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Biometric Terrorist Detector
neutralino writes "The Wall Street Journal has this story about a biometric airport security system which uses biometric responses — blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels — to series of questions ("Are you smuggling drugs?") to identify passengers with "hostile intent." According to the article, "In the latest Israeli trial, the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists, meaning that 15% got through, and incorrectly identified 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats, according to corporate marketing materials.""
The busiest airports in the world handle 30-80 million passengers per year. With an 8% false positive rate, a 30M/year airport would flag almost 8,800 innocent people per day, per airport as a terrorist. How can this be considered even remotely feasible? Even if getting flagged just means that you have to undergo a more rigorous personal inspection it's going to piss off a lot of passengers. Plus the TSA people aren't going to put much creedance into something that dramatically increases their daily workload, but might catch one terrorist every decade. Just another misuse of expensive technology.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I think this is what we've been waiting for. Some method to intuitively deduce whether a person is telling a fib! The only thing this device is really missing is a name. How about ... the Polygraph? Wow, kind of catchy!
Sorry, but my blood pressure would rise if some cop comes up to me and starts interrogating me in the middle of an airport. most people almost have a heart attack when they are driving and you see the blue and red lights roll up behind you. I don't see how this is the slightest bit effective.
Remind anyone else of: "You're in the desert. You see a turtle on its back and it can't flip over. Unless it gets on its feet it will die. But you won't help it. You're going to let it die. Why is that?" (paraphrased.)
... their statistics are based on actors- who can't reasonably be expected to have genuine responses to those types of questions.
I bet there are quite a high percentage of people who, just by hooking them up to the polygraph apparatus (which is basically what we're talking about) would have elevated levels and potentially have a panic attack in some percentage of the population.
I'm betting they wouldn't even require a licensed (or certified, or whatever) polygrapher to run it, further decreasing the accuracy on an already questionable technology.
If I were a terrorist, I would pretend to be a normal person, this thing won't fly.
It reminds me of films like Airplane where the scanners stop and beat up the little old grannies but welcome the missile/gun toting libyans through.
liqbase
So when this becomes common practice, will you really be suprised when you're asked a string of questions like this?
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
Bush will buy these systems that let one in six lying terrorists through, while sending one in twelve random innocents to Guantanamo. Instead of spending a mere $6M (2/1000ths of 1% of the Iraq War bill to date) on explosives detection systems.
--
make install -not war
Now my fear of flying is going to get me a cavity search. Life is just coming up roses for me...
Part of the difficulty developing a system like this is lack of real data. I mean, they've built more of an actor detector than a terrorist detector. Unless you have the biometric responses of terrorists who were actually trying to board a plane you're always going to have high false-positive rates just to be on the safe side.
...the idea is utterly worthless, since if you're a polished and practiced enough liar, your bodily functions are not going to change significantly, because you believe every word you're speaking. And plenty of people are going to be nervous at the types of questions, the thought that they might be lying when asked if they've used drugs or something similar when they remember the pot they smoked in college, and generally be ramped up anyway from waiting around to pass through security. It's the same process that causes your blood pressure to be higher in the doctor's office than it is when you take it at home.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
If you've ever seen a 6-foot tall crew cut tough as nails El Al employee ask you about your luggage, you know what I mean. They'll paw thru yuour luggage, pull out an orange, shove it one half inch from your nose and ask: "AND *WHAT* is *THIS*!??"
So people who weren't actually terrorists managed to generate an 85% positive rate? That would suggest that this can be easily triggered by overall nervousness (or in this case, people inducing nervousness in themselves as part of the role-playing). What is the difference between the mindset of "I need to be nervous so that I will act like a terrorist in accordance with my role" and "Oh my god, why does this TSA official think I'm a terrorist"? It's not real clear to me.
A real lie-detector test (like the polygraph) ought to be able to tell the difference between nervousness and an actual sense of having told a lie. Otherwise this is worthless.
Doesn't catching "role-acting" terrorists also imply that these people were bad actors?
This guy's the limit!
If you see anyone acting suspiciously, security can walk up to them and ask
"terroristsayswhat?"
most of them will reply
"what?"
proving that they are a terrorist.
Bingo! A solution that's just as reliable as a lie detector test...
Summation 2
then they accuse me of having high blood pressure?
there's no way out of this one, is there?
[place
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
AARP is going to have something new to talk about soon if this is the way things are going.
Considering Sen. Ted Kennedy supposedly made it on a 'no fly list' , all I can quip is 'just think of the possibilities'.
"Did you poison the quadrotriticale?"
Where were you when the voynix came?
I can just imagine him in today's society:
I have nothing to declare except my genius
Security! We have a terrorist mastermind in our midst! Get him!
Summation 2
...this tool in the right hands is effective. Israeli airlines and airports have the reputation for being the safest in the world. A big part of the reason for that is that they focus on passengers' behavior rather than what they put into their bags. Granted, the volume of air travel to and from Israel is probably a tiny fraction of what most major airports see. The questions are: (a) whether the Israelis' success is scalable to other airports, and (b) whether this device is a valuable supplement to a well-trained security team--one that can understand the machine's limitations and leverage its strengths in assessing the stream of passengers.
This looks a whole lot like a polygraph test, which has been considered in court an unnecessary breach of privacy. You can't use them for evidence and you can't use them for interviews (unless you're the FBI). So what gives us the legal precedent to use them on travelers?
Until the Diebold version comes out.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If terrorists are going to invest many years and gobs of money into planning their plots and they are thorougly devoted to their cause... isn't it likely that they would overcome this method by learning to act / control themselves under pressure? If 15% of ordinary people who are just getting paid to pretend they are terrorists can get through, I'd hate to see the percentage of real-terrorists-willing-to-blow-themselves-up-and- kill-many-innocent-people-because-they-think-it's- what-their-god-wants could get through.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
...85% of role-players were able to convince this thing that they were terrorists despite the fact that they weren't? And this is newsworthy? The I Ching is more reliable. Except in this case I'm not exaggerating. The I Ching really is more reliable.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
With proper biofeedback training, you can learn to control your own biometric responses (heart rate, galvanic skin response, etc). If anything like this were put into place, the terrorists would simply resort to that kind of training.
Technoli
The TSA is a bit better off with those machines that can physically detect explosive traces on people than a "lie detector test". Although I'd like to see them improve the technology, because the current ones being tried are pretty limited in what they can detect and have too high a false positive rate themselves.
From the Article: Within a year, he predicts, such technology will be able to tell whether someone's "blood pressure or heart rate is significantly higher than the last 10 people" who entered an airport. What use is blood pressure for detecting terrorists? 16 % of people in the United States have undiagnosed hypertension. I suppose it might make for good public health screening, but I'm thinking that's a pretty bad way to detect terrorists, except perhaps those who like to binge on fast food and don't exercise...
This ought to work great with the new Skin Sensing Table Saw. Just find the terrorists & let the saw do the rest.
That number is just small enough to seem effective to the bulk of opinionated political junkies who know next to nothing about computers, statistics, etc., but large enough to allow the TSA to catch no terrorists while claiming credit for being busy. It's a bureaucratic win-win. Little hard and scary work, lots of busy work and everyone is happy until it doesn't do its job when it counts, a terrorist gets through and people die.
Then, TSA gets more power.
The only time that failure is bad for such an agency is when it makes Congress seriously ask "so who is going to get the first pink slips?"
Finally, we have a way to identify people pretending to be terrorists! Excellent!
Honestly, how do you possibly test this? A terrorist that isn't nervous in the slightest will breeze right through, while anybody with social anxiety disorder, or people with phobias of authority figures, will be rounded up as "potential threats". Give me a break.
Any technology is going to be useless in preventing terroristic attacks if you force conditions upon it that only make it harder to succeed.
We know a great deal about the people who have or tried to attack airliners. We have age ranges, ethnic backgrounds, countries of origin, and other factors. Unfortunately its not nice to use these in the process.
Apply this technology and similar to people who fit the above categories and your false alert numbers are more manageable. It will never happen.
Apparently 3000+ lives is not enough to pay versus being politically correct.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I guess Palestinians made up 8 % of the test group ;-)
It's also pretty good at picking out replicants (androids) from humans.
If I have a choice between carry-on luggage and this, I'll take this. Will it catch everyone (terrorists, drug smugglers, etc)? No. But our current system doesn't either. 8% false positive? What percent of people are currently searched randomly? Maybe not that many, but it wouldn't necessarily be prohibitive to hit that number. After all, the UK is currently screening 50% of all passengers, down from 100%. It's hard to say what the actual rate of success and false positives are without putting it into a real-world situation. I'm sure it doesn't go off if you're just nervous about going through security- I'm guessing there's more to it than simple nervousness. After all, I imagine everyone is nervous when strapped into a polygraph, yet they still work. Plus, anyone who is planning on killing themselves and a bunch of other people is probably a ball of nerves (unless they're on drugs of some sort). Also, consider that most of these plots involve several people- three or four. So all of them would have to get through without setting anything off.
Qunu linux support - think IM mashed with tagging and search.
If the intent is to scare would be terrorists, I suggest they could achieve the same effect with a pretend system that lights a bulb when the security officer doesn't like the answer he is hearing.
Measuring pulse, bp, and sweat by galvanic response no dount. Lie detectors dont work. They're like the war on drugs. We want to believe it works, but in the end it's a big waste of money and it hurts innocent people for no real result.
"Are you smuggling drugs?" If I was working the ticket counter, I'd ask couples "Do you cheat on your spouse?" That would provoke a much more interesting response.
A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software
I can forsee alot of innocent passengers with anxiety disorders getting screwed.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
nuff said :)
Home of Faramir Paint Shop Pro scripts
trial by ordeal? Or having the airline boarding agent stare into the eyes of every brownish-skinned male aged 15-30 and denying boarding to the ones with shifty eyes? Or seeing which passengers little Fido (he's so intuitive, he can just sense these things) growls at?
It's obscene that something like this is even being considered. This is nothing but a polygraph test... a rush-job polygraph test conducted under poor conditions.
Even on the face of it--and one can be sure that these company's tests and reported results put their best foot forward--the system is useless. If one in ten million passengers is a terrorist, then according to the cited results it will yield 80,000 false alarms for every actual detection. In the old fable, "the boy who cried wolf" was ignored after only three false alarms.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This will eliminate almost all terrorists, along with 90% of all legitimate travelers. Think of how uncrowded the airports will be!
This clearly is not a solution that would go by itself. If a person could get pass this system, they would have already gotten through every other security measure in place, so it is not reasonable to suggest lowered safety resulting from this procedure. The harm from being a false positive would also be minimal. I have not heard so much as a suggestion that this technology be used to press charges. If you cause a flag, you wait in line a while longer while they check you out in detail. This sounds a lot smarter than the current "terrorists only go one way" policy. Also keep in mind that the system caught 85% of the the role acting terrorists, there was no mention of false positives, so this only tells us that 85% were not caught. This of if a plot consisted of 5 terrorists, run that through statistical analysis and this system would have better than 98% change of catching at least one of them. Do not be closed to new technology like this. I am not saying it is not too intrusive or that it is perfect, but it sounds worthy of consideration.
I remember when I posed as a customs officer to meet Oscar Wilde. "Have you anything to declare?" I enquired. "I have nothing to declare but my genius," he replied. "I shall put that down as 'nothing', then, shall I?" I said. For I am the wittiest man on Earth bar none, and have two sharp fists to prove it.
These devices don't measure against a set point, the measure against beleived truths. So if your heart is beating hard when the cop asks you your name and where you are traveling, but then beats even harder when they ask you if you are running drugs, or planning on attacking the plan, it triggers.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I don't know about anyone else, but wheneve I fly my blood preasure goes WAY up, I sweat a lot more and I am usually VERY pissed because of the inefficiency EVERYWHERE. I'm sure I'd get flagged every time. This is total BS. I know lots of people who do the same thing, whether it's the stress fo flying, running late, flight delays, etc... I dont' see this working.
systems that identify liquids in carry-ons, systems that detect material on clothing that are common in bomb making, etc... are MUCH better options.
Putting people in a two hour long queue to go thru this system and then flagging them for being upset, sweating, etc... is just plain idiotic.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Eddie: did you have any grudge against Montgomery Burns?
... Sears catalog *BEEP*
Moe:No
Lie detector: *BZZZZT*"
Moe:Alright maybe I did but I didn't shoot him - I swear
Lie detector: *BEEP*
Eddie: Checks out. Ok sir you are free to go.
Moe:Good, coz I got a hot date tonight. *BZZZT*
Moe: A date *BZZZT*.
Moe: Dinner with friend *BZZZT*
Moe: Dinner alone *BZZZT*
Moe: Watching tv alone *BZZZT*
Moe: Alright! Im gonna sit down and ogle the ladies in there Victoria Secret catalog *BZZZT*
Moe:
Moe: Now will you unhook me please, I dont deserve this kind of shabby treatment *BZZZT*
Even is we're only talking a max accuracy of 75%, the impact on potential terrorists will be much higher. One more hurdle for them to jump. I wonder if they bothered to test this on subjects under the influence of depressants? I'veh eard it isn't unusual for terrorists to take drugs to get in the correct state of mind.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Anybody remember SARS? No? Yeah, once upon a time it's all travelers to-and-from Asia talked about, but it's a little passe' now... anyway, in the Shanghai International Airport they had (this was in '02; I have no idea what they're doing now, if anything, to "detect" passengers who have/may have SARS) what appeared to be an infrared camera pointed at the line they herded passengers through ( everyone had to have their "SARS test", and their "checked; OK" card, to proceed) -- I presume (couldn't get an actual answer out of anyone, and didn't really want to press my luck 7,000 miles from home in a country where I speak about 1/1000th of the language carrying a 10-month-old and what felt like a metric ton of luggage...) the idea was that if someone were trying to travel with a high fever it'd set off an alarm and further measures would be taken. Of course it immediately occurred to me that a belly full of Tylenol or Motrin might help "patient zero" on his/her travels...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
This morning on the radio they had a business analyst talking about the trend of companies to charter jets for executive travel. His point was that although a biz-jet is expensive (starting at $1000/hr.) the cost might not be that much more than regular business class fares (I assume you have several people flying). Taking a charter jet saves a lot of time. You turn up ten minutes before departure and fly directly to the airport you want to go to. His point was that this trend could cost the airlines the cream of their business.
There was also a story about musicians not being able to carry their instruments any more.
I gave up flying a long time ago because of the hassle and I've seen similar sentiments on many blogs. I realize that teleconferencing needs a lot of improvement but I'd much rather do that than fly any more.
When enough people are turned off flying by the security and lousy airline service, the industry as a whole may find itself unable to make a profit. For sure if every twelfth passenger is tagged as a terrorist, they will lose those customers.
"In the latest Israeli trial, the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists...
So I'm guessing this would be a bunch of Israelis from the developers' marketing department wearing comedy fake beards and calling each other Al?[1] Oh, and they'll probably have their collars turned-up, theatrically shifty eyes, and long, twirlable moustaches.
I suspect the accuracy may not be as great as the company PR would suggest.
[1] ObPratchett, of course. Jingo, IIRC.
if face == arab { flag face; } else { return 0; } (Take it as a little joke, I'm not prejudice)
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
While the percentages look good, the actual numbers are much different. Let's suppose for every 100 people, 1 is a criminal / terrorist/smuggler. Using this,
.85 will be a terrorist / criminal - 8.85 - .85/8.9 = 90% of the people stopped will be innocent - so the guard is faced with the sisituation where he /she knows the detector is usually wrong - I wonder how hard it is for a real bad guy to talk themselves out of the situation.
85% catch rate - You'll have 1 real person caught 85% of the time - =.85
8 % false positives - 8 innocents pulled aside per 100 = 8
Total checked - 8.85
Total id for further review = 8.85 of with on average
Of course, the real ratio of bad guy to innocent is probably much lower than 1 per hundred - making the test even harder.
While I think a profiling / biometric approach is better than the search everyone badly approach it needs to be well understood and part of a more complete way to screen passengers. Two bios - one at the entrance to the airport and another for boarding may be a better start.
That's the trouble - low FR look good until you see their impact on the total population identified as positive.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
85% of people pretending to be terrorists were identified as threats?
Sounds like an 85% false positive rate to me...
"Companies try to get the US government to make us taxpayers into suckers everyday."
And, it's another Slashvertisement for investment in an Israeli company.
The busiest airports [wikipedia.org] in the world handle 30-80 million passengers per year. With an 8% false positive rate, a 30M/year airport would flag almost 8,800 innocent people per day, per airport as a terrorist. How can this be considered even remotely feasible?
I don't think that will be a problem. Judging from past experience each person flagged by the system will be detained and subjected to a long and humiliating process that includes cavity searches, hours and possibly days of interrogations and a thorough background check. Any Muslims (including suspected ones) will be packed into a Lear Jet and flown to one of a number of middle eastern countries where the US Govt. has outsourced its 'efficient interrogations' program. The CIA's torturers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H security contractors on site will soon weed out the false from the true positives.
God Be Gone
Or Thetans ;)
Do you make thoughtless remarks or accusations which later you regret?
When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed?
Do you browse through railway timetables, directories, or dictionaries just for pleasure?
When asked to make a decision, would you be swayed by your like or dislike of the personality involved?
Do you intend two or less children in your family even though your health and income will permit more?
Do you get occasional twitches of your muscles, when there is no logical reason for it?
Would you prefer to be in a position where you did not have the responsibilities of making decisions?
Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people?
Do you consider more money should be spent on social security?
Do other people interest you very much?
Is your voice monotonous, rather than varied in pitch?
Do you normally let the other person start the conversation?
Are you readily interested in other people's conversations?
Would the idea of inflicting pain on game, small animals or fish prevent you from hunting or fishing?
Are you often impulsive in your behavior?
Do you speak slowly?
Are you usually concerned about the need to protect your health?
Does an unexpected action cause your muscles to twitch?
Are you normally considerate in your demands on your employees, relatives, or pupils?
Do you consider that you could give a valid "snap judgment"?
Do your past failures still worry you?
Do you find yourself being extra-active for periods lasting several days?
Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do?
Is it normally hard for you to "own up and take the blame"?
Do you have a small circle of close friends, rather than a large number of friends, speaking acquaintances?
Is your life a constant struggle for survival?
Do you often sing or whistle just for the fun of it?
Are you considered warm-hearted by your friends?
Would you rather give orders than take them?
Do you enjoy telling people the latest scandal about your associates?
Could you agree to "strict discipline"?
Would the idea of making a complete new start cause you much concern?
Do you make efforts to get others to laugh and smile?
Do you find it easy to express your emotions?
Do you refrain from complaining when the other person is late for an appointment?
Are you sometimes considered by others a "spoilsport"?
Do you consider there are other people who are definitely unfriendly toward you and work against you?
Would you admit you were wrong just to "keep the peace"?
Do you have only a few people of whom you are really fond?
Are you rarely happy, unless you have a special reason?
Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about: your mother.
(Only the last qhestion is NOT from scientology, last line is from that book/movie, not to be taken serious!)
It is truly bizarre that someone who is smuggling drugs is grouped in with terrorists as having a "hostile intent". True, both are breaking laws, but drug smugglers have a motive for being non-hostile - they don't want to get caught. They just want to get from point A to point B without interference. Which, paradoxically, gives them the same motive as the TSA.
Hmmmm...that gives me an idea. Drug smugglers could be useful allies in the war on terror. I suggest a new TSA policy. Let one dealer through on each flight. Grant him the right to carry, say, 5 kilos of drugs exempt from the law. Let him also carry a gun - uh, no - REQUIRE that he carry a gun as part of the deal. You can be sure he will not let a plane get highjacked without a fight. And a terrorist organization would think twice about highjacking a plane - even if they could overpower the dealer - knowing that the Medellin or some other international drug cartel would then be out for revenge.
Not only would flights be safer, but this is a very profitable policy for the TSA; they save the cost of hiring air marshalls, and the dealer would pay a bunch of money for the privilege.
What the heck - let's take this idea to its logical conclusion. Let the cartels run their own flights. I'd feel safer on Medellin airlines that I do on American or United, etc. ( I'll bet that they could also put the fun back in flying: "Would you like some coffee, senor? Cocaine? Hashish?" )
...a Beowulf cluster of them.
Where are they going to get people that speak all the languages of every traveler? How to question an old lady from India (or anywhere else), that doesn't speak anything but the local dialect?
Just what we need, a polygraph by another name.
The polygraph's accuracy is highly questionable even in the hands of an operator with intensive training and years of experiance. Now we're supposed to believe it will work in the setting of an airport when operated by people who are there because nobody but the TSA was stupid enough to give them a security related job?
If the MARKETING literature itself admits to 8% false positive and 15% false nagative, I have to wonder if the real world figures will approach 50-50.
In the sample questions, I can see plenty of reasons a person might have a physiological response to the questions other than being a terrorist. Immigration is a hot-button topic. Some will be angry at being asked if they are smuggling drugs, others that some drugs are actually illegal, and still more that airport security has gone off-mission by even caring about drugs. (After all, the last person who would want any trouble at all on a flight is a drug smuggler!)
Take nearly any government statement about terrorists and replace 'terrorists' with 'they' and you've got that crazy homeless guy on the corner. Perhaps we could solve the problem by adding thorazine to the D.C. water supply.
I don't think it qualifies as Flamebait when he's got a source to back it up...
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
This is really cool. Now the Israelis can sell us the tools to make our country into a shit-hole just llike theirs. Israel's enemies become our enemies. Israel's tools of intrusion and oppression become ours too. It's all fine and dandy for the Christer-fiundies and the jewish beanie-boys, but those less religious among us don't like to live in Hell on Earth for the dream of a postumous Heaven.
Of course, it's not just polygraph tests that give Homer trouble:
TEACHER: Okay, Homer, the test is 50 questions, true or false.
HOMER: True.
TEACHER: No, Homer, I was just describing the test.
HOMER: True.
TEACHER: Look, Homer, just take the test and you'll do fine.
HOMER: False.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
How is it even a test of the effectiveness of this tool when 85% of the people weren't really terrorists, just people playing terrorists in tests? This makes no sense. Why would we believe that the physiologocal responses of actors pretinding to be terrorists would be in the least like the physiological responses of real terrorists? And still, the test identified as terrorists 8% of the actors who weren't pretinging to be terrorists. Total it up and this is a 93% failure rate. What did the test do with the other 7%: melt down?
Being developed, even as we speak, is a device that will pick up the electrical signals emitted by your cerebrum and frontal lobal regions of the brains. Thse devices will employ electroencephalography methodology and electroencephalogram tests from a distance to analyze the brains electrical signals. These signals will be fed into a statistical probability matrix, and your present, future desires and, probable actions will be determined with a degree of acceptable confidence and error.
Worry not citizens. These devices will be for your own good. You will no longer have to worry about terrorists in airports. These devices, once perfected, will be used to identify terrorists as their own brains compose the electrical signals responsible for the thoughts that make up criminal and terrorist behavoir. These devices, paired with security experts, will be able to aprehend and detain individuals before they are able to carry out their egregious actions.
You will be safe.
Assuming the marketing literature is right about the detection rates, that alone renders the device useless. Consider this: for every terrorist there are at least a thousand legitimate travellers in any given airport. At an 8% false-positive rate, you'll incorrectly tag 80 innocent travellers during screening. Assume you tag the terrorist as well. You've now got a group of 81 people, 80 of whom are innocent. What's the public reaction going to be when, after the delays and the hassles to all those people, it turns out that 98.77% of the time your "detector" is wrong? And this is conservative, assuming a low number of travellers and a high percentage of terrorists. It wouldn't suprise me if a major airport like Heathrow handled several tens of thousands of travellers every day and only saw any terrorists at all on one day a month if that often.
Thought I see the use in this device, I think this article outlines an ongoing problem with the concept and use of the word terrorism. We cannot let government agencies keep labeling every criminal or enemy of the state as a terrorists. This word should be reserved for acts that specifically qualify them as terrorists.
Using terrorism to justify biometric sensors which will in turn be used against all criminals is another step away from freedom and into a big brother society. We develop sensors to stop 'terrorists' and the first thing they do with them is use them against common criminals instead of their intented purpose. Treating the entire population of the world all as potential terrorists and criminals is an espeically bad idea. When you unjustly treat people like criminals they lose respect for justice and law, which in the end will make it easier for the actual terrorists.
Polygraphs are real lie detectors? If so, Winston Churchill was 27th Persident of the United States of America.
The National Academy of Sciences was asked to do a scientific review of the polygraph's effectiveness at detecting lies.
Their report http://www.nap.edu/books/0309084369/html/ thoroughly debunks polygraphy as a junk "science."
Let's assume for a moment that a polygraph magically does detect lies:
The most commonly used method is "control question" polygraphy.
In a nutshell, the examiner asks "control" questions among the other, "important" questions where the response
is expected, I say again: EXPECTED, to be a lie.
How can/will the examiner interpret results when the subject responds truthfully to the control questions?
Physical characteristics are NOT effective when profiling a terrorist.
The real terrorist will put the weapon on a non-profiled person and then run some of his buddies through the security system to make sure that any available security personel are used up checking his clean friends.
The end result is that the weapon is onboard the plane and so is the terrorist.
It's far better to just randomly search passengers. At least then you have some small chance of finding the weapon.
"In the latest Israeli trial, the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists, meaning that 15% got through, and incorrectly identified 8% of innocent"
Assume say 2,020 people. 20 are terrorists.
The machine will identify .08 * 2000 plus 20*.85 = 177 people called terrorist by the machine
Of those only 17 are really terrorists (less than 10%), the rest are innocent. 90% wrong decisions
Of the people called 1843 "innocent" by the machine, 6 would real be terrorists. Less than 1% wrong decision there, but even 6 are 6 too many.
This machine looks to do nothing but provide a false sense of security, while causing MAJOR trouble for a huge number of innocent people.
This is basically just a Lie detector, used for a VERY bad methodology. Lie detectors ARE usefull, if used correctly. Specifically you use them to confirm knowledge, not motive.
I.E. "Lie detectors" can NOT detect lies said by the suspect, they detect Nervousness. The proper way to use them is simple. Say you have a woman killed when someone cut her throat. You take suspect, before he has seen the body, or heard anything about her murder and you ask him:
1 "Did you blow up the victim?"
2 "Did you cut the victim's throat?"
3 "Did you shoot the victim?"
4 "Did you run the victim over in a car?"
If the man is innocent, he will be no more nervous on question #2 than the other questions. If he is guilty, chances are question #2 will cause a HUGE jump in nervousness, as compared to the other questions.
Even this is not fool proof (if the suspect happens to be afraid of knives/was cut by a mugger, bad results are likely), but it is certainly a lot more helpfull than the standard practice.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"What we are looking for are patterns of behavior that indicate something all terrorists have: the fear of being caught," he says.
Someone who is role-playing at being a terrorist has no fear of being caught. It would be very easy for one of these "actors" to sit in the booth, push the thoughts of the role-playing out of their head, and answer the questions as a "normal" person. The system wouldn't be able to tell them from any other regular John or Jane standing in line. They probably had to role-play being a nervous terrorist in order to get the system to detect them.
incorrectly identified 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats Probably because they had the crap scared out them wondering what was being scanned and gathered. I'd be nervous too and I have nothing to hide.
Completely and utterly useless data does not make a test successful.
Bush, Cheney, Blair, Rumsfeld, Aznar, Chalabi etc?
so if the ones they caught were role-playing as a terrorist, couldn't a terrorist role-play as a non-terrorist?
Let's pretend the odds of a person being tested being a terrorist are 1/10,000 (yes, that's high). Then in a population of 1,000,000 (100 terrorists total) would have:
85 true terrorists labelled as such
79992 innocent people labelled as terrorists (0.08*(1,000,000-100))
15 true terrorists not labelled as terrorists
919908 innocent people not being labelled as terrorists
Taking the "terrorist labelled" group we have 85/80077 or approximately 0.1% actual terrorists (where the total population had 0.01%). It gets worse if the base rate (# terrorists/# people) is lower.
Same thing applies to medical tests, even very high "accuracy" (i.e., low rate of false positives and high rate of true positives) can lead to tests where given a "positive" result you're actually not very likely to have the disease, if the actual rate of occurence is low enough.
Passengers swip their passport into the machine. First off, I seem to remember that all of the 9/11 planes were on domestic flights and therefore people wouldn't have their passports.
Secondly there was just recent concern about ease of duplication of RFID passport data. I hope no one decides to put this technology in use until alot of problems are worked out.
Just how accurate is "role acting" terrorists? An 8% false positive rate is almost 1 of every 12 people. Perhaps a role of a twelve sided die would work as well.
Think Deeply.
In other news... capacity at Guantamo Bay is being increased by 8%.
please excuse my apathy
I think that was a "no drive" list, but even so, I'd somehow feel safer without him on my plane.
Pi Ran Out
I don't know about you, but I'm feeling absolutely murderous after being corraled, searched, interrogated, and then finally left to wait in a crowded room for 2 hours to get on a plane.
I can't believe only 8% were detected to have hostile intent. Between the airlines themselves screwing you in every possible orifice, TSA, and airport security guards hassling you for doing such foolish things as wearing shoes or carrying water it usually takes quite a bit of will for me to calm my hostile intent. It drives me nuts that air travel has devolved to the point where it can be faster to take a train for short distance travel due to all the mucking around in the airport.
Not to mention, being thrown in one of these biometric devices would certainly give me a bit of 'hostile intent' "what are you assholes talking about!, I'm just trying to go to Chicago!?, Shave my chest hair for the electrodes?!"
ôó
"I would much rather be safe than happy on a flight"
For sure but too much of a delay and it's just not worth travelling. London to Paris is 1 hr 15 minutes (approx), right now we're being told minimum 2 hours wait time to get on the plane for European short hop flights. It's one thing to queue for 3 hours for your London -Australia holiday flight but another if you want to get somewhere across Europe, have a meeting and fly back the the same day. Luckily I don't have to do this any more but a lot of people do.
I'm off to Copenhagen next week for a conference from London, 2 hour flight. A two hour wait in the airport I can just about cope with but when they start talking about 3,4,5 hour delays, heck, you got to wonder if it's worth it. Maybe we just have to rethink about how we do business in remote locations. I reckon the train and ferry companies are probably pretty happy right now, and the videoconference people as well!
I am a really peaceful person but if they'd subject me to that sort of treatment, the "hostile intent" might be created in me afterall.
Fuck them. I want my freedom back.
... after they made you dump your Scotch in a garbage can?
OHH!!!...You mean???!!
Never Mind!
Because there have been many stories on Slashdot that seem like advertisements for Israeli companies: Northrop to Sell Laser Shield Bubble for Airports.
See also: The Car That Makes Its Own Fuel.
I found another earlier story asking for investment in an Israeli company, and a comment complaining about it: Wanting investors. FRAUD???
You found a 3-month old post from an Anonymous Coward complaining about a Roland Piquepaille post, claiming that company was a fraud. That company was Israeli. This company was Israeli, three months later. So you decided that this company was remarkably "Israeli". Even though Slashdot promotes all kinds of questionable products from companies all over the globe, but you don't complain about their nationality when they're not Israeli.
You're just searching for companies to complain about, and picking the Israeli ones because they're Israeli. That's a nationalist agenda at work. These posts might or might not be advertising, but your posts are obviously anti-Israel. I wouldn't be surprised if you were the AC who posted that story back in May.
--
make install -not war
This again goes to the prior poster's complaint. Why are you turning this into a false dilemma between "perfect" and "utterly worthless"? Anything that doesn't measurably hinder passengers yet significant increases the hurdle for terrorist acts on airlines is a good thing, right?
Why are you acting like this system is only a smidgen off from being perfect? This isn't a case of some false dilemna, this is a case of correctly identifying a system as utterly worthless.
Even an 8% failure rate (assuming it doesn't go up) is not worse than the current random screening rate.
Actually the "failure" rate, which I would say is allowing a real terrorist to get through, aka false negatives, is 15% (in their simulated test). 8% is the rate of false positives, i.e. identifying an innocent person as a terrorist.
That's worthless, not because it isn't "perfect", but because it's really truly shitty. First, it can easily be proven mathematically that anyone the system actually flags is almost certainly an innocent. I've ran the math with profiles that claimed much higher accuracy and specificity than this one, and under any reasonable assumption of the ratio of terrorists to innocents it's in the high 99%. For this system, the odds of the person under consideration being an actual terrorist would be ridiculously small. I could run the math for you if you doubt it, but practical experience would show it to be true and thus cause the system to not be taken seriously, making the chance of the one terrorist out of thousands of innocents flagged being vetted much higher. Second, you're talking about 8% of all passengers being flagged as terrorists. That's 80 per 1,000 passengers. Now think of how many people pass through security at an airport like O'Hare. That's a ridiculous quantity of suspects if you're going to even pretend that you're thoroughly investigating them. And you'd have to, because the system inherently requires more effort to validate, knowing full well that there's basically zero chance of them actually being guilty.
See, unlike say a metal detector, it is difficult to prove that you have in fact found a false positive. If I walk through a metal detector and it goes off, I can pretty easily reveal that the problem was my belt buckle and not a concealed weapon. If the biometric sensor goes off, how exactly do I prove that the biometric readings it saw are not evidence of malign intent? You can't prove whether or not malign intent exists; the only way to do so would be to find some physical evidence, like a weapon or explosives, which we already have detectors for and which don't suffer from the horrible false positive problem that this does.
Anything that doesn't measurably hinder passengers yet significant increases the hurdle for terrorist acts on airlines is a good thing, right?
But this would necessarily create a large hinderence for passengers yet would would not provide a significant hurdle for terrorists that is not already created by existing detectors, therefore this is not a good thing, it's a retarded thing.
The enemies of Democracy are
No system like this will ever work for a very simple reason - one well known to those of us who do medical screening.
Note the following.
Assume 1 in every thousand passengers is a terrorist - surely a wild exaggeration. So the probability that a random passenger is 'innocent' is 0.9999.
This sytem will 'catch' 85 terrorists and 7,992 innocent people from every 100,000 passengers.
So what we call the 'Negative Predictive Value', that is the probability that someone who passes the test isn't a terrorist is not too bad at 0.99984, down from 0.9999 before we did the test,
The 'Positive Predictive Value' is a truly uninspiring 0.01052. Just over 1% of those who test positive truly are actors pretending to have evil intent.
For a more realistic 1 in ten thousand passengers being a terrorist we get 8 terrorists and a total of 7999 'innocent's. This assumes that actors mimic terrorists well.
This would stop international flights dead, but buy shares in it anyway.
-- Anthony Staines
So the terrorists are willing to explode themselves for Allah, but not to take a valium before going to the airport? Come on, you know you are going to be nervous on the suicide mission right? LOL!
No, for several months there were more ads about Israeli companies than any other.
Much more importantly, in my opinion, the ads were for very undesirable "investment opportunities", that were unlikely to make money because they were not based on the laws of physics. To me, the ads looked like fraud, and I wasn't the only person to think that.
Americans would rather blow up on a flight than have their privacy taken away by being bothered with irrelevant questions. That is what the ".. or give me death" part is all about. The rest of the world would just rather be alive. "..Or give me death"? Carefull what you wish for.
yes I'm not an american, but I love my privacy. I love my life, my wife, my kids more.
Just an anecdote...
I had a friend who visited Israel, for the sole purpose of tourism, alone, from Japan.
As the only tall white blonde with a german name on the plane, it was not entirely unexpected, but apparently they kept him for two whole hours before they let him into the country.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
You know, the freaks that go to the airport *just* for the cavity searches and micromanagement abuse. They wouldn't try to be tagged as terrorists, would they?
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."
- Are you a republican voter?
- Do you believe the Iraq war was necessary and just?
- Is America the greatest nation in history, pinnacle of civilisation and rightful world ruler?
- Is it okay for America to use force against any nation anywhere on any pretext?
- Is it okay for an American president to lie and break any law at will, domestic or international?
- Is corporate profit more important than the environment?
- Is corporate profit more important than an egalitarian society?
- Should the rest of the world be remade in the image of America, the greatest nation ever?
- Do you believe that American foreign policy is moral and useful in every respect?
- Did the USA win the Vietnam war?
- Is it okay to use nuclear weapons from time to time, in American interests, of course?
- Should the USA invade Cuba/Iran/North Korea/Canada/Iceland bringing the sunshine of democracy and prosperity?
- Should every computer in the world run Windows?
and so on. Anyone who answers No must by definition be a terrorist.you had me at #!
You are not paying attention. You didn't read the links. The Slashvertisements for Israeli companies are the only ads Slashdot has ever run that are really ads for investments in seemingly fraudulent companies.
Every time someone says something negative about Jews or Israel, he is attacked because he is anti-Jewish. Are you trying to say Jews are perfect?
I remember the Slashdot stories about Israeli companies because they were unique. They were actually "investment opportunities" that were, in my opinion, very unlikely to do anything but lose money. Read them and see what you think. Slashdot has run other pseudo-science articles, such as about a researcher at the University of Washington, but these articles seem to be the only ones that could easily cause people to lose their money.
This is a big issue, because it affects the health of the entire Slashdot business. If people lose trust in Slashdot, it will be very difficult to gain it back.
The entire policy concerning invasion of Iraq, which most people in the U.S. are against now, was authored by a Jew, Paul Wolfowitz. A lot of people think that was conflict of interest. Israel wants to draw the U.S. into conflict in the middle east because that lowers Israels costs for defending itself. Do you think it is a good idea to have the U.S. taxpayer pay for the political issues of another country?
I would like Slashdot editors to realize that articles with political content should be labeled as such.
Your free thought and rational approach has not gone without notice. Your solutions provide no business to corporations that have already signed contracts with government agencies for security products so they are by definition anticaptialist and unamerican.
Your calmness in the face of our greatest threat ever, and your ability to provide accurate analogies within accurate and acceptable terms are a threat to national security and solidarity. Post 9/11 America can only be harmed by your continued presence.
Get your affairs in order, traitor. We'll be picking you up shortly.
...the president is a Born-Again-Christian fundamentalist. Doesn't that give him a "conflict of interest"...
Yes: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Apparently you think you are being pro-Jewish. But you aren't, I think.
You don't seem to be familiar with the pseudo-science of the Israeli company. That appeared to me to be fraudulent.
You said: "Not saying that they are all fradulent, but at least a couple of them appear quite shady (especially that ridiculous network card company)"
I don't see any obvious fraud. Reducing latency with a special card would make online games more playable.