From a confidential Transportation Security Administration document that was leaked to The Intercept by, according to them, "a source concerned about the quality of the program," comes this checklist of behaviors said by the TSA to be indicative of possible terrorist activity. The checklist is a guide for TSA agents to score suspects at the airport. It is part of a controversial protocol called SPOT, an acronym that stands for Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques. Each behavior on the checklist that is identified in a suspect scores them "points."
Part of the list of behaviors reads as follows:
- Excessive Throat Clearing
- Exaggerated Yawning
After flying home from my last vacation still suffering from the remnants of a virus, its safe to say I could have been classified as dangerous based on those two behaviors alone.
Read more on this story and see copies of the TSA documents in question, which include the other behaviors that mark airline passengers as suspicious, at The Intercept.