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DARPA Has $3.2M to Sniff You Out
quackking writes "The Army wants to sniff you out. This fedbizopps.gov link to a DARPA pre-RFRQ tells more. 'The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Advanced Technology Office (ATO), as part of the Odortype Detection Program, invites proposals to (1) determine whether genetically-determined odortypes can be used to identify specific individuals, and if so (2) to develop the science and enabling technology for detecting and identifying specific individuals by such odortypes. Total program funding for this effort will not exceed $3.2 million in FY 2003. Multiple awards are anticipated. Proposals are due by January 29, 2003.'"
But could wearing heavy perfume mask your scent enough to avoid detection? Bah, just stick to good ol' bloodhounds.
I am a filthy pirate.
And its called a dog
Developing the equipment to identify unique scents would be costly, bulky, and probably easily confused by purfumes and other forms of distraction.
I say that nature does the best job, use some sort of animal to sniff a trail, or use a better means to identify a person.
As it is, fingerprints, eye scans, and DNA are much better than smell, and how would you store the signature of a scent in a database?
"subject has a old-man on crack smell about him."
That they use RMS as a test subject. Given his potent odor, their prototype equipment will have an easier time functioning.
Ok, you have my name, social security number, IP address, you want to decide how I use MY computer, you take pictures of me when I go to sporting events, you want to cache my surfing habits, sniff my e-mail, and NOW you want to know what my ass smells like??
Two Letters: FO!
Oh, and by the way, All your funk belong to us!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
This kind of reminds me of the East German's intelligence program of keeping people's scents on file. Maybe that will be next?
This is just another sneaky government plot, this one to get geeks to bathe!
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Could the robotic hounds be far behind? Run, Montag, run!
The Statiz (sp? E. German Secret Police) did something like this once. They would take samples of everything and place it in sealed jars so if they needed to track you with the hounds later, they could in theory open the jar with a sample of your sofa in it and let the dogs loose.
Funny thing was that it didn't work.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
A targeted anti-personnel mine comes to mind. Could be useful for taking out enemy commanders. A retreating force could leave these scattered in the bushes. Of course, they'd have to acquire some samples beforehand. Who does Saddam's laundry, by the way?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
My guess would be that this would be useful because scent, unlike appearance, is harder to alter. A wanted criminal can just put on some different clothes, maybe grow a beard, etc, and he won't be easily recognized - wear shades, a hat, and he won't be very easy to recognize with any sort of automated system. Other methods of identification - fingerprints or retinal scan - are difficult to apply without the target noticing (and cooperating). I could see machines at airports or bus terminals that "sniff out" anyone who passes by, and if the smell matches with any in its database, bingo... IF the technology works, it could be far more reliable than current methods.
Of course, all this hinges on the idea that slapping on some cheap cologne won't confuse the machine. And I won't go into the privacy/1984/control etc. arguments...
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
One application I saw on Discovery channel, was a machine which looked pretty much like a metal detector ala airport style. You stood sideways in it, a small puf of air was blown on you, and the sensors "snorted" in the air. They where very sensitive to all different sorts of explosives and similar chemicals. Can't recall the exact figures, but it was in the region of if you touched anything the last couple of days, it'll go off.
And suddenly the large stockpiles of Old Spice found in Afghan caves seemed a little less ridiculous.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
...of science articles. It is very unlikely that humans have a genetically determined smell. In 1992, Blaustein & Waldman did an experiment on tadpoles to see if they could recognize their kin based on scent. The reasoning behind it was to see if they could in fact be breeding collectively to increase indirect fitness. Out of the 12 species tested, they found that 8 showed a kin bias while 4 didn't. Three species favored full siblings over half siblings, three favored half sibliings over non-siblings, and one favored maternal over paternal siblings. Was it Kin recognition? No. Why? Well there was variable expression of this favoring within species and satistically it wasn't favored at all. In other words, it was an experimetanl artifact.
In 1990, Pfennig et al. repeated the experiment but fed different groups different diets. So non-kin got the same diet and kin recieved different diets. The result? Tadpoles stayed around those that ate the same material because they smelled the same. So it depended on diet rather than a genetic signature. However, further experiments showed that outside of nature, if the environment was completely identical then they could do some rough recognition but this condition never exists in the real world.
I have huge doubts the government will find a connection here. Before someone says that babies recognize the smell of their mothers, I want to say that is a common myth. Babies recognize the heart beat of their mothers and nothing more. What a waste of time and money.
More like, in Soviet Russia the government might have spied on you.
In the USA, post 9/11, the government will spy on you.
So... what was the objective of this Cold War thing again?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, odors are generally caused by 'aromatic molecules'. The nose, actually, is a molecular shape sensing device. Knowing what a terrorist smells like is central to knowing what kind of compounds and chemicals they've been working with. Somebody who smells acidic, dusty, and metallic is doing very different kind of work than somebody who smells of of wood/bark, musty, or moldy. The first person may be working with metals and acid etching things, whereas the second person may be a mycologist, and growing fungus. Between the two, the former is more likely to be making a bomb; the later bioweapons.
Well, that's tadpoles.. but here's my experience as a dog breeder (33 years and an average of around 30 individuals in my kennel):
For 12 years I had two essentially unrelated bloodlines. And I found that I could not keep dogs from the two different lines together or they'd fight (even when they didn't fight with their own relatives). Even those of the different lines that were raised together as pups would take a dislike to one another as adults. When I got some dogs from a third unrelated line, BOTH the other lines tried their best to kill them!! OTOH, they tended not to care one way or the other about newly-introduced dogs of other *breeds*. So it wasn't just a "new dog in town" problem.
Second, I've observed that in general, given a choice, dogs will mate with a closely-related dog in preference to one that's not related (whether they know the individual dog or not). With some stud dogs, it's such a marked preference that they aren't at all interested in breeding unrelated bitches -- and act like they don't "smell right".
BTW, contrary to common perception, newborn puppies recognise their dam (or other source of food, if bottle-fed) by touch first, scent somewhat later, and heartbeat *never*.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Your government throws money at all types of security "solutions" right now because it believes that is what you want it to do. It believes that, given the events of the last 14 months, you are frightened enough to break Franklin's famous principle about trading freedoms for security. It will do anything to make you feel safer, not only by making you safer, but by throwing tax payer dollars at pointless and socially dangerous projects such as "odor identification systems", as well as more infamous projects such as the face scanning technologies used in Tampa that were found to misidentify a large percentage of the population.
This quagmire of government spending to make you feel safer regardless of the consequences will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them not to do anything. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to protect your safety, but if money keeps being thrown at more and more invasive and ultimately pointless security measures you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how them doing stuff all the time just for the sake of being popular harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on whether or not they can summon up the political courage to spend an entire term getting nothing done.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Loud noise immediately following is DARPAs collective forehead-slap.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
IANAL, etc, etc... not legal advice, blah, blah, blah
Courts have long held that using odors is not necessarily a violation of your fourth amendment right to be free of unreaonable search and seizure (with a few exceptions).
The air around your vehicle, luggage, or other "object" is free to sniff, so drug sniffing dogs and explosive jiffy-sniffers are usable without a warrant. Vehicle "stop and sniff" random checkpoints have run into some trouble, but if you've been stopped by a police officer for some reason (traffic offense), and he suspects the presence of drugs, he can call for a dog, no problem. If said K-9 alerts on your car, probable cause to search is established. I believe the case was United States v. Place in the early 1980s.
Air around your person has been treated a bit differently, since random, agressive sniffing by a dog, without some articulable suspicion, has been considered a "search" by some courts.
There was a case of high school students being personally sniffed, and found unconstitutional... it was B.C. versus Plumas Unified School District. Here's a link with some info: Newspaper article you can probably google for the whole text of the decision.
Based on some of the above cases, this might actually BE unconstitutional, since it's a direct sniff of a person, not an object. You can sniff people without individualized suspicion, but the state has to seriously justify it... minimal privacy invasion, and compelling state interest. However, with the current terrorism problem, and simply having to walk through a gate of some kind to be sniffed (minimal invasion of privacy), this might pass constitutional muster. The lawyers will have their work cut out for them with this one.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
For a time I worked as a contractor on a program in the DARPA ISO (Information Systems Office). A common misperception about DARPA is that they're bumbling DoD idiots who are always running off chasing impossible goals.
DARPA was established specifically to go after high-risk, high-payoff technologies. They know that many of their projects will not result in immediate payoff in terms of useable technologies, but they figure that those technologies which do make it will leapfrog two generations ahead of any competing technology.
That being said, the program methodology at DARPA is oriented toward specific uses of technology. They're not generally interested in creating something just to see if the technology will work.
People also have the impression that the research and development takes place *at* DARPA (the infamous "clones in the basement" episode of the X-Files springs to mind ;-) . The truth is that the project managers work out of DARPA, but university labs, defense contractors, and other organizations do the actual development work. In many cases, "failed" DARPA projects later lead to working technologies, based on the expertise gained during the original project.
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