E-nose Sniffs Out Nasty Resistant Bacteria

geekroot's dad writes "There have been several tries for an Electronic nose that seek out various airborne elements - they can find cancer, monitor recycled air for NASA and find nasty bacteria better than lab tests. Now as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSRA) becomes a problem not only in hospitals but in everyday life some British scientist have built a super nose to find the 'little buggers'."

Comments

Privacy Rights?

[putko]

This sort of thing lends itself to non-intrusive search and what civil libertarians call "violation of privacy."

A similar technique is looking at heat, and using it to identify folks growing things in their houses: fly over with a helicopter looking at heat signatures -- the growers' houses light up. The court had to decide if this was an illegal search or not.

Already there have been cases where cops had drug dogs sniff folks on a bus and identify smugglers. The court had to decide if the cop searched people (illegally) just by walking by them with a dog, or if the cop was innocently walking by folks, and when his dog aletered, the cop became the probable cause to search further.

Electronic noses, with their reduced cost and targeted nature, will lead to many similar cases. A cop's e-nose might alert. He'd followup with a search, find contraband and so on. The question is, was it OK for him to have an e-nose sniffing in the first place? Or did he need a search warrant to use the e-nose?

One can imagine an e-nose built to sniff explosives, but that also sniffs out everything else. In that case, the cops have a legit purpose to search (national security), but the effect is that they'll be busting folks for all sorts of other violations.