Bill Clinton’s video interview a part of CISF profiling course

NEWDELHI: The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) is learning how to profile from a course that uses among other things, footage from famous video interviews.

One of the elements in the course involves watching video footage without the audio and guessing the subject’s response. A first round of training for 12 senior officers was conducted in February and a second batch, comprising officers stationed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, is expected to take the course in June.

The CISF is tasked with handling the security of airports, the Delhi Metro and some government buildings.

“Profiling has two parts and 80% of it is in the appearance of a passenger,” said a CISF officer on the condition of anonymity. “Now, we are learning, once a suspect is identified through appearance, how to detect whether he is a threat or not by reading expression after asking random questions,” the officer added.

One of the videos used in the course, featuring former United States President Bill Clinton, proved to be revealing. When the first batch of officers saw the footage of Clinton nodding during the interview, they misread his body language and thought he was saying yes to the questions posed to him. Only when they heard the audio did the officers realise Clinton had been saying no.

Officials believe that this course will help personnel detect suspects by scanning closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage which has only visuals and no sound.