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

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

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.