U.S. Program Tracks Unsuspecting Air Passengers.
SY: U.S. airport security is tracking ordinary passengers with methods usually reserved for criminals and terrorists. The idea is to gather details about people's behavior on the plane to try and thwart any potential aviation threats. According to a report from the "Boston Globe", passengers could be tracked for sweating heavily, sleeping or using the rest room repeatedly. Rene Marsh has been following this for us from Washington. There you go, Rene, I've been tagged, I've done all three of those things in recent months. This kind of sounds sketchy, this program. What other details do we have?</s>RENE MARSH, CNN GOVERNMENT REGULATION & TRANSPORTATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, as people are learning about it for the first time, and the TSA says that they've been doing this for some eight years. Certainly, when you hear these details, people are drawn, taken aback because of course it raises some privacy issues as well. We do know that TSA holds this program, a Sensitive Security Information Program, so that's why they hadn't advertised it so to speak in quite some time. But in speaking with the agency over the weekend, we got a better sense as far as what it entails. We know that they've been tracking passengers with no obvious ties to terrorism, and the agency is pretty upfront about that. They won't divulge many details about this program and how it works. But we do know that passengers are selected first based on their travel pattern. Do they travel some place like a terrorism hotspot, multiple times, that would certainly raise a red flag. The agency is also getting information from the Intel community. So they're using that sort of information to determine if you should be tracked or not. If you do raise a red flag, let's say because of your travel patterns, then a U.S. Air Marshal will be placed on your flight, you won't know that. But they'll be dispatched to their flight and they will be seated strategically in a seat where they can observe your every move, your entire -- you know, if you move your left hand, they'll see that, your behavior in the entire fight. And they're looking for a number of things, you mentioned some of them off the top including like excessive fidgeting and perspiration, rapid eye- blinking, even sleeping. So they say that -- and 'they' meaning, TSA say that they're doing this not so much to survey ordinary Americans, but they say because they have to do it as a way to secure air travel.</s>SY: All right, Rene Marsh, let's hope that they know what they're doing. Thanks a lot. That is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS, I'm Stephanie Sy, Richard will be back tomorrow. For now, the news continues on CNN, thanks for watching.