Mar. 23 -- Starting this summer, another set of eyes is going to be watching you make your way through Memphis International Airport, noticing any anxious tics in your face, darting eye movements or signs in general that you've got something to hide.
Beginning next week, the Transportation Security Administration will be interviewing people who are already certified TSA security agents, looking to fill 12 openings for behavioral analysts in Memphis whose job will be engaging you in conversation simply to see how you act.
"We're not going to pick you out because you're nervous about flying. We understand what signs a 71-year-old woman flying for the first time exhibits," said Don Barker, TSA federal security director in West Tennessee. "We're looking for something above and beyond that."
The program -- Screening Passengers by Observation Technique -- will be rolled at a few airports each month this year.
"By the end of the year, it will be in place at 40 airports," said Sari Koshetz, TSA spokeswoman. "We are moving it out slowly because we have a careful selection process to find TSA officers qualified for this assignment."
The program, tested in a handful of airports last year, including Logan International in Boston where it started, is a process for conducting more than random screenings and is based loosely on the tactics used at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
No flight leaving Ben Gurion has ever been hijacked. While Israeli security agents check for bombs and weapons, they make a point of engaging in dialogue with almost everyone who's catching a plane, acting on the truth that things don't hijack planes, people do.
In the U.S. system, passengers are pulled out for more thorough screenings by random marks on their boarding passes or by their number in line, giving rise to a litany of complaints that TSA is spending its time searching grandmothers, for instance, and others who pose no threat.
"This is one more element to identifying the people who may cause problems rather than everything being random," Barker said.
The agents, representing a tiny fraction of TSA's more than 40,000 screeners, are in uniform, "and will definitely be interacting with passengers," he said.
In Memphis, they will be stationed at each of the four checkpoints, but will move around the terminal.
Training includes four days of classroom instruction in behavior observation and analysis, and is followed by 24 hours of on-the-job training in airport security settings, Koshetz said.
Some of the curriculum is based on the work of Paul Ekman, a psychiatrist who helped TSA create the program and whose long-term study of facial expressions proved they can be used to reliably detect lying.
TSA said it is working with the Department of Justice to ensure it protects individual civil rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts sued Logan Airport over the constitutionality of a behavioral assessment program that allows officers to stop and detain people for questioning, saying it allows police to stop people anytime for any reason.
TSA officers do not have law enforcement powers. But they can alert airport police or force a passenger to go through a more intense checkpoint search.
The extra effort in Memphis comes as the busy summer travel season approaches and as TSA agents are conducting more random, surprise checks of airport workers, contractors and vehicles entering the airfield.
"We've been doing this for four months, but Monday we stepped it up tenfold," Barker said.
The checks are partly a reaction to an incident this month when two Comair baggage handlers brought guns and drugs aboard a Delta Air Lines flight by using their employee uniforms and airport identification cards to enter restricted areas and bypass screeners.
"While all airport employees have passed background checks, "past conduct is never an absolute predictor of future conduct," Barker said.
Memphis International also qualified for a $680,000 TSA grant to install and maintain 120 additional video cameras throughout the airport and revitalize the airport's recording capabilities.
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