a well-concealed bomb or weapon is a close to impossible task.  The TSA is tasked with finding knives, bombs and other weapons that a potential terrorist might possess on thousands of flights a day across the U.S.  Some would say they are sagging under the weight of such a mandate.  Yet finding the intent of a person first, and then searching for weapons is not only a much easier task but a more effective one than having a security system that uniformly checks for bombs and not for bombers.

Finding intent before means is not a new concept.  In fact, traditional security organizations such as U.S. Immigration and Customs as well as the Secret Service have always worked on the basis of intent first.  U.S. Customs does not scrutinize each piece of cargo that arrives in the U.S. to find smuggled merchandise. They generally look for irregularities and suspicion signs that may indicate malicious intent and then they check for the means.

Good security and threat-oriented security is always driven by intent.  Whether you protect your own home or your country, the intent of the potential aggressor and his methods of operation must be the frame of reference against which you design your security system and policies.  Going for the means may lead to incrimination – but never to prevention

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.

Al Walaki posed an immediate threat.  He was a very big player in the jihad he encouraged against the West.  His Inspire magazine was well named insofar as it successfully inspired the likes of Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Abdulmutallab the so called Underwear Bomber, Roshonara Choudhry in the stabbing of a British Cabinet Minister and countless others.  Only a few faulty detonators came between his leadership and support of terrorist acts versus the murder of hundreds of innocent citizens.

He was no Timothy McVeigh – a lone wolf who could be easily captured on his home turf.  Al Walaki was a charismatic leader in an international movement whose intent is to produce a pack of lone wolves.  Killing such a person is not about settling a score with him individually, but about countering a larger organization with whom, like it or not, we are at war.  Al Walaki  - as is the case with leaders of organized crime cartels and terror groups – may have tried to duck personal accountability and attempted to remain untouchable.  He was not untouchable and that is a good thing.

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 linguistic expressions, social mores, apparent education, priorities, beliefs and preferences inform a culture.  Growing up within a culture we learn more about it than we realize.  We barely know what we know.

With Arabs the current poster children for terrorists, let’s use that group as an example.  Shia, Sunni, Maronite, Christian, Druze and Bedouin Arabs hail from dozens of countries, and each holds a different set of religious, political and social affiliations.  And then among the two billion Muslims on the planet there are myriad differences.  Most of which are known and familiar only to those with intimate experience in a given, and sometimes closed, environment.  For some, making decisions around those subtle differences are part of their daily existence, part and parcel of efficient social function.

Population or racial profiling is problematic because as we can see, it can be really hard to do.  Across all populations of terrorists, be they  a blue eyed, blond Scandinavian (Anders Breivik), a dark skinned, dark eyed Egyptian (Mohamed Atta) or a Jewish doctor from Brooklyn (Baruch Goldstein) there is one common denominator.  The way a terrorist plans for and executes an attack.  The method of operation remains the same across all races, cultures and societies.  These methods and their associated indicators can be learned by any security professional and therefore  should be the focus of our attention when we are talking about anti terrorism.

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 spending much more time at home, by themselves.  On the whole, my impression is that there has been a strong shift towards if not outright anti-neighborliness then at least ignorance of ones neighbors and community.  In the distant past, dependence on community could be a matter of life or death.  It was socially understood that the group would band together to protect itself and its constituent parts from whatever enemy presented itself.  Perhaps now the danger doesn’t feel as acute or apparent as it once did.

From a security point of view, community is a critical component of a safe environment.  It’s another facet of awareness, isn’t it?  Only by first really getting to know my neighbors, their cars, kids, pets, hobbies, habits, timetables, etc. could I understand what constitutes something irregular and potentially threatening in my environment.  That my neighbors know me well enough to question the new (different) car in the driveway, or a change in my schedule, is great.  That I allow them to know me grants them license to be involved in a way that makes us all safer.