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Biometric Terrorist Detector

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tell-the-machine-everything-you-know dept.

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.""

6 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Guantanamo Boom by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    make install -not war

  2. Totally unnecessary... by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    TOtally unnecessary, as in addition to the bio machine, you need a trained interrogator, who could just as easily notice sweating, blushing, trembling, and in addition will notice a bunch of other facial and body language clues that the machine cant.

    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*!??"

  3. "role-acting"? by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Doesn't catching "role-acting" terrorists also imply that these people were bad actors?

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    This guy's the limit!
  4. Re:8% false positives? Absolutely useless. by recursiv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hahah, yeah, what the fuck is this? What if the terrorists were "role-acting" as normal passengers? Nice system.

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    I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
  5. Fair point but... by SPYvSPY · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...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.

  6. Blood Pressure Detector? Useless! by rickkas7 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...