NASA Plan to Read Brainwaves at Airports

cascino writes: "In one of the more bizarre (and intrusive) spinoffs of the Government's 'crackdown on terrorism,' Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify. Space technology would be adapted to receive and analyze brain-wave and heartbeat patterns, then feed that data into computerized programs 'to detect passengers who potentially might pose a threat,' according to briefing documents obtained by The Washington Times." This is the second story recently that gives me second thoughts about flying Northwest.

Comments

metal plates

[hereward_Cooper]

so now all people with metal plates in their heads are terrorists...

-- Coops

EM Effects

[HaeMaker]

With metal detectors, geiger counters, bomb sniffing equipment, brain and heart rate scanners, not to mention the radar, radios, cell phones, computers, flourecent lighting, etc.

How long will it be before all of the EM radiation converges and produces some kind of secondary effect, say like a worm hole or quantum singularity, or maybe fusion?

good intentions paving the way!

[Anonymous Coward]

cut out the privacy issues and you are still left with the problem that these bureaucrats just refuse to LEARN. This will not work, plain and simple as, first of all there are many levels of thought and subconscious activity throughout the body that people have that will give a whole heap of false readings. A lot of people may have violent thoughts if someone pisses them off, they are having a bad day, etc. However, this is just the internal process of weighing possibilities with ethics and morals (or weighing against plans). Like a meeting in which open discussion is actually supported, there should be people playing devils advocate to get issues and ideas out in the open, even the stupid ones. Only then can you say you weighed them and turned them down.

Anyway, the signal to noise ratio will be tremendous unless a fantastic group of parallel algorithms along with miraculous hardware is available that enables an AI aspect that in many ways could be even more perceptive than actual human thought.

Then we get the fact that any terrorist or criminal is worth anything is going to train for this. The common theme among all these idiotic plans that government bestows upon us is that they fail to understand that you should build up on basics before instead of depending on gadgets.

Now bring back in privacy issues, due process and so forth and you are left with a system that allows any one person to subvert it for their own personal gain. You in essence setup multiple powder kegs and leave out the torches in reach of any bureacrat. I don't think I ever voted in the entire executive branch. When people have power over me that is not strictly limited and regulated by those I place in power, then the chances are great that it can be abused or neglected. THe result is not only a destruction of our way of life... but in the end we will be less safe than before. Terrorists need not attack our country anymore, it is apparent what they did was enact a chain effect where by our 'well meaning' gray hairs will do the rest for them [the terrorists]

Don't hold your breath on this one...

[irishkev]

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the government is making an active attempt to read peoples' minds. The good news is that it's never going to work---if the description in this article is any indication of how they're going to go about it.

How could I possibly know it's not going to work? Well, let's just say I worked for a company that burned up millions of dollars attempting to do something FAR less ambitious than these bozos at NASA have set out to do. We were using essentially the same techniques as described in the article, with one incredible difference. THE NASA THING IS NOT GOING TO TOUCH YOU. BAA HAAA HAAAAA! I nearly broke a rib when I read they're going to gather the EEG signals---I have to steady myself from laughing so hard as I type---without placing a "cap" on the subject. Wait, can you hear that? It's the sound of my former co-workers laughing their asses off. What is the NASA team going to do *I'm still chuckling*, have every airline passenger step inside a Faraday cage packed with room temperature, superconductive sensors built by little gnomes at Area 51!?

We've been there, we've tried this....well, minus the full body Faraday cage and extraterrestrial sensors. That is, we had the luxury of actually using a standard EEG headset to collect the data. And it was still difficult to JUST GET QUALITY DATA. EEG is the biggest pain in the ass to work with. Ask ANYONE who's ever dealt with it.

Well, say NASA can wave a magic wand and somehow collect the data, then what? Predict high order human behaviors and thought processes by analyzing EEG with some other special herbs and spices thrown in for good measure? It may sound good on paper, but I'm here to tell ya: It's bullsh*t. No, it's double bullsh*t. Two years and millions of dollars later, I'll tell you what we got: Snake Eyes. Nothing. Jack. Nil. And I can assure you that we weren't going for anything remotely as hard as this NASA thing. We had lots of PhDs, freaks, nerds, experts, etc. It didn't matter. The feds would have a better chance of getting at the intent of an individual if they would let a circus macaque run loose in the terminal, randomly identifying "terrorists" in the crowd!

In case you think I'm kidding about all of this, that's me in the pictures. Pic1 Pic2 Pic3

Re:Don't hold your breath on this one...

[alouts]

Well, the EEG aspect of it may not work. But unless I was seriously misreading the article, that was only one component. They're also gathering data on eye and facial movement, heart rate, all kinds of junk other than EEG readings.

I'm not normally much of a conspiracy theorist, but maybe the EEG thing is thrown in there so that people can laugh off the "mind reading" aspect of it as being unfeasible and dismiss the whole thing while they get 90% of the program working without anyone noticing.

I'm still concerned about my privacy, and being falsely accused of being a terrorist jsut because I'm a bit high strung that day.

Re:great idea

[sheean.nl]

I'd still assume there would be a difference in the brain waves of a person who is considering destroying a passenger jet and a person who just wants to scream.

Yes, now the problem is... how are you going to find out what those signals are?! You can't just open an can of terorists to see what they think...

Second Thoughts!?

[theGopher]

I don't think this would give me second thoughts about flying Northwest... it seems as though Northwest is trying to position itself as "the secure airline"... a strategy that I'm surprised no airline has really tried to use since the terrorist attacks. (Sure, you can take Foo Airways, where the only security scan is a newly minted federal employee staring at the women on the x-ray cam, but wouldn't you prefer to take Bar Airways where they interview each passenger rigorously, require biometric ID and scan aganinst federal fingerprint databases before issuing a ticket, check branwave scans etc... I think it has marketing potential.)

Whether these measures are effective or not is questionable, and I would agree if this became federally mandated it would be invasive, but this seems to be a private initiative so far and thus not much to worry about.

Devil�s Advocate

[DumbSwede]

Devil's Advocate

The September 11th terrorists engaged all sorts of nervous, suspicious behavior, and security guards didn't notice, or felt in inappropriate to subject them to further scrutiny (yes, yes, they let them get through with box cutters when they shouldn't, yadda, yadda).

Is it appropriate or inappropriate for a human to make the call for further scrutiny based on nervous and suspicious behavior? If it is appropriate, then why is it bad for machines to detect suspicious and nervous behavior in these situations? Despite the reference to "Mind Reading", the technology, whether based on reading brainwaves or other physiologic responses, is really only looking for signs of heightened agitation. Yes there will be false positive (especially at introduction of these technologies), but why are these false positives inherently worse, than false positives by alert security officers detecting suspicious behavior?

For arguments sake, lets assume a 100% accuracy rate in detecting stress or agitation. Should nervous or agitated people be allowed to fly without some attempt to ascertain the source of their agitation?

Now they may have a personal reason they don't wish to divulge.
"I'm afraid of flying"
"I just got a divorce"
"I'm moving to a new job"
"I'm afraid of being asked why I'm afraid"

They should just be informed they can/should respond:
"Yes I am feeling some degree of stress for personal reasons."

Many may be surprised to learn they are giving off signs of being stressed, which may of benefit for them to be aware of.

Gun toting terrorists are likely respond with the majority in saying:
"Yes I am feeling some degree of stress for personal reasons"
But they would still have shown up to security screens as requiring extra attention.

While such automated scrutiny is likely to stress some people, especially at introduction, it could potentially make airport checking much quicker for the majority, and even for the minority, since their additional screening occurs immediately, instead of in line with everyone.

I agree there should be checks and balances for the use of such technologies. They are not appropriate for all areas, but to reject them outright in all situations is probably short sighted. Many things in life are a compromise from the ideal. The ideal freedom would be to board all planes with no screening, and having them fall from the sky in some percentage due to terrorism, which would just be the price we pay for complete privacy and freedom. I'm sure x-ray screening technologies were initially seen by some as too intrusive. As threat scales up, so must our technological intervention.

False positives must be assumed to occur, and those people that need further screening must be handled in such a way as not to stigmatize them, stress them further, or alarm other passengers. Even without this technology, near strip searches in front of other boarding passengers fails this requirement.

BTW, I would rather respond to why this would be bad, if the technology works, rather than why it won't work, which in all truth may not work well enough now, but can probably be made to work well enough in the future.

Let my pillorying begin at the hands of /. Freedom Fighers. :-)

Something smells like horsecrap

[guttentag]

1. The Washington Times is not a real newspaper. It is a publication of the Rev. Sun Moon's Unification Church that was founded in the 1980s to advance church interests by influencing people who would mistake the publication for the Washington equivalent of The New York Times.

   You should see the stories they ran during the Clinton administration... one front page I remember staring out of the newsbox at me as I walked up the Metro steps one day featured a giant photo of kids dancing around a bonfire at a rave. The headline on that story criticized Clinton for not supporting an "anti-drug" bill, but the article said nothing about the fact that he was opposed to the non-drug-related things that were tacked onto the bill.

   The publication survives for two reasons:

   1. Church funding
   2. A decent sports section (not news)
   
   
2. The Washington Times did not obtain these documents from the government; EPIC did.

   The organization [the Electronic Privacy Information Center] obtained documents July 31, the product of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration, and offered the documents to this newspaper.

   The EPIC story plays down the brain-reading aspect by devoting only one sentence to it:

   NASA has even suggested developing "non-invasive neuro-electric sensors" or brain scans at the security gate to see if people are having suspicious thoughts.

3. Neither organization which claims to have these documents provides them or quotes more than one out-of-context sentence fragment from them. Normally when an organization obtains government documents through FOIA, it provides the focuments themselves as proof. Anything obtained through FOIA is public record. If EPIC took the trouble to show us its FOIA request in PDF format, why isn't it showing us the documents it claims were obtained?

Conclusions:

1. Washington Times readers are by nature a paranoid, ultra-conservative group that likes to feel informed of the stories the real media "conveniently ignores." (Aside from the people who pick up the paper and throw out everything but the sports sections... and I've seen people do this on the Metro)
2. Any Washington Times story should be carefully scrutinized before treated as news.

Re:Washington Times

[guttentag]

Washington Times stories routinely cite reports generated by political action committees as the basis for its stories. Those reports are written because special interest groups paid their authors to produce reports that appear to support their the special interest groups' positions. That is the first reason The Washington Times is not a real newspaper. In this respect, it is more of a glorified business journal.

Second, real newspapers do not exist for the purpose of promoting their owners' beliefs. Real newspapers have a strict separation between the editors and the publishers.

Sun Moon himself says he created The Washington Times so he could influence the world:

"Do you know that I was creating the Washington Times during the court case? ... Do you know how much the Washington Times spent? 830 million. ... Why? I gave everything, centered on true love. So it expands everyday. So that I could affect the depth of American thinking, filling it full of true love water. Completely full, occupying everything."

The court case he refers to is regarding charges of tax evasion. He was convicted and spent over a year in prison.

He also claims he used The Washington Times to bring Reagan and Bush to power to defeat Communism:

The Unification Church, centering on Reverend Moon, came to America to connect that victorious foundation with the American government, the presidential level. ... Reagan became the president in 1980 through me. Think about it. Five years after the Vietnam War, a conservative, moral, rightwing Reagan could become the President of the United States. Who made that? Reverend Moon. During my time in Danbury jail, in 1984, I helped Reagan too. He was my enemy. Bush, too. I chose those great American leaders, centering on the Unification Church as subject, with the American government as object-connected into one. The Washington Times helped America overcome the communist world.

Moon claims he used The Washington Times to influence Congress (yawn):

Father [Moon] was in prison, but at that time said Nicaragua must not be abandoned, the Freedom Fighters must be supported. US Congress abandoned the project, they didn't want to give any money to the Freedom Fighters. So the Washington Times made a special editorial on the front page. You never see front page editorials, but it was published. Many people sent money and letters to Congress and the Senate. The leaders were shaken and knew they had to pass the resolution for support that had already been sent to the trash can. They decided that instead of fourteen million dollars, they would send twenty seven million. That is the money that Father earned for the Freedom Fighters of Nicaragua.

Bo Hi Pak, publisher of the WashTimes, claims Moon used The Washington Times to promote Star Wars (SDI -- double yawn):

Through The Washington Times and other organizations he founded, Rev. Moon staunchly supported President Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "Star Wars," to protect the United States from Soviet nuclear missiles through space-based defense.

I'm getting tired of looking up instances in which the owner or publisher of The Washington Times states that Rev. Moon used the publication to extend his influence over the world, so I'm going to go take a nap now. If you still want to believe the WashTimes is a real newspaper, well, it's your loss.

Still in the beginning stages

[willpost]

They're probably just checking for alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves.
Alpha - (8 to 13 Hz) Indicative of Relaxed, Awake State
Beta - (14 to 30 Hz) Fast, Unsynchronized Activity
Delta - (0.1 to 3Hz) Indicates Deep Sleep Highly Synchronized Brain Activity
Theta - (4 to 7 Hz) Slower Activity, Found in Sleep

They might combine them with heartbeat, breathing, eye, and electrical signals and feed it into an expert system or neural net to identify people that are unusually nervous.

In the future they'll hide incriminating images and voices all around you and check your EEG's for "P300 waves." If your brain recognizes too many of them, it'll increase the chances of you being a suspect. John Norseen, a scientist with Lockheed Martin, is often able to discern when subjects are thinking of particular numbers. He predicts that by 2005, brain mappers will be able to automatically scan the skulls of everyone going through airports to search for potential hijackers.
The Lie Detector That Scans Your Brain

They'll also have probability assessments of people instead of a definite guilty or innocent. Those with a higher probability of guilt will get more agency attention.

Eventually they'll know what you're thinking. They can already wire a computer to a cat's brain and create videos of what the animal was seeing.

All that's left is to reverse the process and plant ideas into your head.