Slashdot Mirror
Airport Security vs. Cyborg Steve Mann
CompaniaHill writes: "The New York Times (free reg, etc.) has a story on University of Toronto engineering-professor-turned-cyborg Steve Mann's recent run-in with humorless airport security. Apparently his preplanning and documents were sufficient to get him through the Toronto airport security on his way to St. John's in Newfoundland, but not sufficient to get him through the St. John's airport security on his way home. Two days later, after strip-searches, forced removal of implants and x-raying and other ill-handling of delicate hardware, he returned home in a wheelchair. Mann's lawyer is attempting to recover the cost of the $56,800 in damaged hardware, while his doctors are studying his body's response to the removal of the implants, some of which he has had for over twenty years."
This is *not* Kevin Warwick, the British psuedoscience jackass who's been walking around for a few years with an RFID pet tag under his skin.
It is Professor Steve Mann (http://eyetap.org/mann/), one of the first inventors of a *real* wearable, and a downright cool guy. I didn't know he had any implants- does anyone have any more information? I'd imagine his equipment would be a bit more advanced than the snake-oil Warwick's been showing around.
Two years ago Steve Mann had a very similar run-in with AirCanada, they being very hostile towards him bringing his equipment on-board, and damaging some of his equipment in the process.
His detailed description with photos is at Air Canada Irresponsibility.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
In one fell swoop they cut him off from his augmented memory and processing, and then threw his visual system for a loop, hence the need for a wheelchair.
I'm a graduate student at the University of Toronto, and interact with Prof. Mann on an intermittent basis (did a project under him a few years back, meet him in the lab whenever I'm borrowing his soldering equipment).
He can see fine without his HUD. It's not a complete visual transformation overlay - it's a wearable computer display, functionally equivalent to most of the other wearable displays you can buy. He's been working on information-overlay projects for years, many of them successful, but to say that he has "vital" vision-enhancement programs running at all times is a drastic overstatement.
Likewise, "augmented memory" consists of him either teleconferencing with someone or doing a Google lookup. He's perfectly capable of finding his way through this university, or an airport, without augmentation.
Use common sense, people. If he was disoriented, I'd suspect it to be the result of a many-hour delay with inadequate food/water or of an overly-zealous search as opposed to loss of any electronics.
Despite the claims in the slashdot blurb, Mann does not have any implants. The NYTimes story mentions that electrodes were removed from his skin. These are the same as those sticky things they attach when someone gets an EKG or polygraph test, and are presumably used by Mann to measure physiological things like heart rate or skin conductance. Mann claims that when they were removed he bled -- kind of like ripping off a really sticky band-aid...