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Sampling Your Molecular 'Aura'
Logic Bomb writes: "A researcher at Penn State University has found a way to reliably examine your "thermal plume" -- the convection currents created by body heat radiation that carry all sorts of tiny molecules off your body's surface. While this plume certainly can be used to make pretty thermal images, the real use of this technology is through chemical analysis. Little bits of whatever you're wearing, anything you've touched recently, and skin are all present in the air around your body, and all available for analysis. The technology therefore has some pretty wide possibilities, including drug and explosives detection. Even stranger, the creator thinks such devices could be used to check for some kinds of medical conditions. A working version for use in airport terminals to check for explosives is only about a year away. That sounds fine to me, but a medical-screening version of the device hidden in the doorway at my insurance company sounds pretty scary. This is another very useful technology just begging to be abused. An article from the San Francisco Chronicle has more details and a link to the project Web site."
waiting to be abused....
like everybody's favorite way to find unsigned artists, napster.
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Not directly. Insurance companies should however be allowed to give me lower rates because I'm a "honest, in shape, hard working, non-drug/tobacco/alcahol user, eat right, etc goody goody person" (Not all of which may be true for me)
Those who smoke and then try to get non-smoker rates on life insurance should be caught and made to pay higher rates. (if the insurance company disoceres it they will not pay, but they can't discover all liers)
Now diabettics and those with cancer probably didn't do anything to get it. However your looking at it wrong. If my sister walks through the door, and the scanners conclude she is a higher then normal risk for breat cancer, they would charge higher rates to her, but in return they would make her get screenings twice a year rather then the normal yearly or every other year. She pays for her treatment, but because they are screening often odds are they catch it sooner when it is cheaper to treat. I get to keep my sister, and the insurance company doesn't have to pay for 6 months of hospital bills before she finially dies. Everyone wins. (One could argue that rates are cheaper becuase they don't pay those expensive 6 month bills, but I don't know exactly how that would work)
Insurance isn't for things that you expect, insurance is for things that you can't anticipate and save for. My odds spending 6 months (for example) in the hospital are pretty low. I pool my money with 10 other people, and when one of us spends 6 months in the hospital the bills are paid. If I knew it was going to be me nobody would pool with me because my odds of landing in the hospital do not affect theirs.
I think most people here have brought up a lot of very good uses for the technology. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried about the very real possibility (even inevitability) of it abused. Insurance companies are just one of the likely culprits. They have very little scruples from what I've seen. They, like any other corp, exist to make money. They don't seem to mind screwing people over if that's what it takes either.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
'Scuse me -- don't you mean Ben Franklin?
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
ive seen and read about dogs being used to sniff out skin cancer. theyre also being used by people with epilepsy. they are trained to alert their owners of an oncoming attack so that they can get to a safe place in time. they are also trained to look after them during and after the attack. i believe they can predict usually around 15 minutes beforehand, and possibly up to 30.
granted this kind of training isnt cheap (over $10,000 for a 'seizure-dog' i think), but im sure its well worth it to people who suffer from the disease.
--Siva
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The idea here is that it is not invasive, it does not require you to be detained, and is presumably not in any way harmful to your health. This is better than the cops throwing you up against a wall and being searched because they think you look like a terrorist, as frequently happens to a friend of mine.
The only danger I see in this is that it is not as reliable as it pretends to be, and it is used for subsequent illegal searches, i.e. they think they see bomb residue on me, but it turns out that I had gardened then I cleaned my bathtub with Mr. Clean (nitrogen and ammonia, yeah!). And then they detain me.
Anything that you have not concealed is not private when you walk outside your home. A cop can stake out your house for days and anything that can be seen from public property is fair game - and I think that is only fair. If they get better technology that allows them to "see" more of you - so be it. So long as they don't abuse it.
-nosilA
"That sounds fine to me, but a medical-screening version of the device hidden in the doorway at my insurance company sounds pretty scary."
Not a problem. I'll simply smear myself all over with tofu and organic veggies before applying for medical insurance.
It never ceases to amaze me that people equate the ability to deceive medical insurance companies about their state of health as some sort of privacy issue. A good analogy would be complaining that it is a violation of your right to privacy to allow someone who wants to buy a car off of you to see it and have it inspected first. Insurance companies are a business and they are perfectly within their rights to ask for appropriate information prior to entering into an agreement to pay your medical expenses. Eric Christian Berg
But seriously, they already have mechanical 'noses' that can detect things like drugs in luggage, or the ones at UConn or CaltTech that can diagnose some ailments.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
That would wreak havoc on the member administration of the mile-high club...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
And generate false positives it will... At least with respect to illegal drugs.
There was a study done a while back that showed that something like 90+ percent of US paper currency was tainted with detectible amounts of cocaine and/or pot.
Seems that one person would use a bill to roll a joint or divide up a line. Then he'd eventually spend that currency on something. That bill would get in a cash register and contaminate the others around it. These would eventually find their way to a bank, where they are fed into high-speed money-counting machinery. The machinery is now contaminated with coke/pot residue and duely taints every subsequent bill fed through it.
So just think. Pretty much EVERYONE is carrying, on their person, detectible amounts of illegal drugs.
Paper currency (not actually paper, but a linnen/cotton blend IIRC), is remarkably fiberous and holds particulates quite well. Hell, it soaks up liquids pretty good too, AND is plenty durable.
Seems like you could screw up the system something fierce by saturating your cash with whatever you plan to smuggle in the future, and just wait a few months for everyone to get sick of all the false positives generated.
Or hell, don't smuggle anything, just fsck the anti-privacy brigade on general principle.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
So my question is:
;))
Can we get a midiclorian count??
/* Lobster Stick To Magnet!*/
Naw, this can't be from penn state. If it were, there would be something about detecting beer. And there is nothing about detecting beer anywere. As a Penn Stater, I have learned that any technology can be applied to beer, no matter how obscure. And since there is no beer, I can only conclude it came from those morons over at Pitt.
Eric
Make it idiot-proof and someone will build a better idiot.
that this device will require consent to be used. yeah, when you enter an airport and agree to goto the boarding gates, you are consenting to allow them to search your person (without violation) and belongings.
this is a unique device and will allow such searches to be more exact, but if you think that you'll encounter this while entering the local deli, think again. trust me - it may take a Supreme Court ruling, but that plume belongs to you and will be subject to the same rules and regulations of search/seizure.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
In any case, I have karma in excess of 50, so I'll post this with a +2 and see if I lose a point after the moderators kill it...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Hmmm...maybe we can turn this around and create a volunteer organization which uses these things to track the movements & behaviors of all of our law enforcement & political leaders (and post the results on a public web site :)?
Conservatives often complain that Americans are constantly making up new rights. But technologies like this one are a perfect example of why our ideas of privacy and freedom have to keep changing and growing just to stay the same.
Fifty years ago, it was unacceptable for the police to conduct random pat-down searches of anyone walking down the street. But it was perfectly fine for them to look, which gave them access only to common information that couldn't be considered personal. If I were to object to having my thermal plume analyzed to see if I (or any of my friends) use drugs, I'm sure Rush would rant about "these crazy liberals! Now they want freedom from being looked at!" But if analysis from a distance now reveals just as much private information as putting me against a wall and stripping me naked, don't I have the same right to protest?
This has been happening for a long time. The police can't go around randomly opening up cars and searching for drugs. But properly-trained dogs can search a car without having to open it! We need to think hard: Do we want to be protected from specific acts -- or from specific inquiries.
The recent Napster debates have taught me that I must make this explicit: I'm not just trying to make life easier for criminals. Once a precedent is set, it's hard to overturn. The more we allow the authorities to find out about us, the more they'll want to find out. The more information they have, the greater the chance that it will be used against us. By all means, let's use anything we can to examine people who are already under suspicion (a very broad category, if a crime has just been committed), but let's also make sure we hold the line agains police intrusion into everyday life.
I suppose this reflects my belief that we have too many laws and too many people in prison already.
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
As the author of the "abuse" post, I would like to express my agreement. I take it for granted that there are positive uses for this technology, and I would almost never go so far as to say that something is too dangerous to be developed.
I don't try to keep my kids from seeing porn by shutting down the internet. I'm not going to try to keep the government from abusing its power by suppressing invention. But if we are going to be this liberal in our treatment of new technologies, we are required to remain vigilant with regards to undesirable uses and to find other ways to prevent them. Hence my warning.
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
That was the Birmingham Six. On 21 November, 1974, 19 people were killed and 182 were injured when two bombs, planted by the IRA, exploded in the Mulberry Bush and Tavern In The Town pubs in Birmingham. Five men who left Birmingham after the bombing were found guilty of the killings. The men were later acquitted of the charges after languishing in jail for 16 years.
Somewhere around c.
Owen
Not sure if I saw this before here or on another site, but it made me wonder then. If they're tracking for saltpeter, whatever, on you: how long does that residue stay in contact with your body after you've left the source? If I shake hands with a demolition person, will their residue stay on my hand and be picked up?
But I don't like the idea from the start. It's like riding home in a car full of smoking people, then your mom getting onto you, thinking that you were smoking. There's too much of a gray area.
There's also "cop's nose"
Advantages: Even more portable. Doesn't require the biscuts.
Disadvantages: Not quite as sensitive as "Dog", but still able to detect significant quantities of Alcohol, Pot, and other illicit substances.
When this amazing new technology gets installed, I predict that the entire basis of our free society will go down the toilet, and we'll spend our lives in neo-Nazi slave camps!
Or maybe not...
I've noticed that too; I'm stuck at 194, and it hasn't changed in a week or so, despite some posting and moderation activity.
This is yet another prime example of Americans surrendering just a little bit more freedom to make the world a vaguely safer place.
I'm not singling out americans actually because it's happening here (scotland) too except i'm sure some big famous american type said that 'he who surrenders freedom to gain more safety deserves neither'.
I'm not sure what we can do to buck the trend because the majority of people just dont seem to understand what free speech is, they seem to gravitate towards the popular press ideals that it will "Catch more criminals". And the few of us that feel strongly about this will be left feeling strongly pissed off.
Yeah by my reckoning my karma is somewhere in the 60's but always displays as 53. That way when I post crap and go down it doesn't affect the displayed value.
:)
How was this for a top quality piece of undecided moderating on a post
Moderation Totals:Redundant=1, Informative=2, Overrated=2, Total=5.
The previous story begins:
Scott_Marks writes "The New York Times today has an article on a newly-patented device...
Where does that not mention a patent?
You can read all about the previous discussion on Walk-by DNA Testing.
:(
Except i'm no karma whore, i'm stuck at 53 for some reason and when i'm mod'ed up it stays put and when i'm mod'ed down it stays put.
Warnings are all fine and dandy, but it won't stop technology from entering the culture as long as it can sell. Look at TV (decline in social activities and some learned skills), guns (out right kills people) or cars (again kills people, but has more of a benefit than guns...)
If it can be sold, it will. Such immoral applications will surely exist as they do in any sector that has immoral people in it.
Same thing with this. Once it is installed, and deemed workable, it will propogate. Soon all airports will have this in tandem with x-rays (same portal, two scanners) this will then open the doors for immoral uses.
Immoral or improper uses will not stop a sellable technology. I specify sellable, as Beta died out in favour of the worse VCR format, only due to installed base. It couldn't sell enough, so it died. If this scanner can't sell, it too will die.
so you physically go in to an office to arrange insurance? tell me it is not so! next you'll be telling us you read real newspapers!
An example of this is an interferometer - which turns out to be a great device for picking up the passing of trucks on streets in front of the building in which it is being used.
We in the technical fields tend to have an understanding for these kinds of problems - which non technical people lack. This has serious consequences when it is non technical people making judgments based on the results of the test.
Example: company uses one of these devices to screen for diabetes in prospective employees by checking for acetone emissions. Woman has used nail polish remover ( contains acetone ) registers false positive for diabetes. Doesn't get job. Her personal database ( shared by employers ) gets updated, and she can't find work - and she never knows why. Given the choice of hiring the ill or hiring the healthy, who gets the nod?
Someone else, pointed out that it is very difficult to find $20 bills in circulation that don't have traces of cocaine on them; we all ought to have increasingly fun times at airport security.
The fact that these machines would score false positives right and left won't keep the technically challenged in the world from treating them like they are infallible 'witch detectors'.
The kind of mistakes that can possibly made with this technology aren't new.
Everyone remembers the problems some employees have had with drug testing and poppy seeds bagels.
I can see problems with people who like to garden and work on their cars. Will this new device say they were working on an ANFO bomb?
The medical applications of this are pretty profound - image being able to do most of the blood work without needles, without having to send the work to a distant lab. Lots of diseases change the metabolism in ways that can be measured in the breath, or molecules coming off the skin. Using old fashioned evolution, there are some doctors that use dogs that can smell skin cancer and indicate which moles need more investigation.
"The medical uses could be more important in the long run than the security application. Any medical condition that produces a chemical signal could be a candidate"
Man walks into doctor's office sneezing and coughing:
"Doctor, I have a flu. Can you give me something?"
"I don't know, let me check your aura." [takes a vacuum hose and sticks it next to the man, sucking air into a machine]
"Just be patient....it's working."
"Ah-ha! You've got the flu. Here's a prescription. That'll be $350"
--
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
"That's not BO you're smelling, there's half a dead mouse in your coat pocket."
Oh, what a fun concept...
"Crack! I detect Crack cocaine! Nah, just kidding."
"No explosives... no drugs... cheap suit..."
Anyone who thinks this could ever be used for DNA sampling to see who had entered the building or locate where you had been can relax now. Even though the technology to pull in bits of skin and do DNA testing on the results exists today, it is an amazingly sensitive tests. So sensitive that it really can't sensibly be used in a non-clean environment - the augmentation of the original DNA material is extremely vulnerable to contamination. So the skin from the person who sat on the same bus seat as you might get picked up. Or the last person you shook hands with. Or just someone you brushed against in the street.
At the end of the day, this technology is possible but not practical for DNA testing.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Sure, like any other new technology, there will be opportunities for good and bad; and often depends on the eye (nose?) of the beholder.
Possible applications:
I'd also like to see if there's any synergy between this and the electronic-nose-chips that I seem to recall reading about recently.
Of course, it's only a matter of time when there will be anti-smell detection devices; nanobots that dismantle the very smells this device would detect.
Some other uses for this technology I would actually approve of:
* Fitted in a hand-held unit to decide, once and for all, the age old question: "who just farted?"
* Preventing people with strong BO from getting on the bus
* Sounding a siren when someone hasn't washed his hands properly after using the toilet
* Not allowing your front door to open until you've got rid of that bad breath
* Keeping smokers out of the non-smoking section of the restaurant / train
* Hooked up to the sprinkler system to go off when those disgustingly perfumed old ladies in fur coats walk by
I think I could go on and on, but I won't...
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Think about this for a sec.
Me the good guy:
I used to use explosives daily for my job. And I traveled on the airlines weekly.
Them the bad guys:
Would it not seem likely that would be terrorists could develop procedures do deal with this inconvenience?
Say they develop the Triple inverted ziplock explosive baggy trick. Or the ever favorite '4 Hour Power Shower'.
In the end they would still make it on the plane and I would be held up at the strip search counter trying to explain myself to paranoid people with small firearms.
Although I must admit that I have never had any incidents with the k-9 devices in use today.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
here
There was a link on Cryptome a while a go.
There is already a highly sophisticated device that can do this. Not only that, it doesn't take 10 seconds to analyse the air particles. It can do it in a fraction of a second.
The unit is almost self contained, running on just a few buscuts a day.
This is a powerful technology, while many will be quick to dismiss it, condemn it, and villify it. It is just a tool. It is inherently neutral. The good or bad that will come from it will come from those that use it. The technology is there, once it has been announced, it can't be taken away, so learn it, use it, understand it, just like so many seem to say about the various hacking/cracking tools.
Too many people are quick to assume that when it is in someone else's hands, they must be evil, but in your hands it would be good. I can see some very powerful uses of this- biometrics for one. How about a home based doctor- maybe you still will need to go to an office, but this machine will tell you which specialty you need to go to- heck maybe an HMO will even support it, since it would mean going directly to the proper doctor, without having to see some sort of gateway practicioner.
Yes, this technology can be abused, but exploring the uses and abuses of technology is what hacking (in the classic sense) is all about.