Why travellers with body odour and a ‘cold stare’ face surveillance in US

Passengers with strong body odour or a “cold penetrating stare” risk being tracked on US domestic flights, internal documents from the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reveal.

Thousands of Americans not suspected of any crime nor on any terrorist watchlist have been surveilled in airports and on flights by undercover federal air marshals for exhibiting what the agency deems suspicious behaviour, The Boston Globe reports.

People are watched for excessive sweating or fidgeting, wide open, staring eyes and face touching, among other behaviours, according to the leak memos.

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“The criteria for surveillance appear fluid. Internal agency emails show some confusion about the programme’s parameters and implementation,” says the newspaper. But “all American citizens who travel back from abroad are screened for inclusion in the tracking database”.

These passengers’ travel patterns and affiliations are checked, and their names run against a terrorist watch list and other databases, according to the documents.

After someone is deemed suspicious and included for surveillance, “an air marshall is assigned to their next domestic flight to observe them”, reports The Times.

TSA employees and air marshals express doubts about the practice in the internal documents. “What we are doing is troubling and raising some serious questions as to the validity and legality of what we are doing and how we are doing it,” one air marshal wrote in a text message to colleagues.

Responding to the publication of the files, Michael Bilello, an assistant administrator for the TSA, said: “These programmes are not designed to observe the average American, they’re designed to protect the travelling public.”

The agency declined to say whether the Quiet Skies programme has intercepted any threats. Release of such information “would make passengers less safe”, a spokesperson said.