Slashdot Mirror
Replacing Metal Detectors With Brain Scans
Zordak writes "CNN has up a story about several Israeli firms that want to replace metal detectors at airports with biometric readings. For example, with funding from TSA and DHS, 'WeCU ([creepily] pronounced "We See You") Technologies, employs a combination of infra-red technology, remote sensors and imagers, and flashing of subliminal images, such as a photo of Osama bin Laden. Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration — signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack.' Sensors may be embedded in the carpet, seats, and check-in screens. The stated goal is to read a passenger's 'intention' in a manner that is 'more fair, more effective and less expensive' than traditional profiling. But not to worry! WeCU's CEO says, 'We don't want you to feel that you are being interrogated.' And you may get through security in 20 to 30 seconds."
Rectal probe anyone?
Just spend more money, keep digging that hole!
wonderful piece of technology known as the polygraph before..... don't polygraphs also rely (in part) on body temperature, heart rate and respiration?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have to wonder how they tested this to draw their conclusions about "how terrorists feel before boarding a plane." Grabbed a couple off the streets and offered them 80 virgins to take a survey or something?
I'm pretty sure the airport can generate anger,fear, and frustration in most people.
How good can this really be?
What about someone who is carrying a weapon without their knowledge? That won't show up on the scans. I could see the supplement current screening technologies if it ever is deployed, but not replace them.
Let's not even start about false positives....
Can it also detect replicants?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Better not thing any doubleplus ungood thoughts, or have a friend that's Muslim.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
TFA doesn't say anything about brain scans What's up with that headline?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
'We don't want you to feel that you are being interrogated.' Yeah that might interfere with your interrogation.
(goatcx image)
I can see it now...someone hacks the system and substitutes subliminal porn images for the bin Laden pictures. Talk about provoking a physiological reaction...
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Right now it is used to find terrorists, but this technology can be used in reverse. Flashing images of the president and the national flag, anyone don't respond positively get singled out... Such uses are very disturbing.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
... what the fuck!?
I am the lawn!
"It is possible today to hijack an aircraft using only five or six able-bodied passengers who are well-trained in Kung Fu fighting," he says. "There is no technology in place in airports to detect a threat like that."
Well, no. Not unless you start putting Ninjas on every plane. Everyone knows that Ninjas > Kung Fu fighting.
Apparently, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting...
tl;dr WTF?
And how did they devise a control for this?
AFAIK, there's no biometric scans of the 9/11 terrorists, so it's just like the company is guessing anyway. For all we know, terrorists could be the only completely calm people going through security, as they're the only ones not worried about arriving at their destination late.
At some point, people will get so pissed off at getting poked, prodded, searched, scanned, monitored and tracked to see if they are terrorists, that they will wind up deciding that it is actually easier to become terrorists themselves.
This is my sig.
*Packs tinfoil hat*
Unless they couple this technology with the ability to read people's minds, then it's completely worthless.
What if random traveler A is thinking about terrorist activities in Mumbai and is afraid for their family right when they happen to walk through the little flashy thing (even if they don't know it)? The system would flag them as TERRORIST PROBABLY and they'll get arrested and cavity searched for no reason. Meanwhile the terrorist who focuses on bunnies and happy flowers and goes about his business will get through security just fine.
Even if I see it I wouldn't believe it... Just like The Riddler's machine in Batman Beyond - it just raises too many questions.
If I know I'm nothing but an elevated heartbeat away from being branded a suspected terrorist by airport security, well guess what? I'd probably have an elevated heartbeat.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
(1) This technology will not be reliable enough within the near future to prevent many false positives (as someone mentioned above). Which is unacceptable. Our legal standards abhor "fishing expeditions" by the authorities.
(2) We musn't just look at the potential good. There is also enormous potential for abuse. Probably enough to outweigh any good it might do.
My intention may be harmless but those who hid a bomb in my bag may have other ideas. How does scanning my brain help then?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
I'm a very shy person in, well, person. I don't like to be in crowds when traveling. I get nervous easily and sweaty hands (same as if I try and talk to a girl at a bar) around many people. Will a device like that automatic brand me as terrorist? The few times I have traveled overseas since 9/11 I have been picked almost every time to get a bigger search, maybe because I don't look people directly in the eye and looks down a lot. I really do not expect a computer device to know this.
Quick, let's beat them up.
Nervous fliers everywhere will now have something legitimate to fear.
It's times like this I wish I weren't an atheist so I could revel in the knowledge that the people involved in producing this destructive rubbish will rot in hell for eternity.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Even presuming that one could reliably detect stress or heightened emotional states via this technology, what is rate of correlation between that and committing terrorist acts? I don't know about anybody else but I know alot of people who are terrified of flying and exhibit alot of stress in the airport. Enough false positives and this technology is not only ineffective but also a tremendous burden in price, personnel, and inconvenience.
I have no ill intentions, but I hate going anywhere unarmed. Maybe I could finally fly without having to give up my knife and sidearm.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Soon, only the deaf, dumb, and blind will be allowed on airplanes. Anyone else that can react to their environment will put on a list, and subsequently denied travel, and ticket expenses.
Great way to subsidize the airline industry, since the Federal Government is running out of money.
Why are we not rebuilding our rail infrastructure again?
"Damnit, I'm not a terrorist! I just have a bizarre beard-and-turban fetish!"
The enemies of Democracy are
"We don't want you to feel interrogated." Frankly, I'd rather know when I'm being I interrogated. That way I can be protected from self-incrimination. I heard somewhere that I should be able to do that...
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
..the plumber isn't worried, because he's going to be with his 70 virgins. I think it would be an ok addition, however - it is no replacement for the current security checks.
It's all fun and games till someone divides by 0. Then it's hilarious.
For Nothing.
Cordially,
Kilgore Trout
Is there a chance I might actually see an image of Goatse Guy while being tested? I wonder what kind of "stimulation" that would bring up.
Would these things detect that you're attempting to fart silently? Esp when you know that it will in all likelihood cause the person next to you chock to death? It could be considered a biological attack.
How do you know someone's normal heart and breathing rates? They're not seriously going to take an avg are they? Also, increased heart rate & breathing are common for people with high blood pressure, and/or overweight. So does than mean every American is a terrorist? Good job, people! Also, if people are stressing about generating a false positive, they will generate a false positive. Just a few thoughts.
and any one how shows any smarts does not get the job.
And someone will think, this guy... :-)
(The subconscious mind works in strange ways.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Airport security is a sham as is anyway. It's all just a show to make you feel safe. They'll, of course, have to detain, torture, and execute the odd innocent as a sign that the invisible force of knowing is working. Kind of like playing a "death lottery" every time you fly.
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
Seems to me that they'd be catching people that were carrying only legal items. It wouldn't be a stretch for an evildoer to put their toothpaste and mouthwash in someone else's carryon luggage intending to get it back later if the innocent got through security.
Of course, I don't know who you'd plant it on. The families with screaming babies and old ladies seem to be the only people who get randomly selected to get the truly invasive screenings.
"...body temperature, heart rate and respiration â€" signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack..."
<p>Or signals a former sexual abuse victim might unwittingly emit for the mortal fear of possibly undergoing a cavity search?</p>
<p>Fear is a crime. Guilt is a crime. Your emotions are a crime. Time for your Prozium.</p>
Don't worry, we don't want you to feel interrogated. We just want to know everything about you. Results will be posted in the cafeteria.
Oh the tyranny of average... Just wait until they start singling out people for not fitting profile American 2.0, because they didn't recognize the last American Idol contestant on the subliminal. Think it's far fetched? Think again. In other, unrelated news, cattle mutilations are up.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The real question is how much R&D money are they going to be asking for to "perfect" the technology after giving some very promising-looking demos?
Here's my question. How do they know about the biological responses of a terrorist about to commit an act? Surely they are just making educated guesses (therefore can lead to false positives). They can't really measure someone who's about to commit an act, right? Or whoever doing the experiment would have been blown off.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Frankly, about the only sinister thing about this is that there are people in officialdom who are so fundamentally brain-dead they actually believe the claims of whatever idiot is trying to sell this.
Even when interrogators have the time and money to hook people up to the most sensitive equipment available there is no technology that can determine to reasonable accuracy whether a person is lying in answer to a given question, nevermind their exact mindset or intentions in the next few hours.
Now we are supposed to believe that some gadget can automagically determine whether or not somebody wants to blow up a plane when they walk past it and are flashed a "subliminal image" of osama bin-laden?
I could go on about the sheer idiocy of assuming that somebody's reaction to a popular hate figure defines their politics or intentions. I could start about how peoples wildly varying mental states and physiologies make such simplistic measurements useless. But frankly it's not even worth deconstructing an idea this stupid in detail. Anybody dumb enough to believe in this fairy story clearly either suffers from paranoid psychosis or is so mentally deficient as to be beyond any form of rational argument.
Let us begin by installing these devices in both chambers of Congress, in the White House press room, and hell, why not in the Oval Office while we're at it?
It would be great; we could have C-SPAN broadcast their readings in real time as the politicians speak.
Why not? If the innocent have nothing to hide, then our rulers should be first in line to be subjected to all of these new technologies.
EVERYBODY KNOWS that if some asshole tries ANYTHING on a plane, the only thing to do is for the passengers to immediately stomp the life out of the motherfucker, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Just take him apart.
EVERYBODY KNOWS that, including the terrorists. As a consequence, there is really no point to screening people at airports.
If people want to blow up a plane, it's a lot easier to book a flight, check your bags full of bombs that are hooked up to timers, and then let it rip. The security at the checkpoint is ludicrous, and the security for checked baggage is even worse. So, if you want to blow up a plane, it's not hard.
If you want to commadeer the plane a la 9/11, the passengers will take you out before you even get to the cabin. They know they have nothing to lose.
So, as a consequence, there is NO point in this idiotic security theatre. None whatsoever. And the smiling jackasses who come up with this Orwellian technology are vampiric leeches with their fingers up the butt of the reactionary militarists and an invertebrate Congress.
And all it means is that flying on an airplane is just that much more insulting and that much more irritating, and that much less worth the trouble.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
correlation does not equal causality
this is why the polygraph is a device that measures some physiological signs that are associated with being uncomfortable about the question asked and NOT a 'lie detector'...
exhibiting signs that are in the mean associated with discomfort isn't going to tell you intentions...
sounds like marketing to me..
Crap. I seem to be exhibiting all the known signs of a terrorist.
Where do I turn myself in?
Seriously though, the security theatre in place does a great job of herding people into crowded areas where the air temp rises, and people get stressed out, resulting in all three of these so called terrorist signs. Without a slightly more relaxed general attitude, people have every reason to be stressed when they might be refused boarding due to some random TSA regulation, or have their property seized for no good reason (including that the screener feels like taking a nice new laptop home)...
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
Back when I was in one of those shitthole corporations in southern california, Huntington Beach Union High School District, if you had a piss-poor GPA or quirky personality stand-off-ish towards the rest of the populous then you get to have daily or weekly sessions with an overpaid "kind" or "polite" lady or tied'n'suited man that was oh'so understanding as to why you are behaving the way that you do. Bad GPA? They'll send you south to a strange adult school to catch-up on graduation credits that you never intended to collect. Bad family life? Hey, we know how deserving Social Services wants to work for you in bringing your famly back together with all those loving "fines" and soothing court sessions that bring the best out of us.
If you can win the heart of the sociopathic psychologist or the psychopathic dean and principle, then it's more difficult for them to lie when disorder on their school hits them in the face. All over California it's a moral mess. In my growing-up, I learned all I needed just by going with family to their house-visit jobs for the services they performed: construction, maintenance, religious, light manufacturing, garage, etc. Highschool is in the dark ages in this regard. I left the school system around first quarter of the 10th grade as nothing more than a nerdy boy attracted to every subject that the school couldn't offer, mainly because it was a greater mix of the curriculum that they couldn't provide. That day and even up to my 26 years old, they still have law enforcment looking to fine me for non-attendance. Can you believe this shit? They think they find my office, then the legal paperwork comes in to somewhere trying to assert fines for failed attendance to which I obviously didn't pay for because I didn't intend to use it and it's unlawful even in their statutes for someone under such age or class to attend because his being is unstudied or unversed in law.
Think of society as having become a Pederast. It looks for the young or unsound of mind, forces a voluntary service upon them, and if at any time they fail to render that service because of your absence or their inability then they'll fine you as a government agency. That's exactly what these scanners in the airports, hospitals, cash registers, toll-road checkpoints, truck stops, and street-lights are arrainged for: catching those of us who have caused no damages in our rights and have made use of other means for which we exercise religiously. Outside of the "patriot" bowl-movement, this is known as the 4th Branch of Government, because the 3 true and separate brances of government are vacant while a fake one known as the 4th Branch is the only thing today that is full of un-oathed unbonded individuals that constantly share information with eachother's departments unethically and illegally to ensure that they have the highest conviction rate and the lowest standard of living for whomever it is they are prejudiciously assaulting and harassing.
RICO-act all of the alleged "government," They're just another mob and Mafia. They are all rioters. If I have to get psychologically profiled again, then I'm going to watch Lebian Giraffe Porn and eat Ice Cream with a stencil of Ossama bin Laden on my left sunglass eye and a stencil of Alan Greenspan french-kissing Bernanke in my right eyeglass.
Send all these jack-offs to hell. Ossama and Alan have caused nowhere near the shame and loss of right that the President of the United States has caused. To sum up that pederast cradle-robbing President Eisenhower to his quote "Only America can hurt America" is the absolute truth. Imaging that: Clinton and Bush, throughout their administrations, have accepted legislation from terrorists by being inspired by them more than the Continental United States.
Are there really people out there who think we can achieve a perfectly safe world? Spending more and more money for ever smaller incremental gains in safety? Is the cost really worth it? Is giving up your rights really worth it?
At some point you have to stop and say look, there's an inherent danger in life. Your own body can turn against you. Are you willing to give up all your money and all your rights to feel safe? But what's left to be worth living if you've given everything up?
I cringe every time I hear about somebody dying in some unique way, because I know there are going to be laws that follow to ensure that never happens again. Unfortunately, those laws tend to be far more overreaching and subject to abuse in ways that are far beyond what incident initiated them.
People die. Dying is a part of life.
What next, witch ducking? Telekinetic terrorist detectors? The TSA employing mediums and ghosthunters to contact the spirits of anti-terrorist angels? I don't think I've ever read so much bunk in all my life. And this is a new low for Slashdot to even give space to such nonsense. These researchers are lunatics milking the fear driven research grant system. They are a danger to everyone and should be mocked by respectable scientists. Some people in the TSA should be fired for negligence and incompetence for even letting such ideas be entertained, let alone giving the fools money to indulge their harebrained power fantasies.
If showing signs of stress will get you detained, the prudent terrori^Wtraveller shows up doped to the gills.
I can see the sales of tranquilizer-laced chewing gum skyrocketing!
Or listen to a particularly annoying song, as Alfred Bester suggested.
Ten, sir, said the Tensor
Tension, apprehension
And dissension have begun.
http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/03/a_word_of_expla.html
I think Kylie's 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' would work pretty well today.
They say its only 20-30 seconds in security, until you realize that Bin Laden reminds you of you buddy's Moses costume last from Halloween when he kept drunkenly telling all the women to "part their legs like the Red Sea". Suddenly your subliminal responses swing the wrong direction and you end up being held in more traditional interrogation for hours to months in some dark hole halfway to Hell.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration
Reaction to which stimuli? Do I have an elevated heart rate, etc. because I'm nervous out the bomb in my suitcase or am I just really turned on by that cute blond in front of me in the security line? Does that cute blonde walking in front of me have that reaction because of a subliminal picture of Osama or does she have that reaction because a male guard just singled her out for some "additional security screening"?
The general thought behind it is good. But you still run into one of the biggest problems you currently have: you'll have minimum wage guards with cardboard badges running these things. Some have failed tests by missing weapons purposely placed in bags!
As for false positives, if I understand the article right, you'll just get pulled over for questioning. Heck, a first time, nervous flier could set the thing off.
I do agree though, I have a feeling this could be beaten too easily.
So, what if my reaction to an image of George W. Bush is worse than my reaction to Osama? I mean Bin Laden is indeed a leading terrorist etc, but he is hiding far away in Afghanistan, years after his deplorable act. At the same time George has been right here screwing with our lives every day...
Would I still pass security in 20-30 seconds?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
You counter with Ninjas, then they counter with Pirates. You think the Ninja's will stand a chance against Kung-Fu Pirates? I shudder at the thought of what they will be stopped with.
Even if it were foolproof, what about a passenger who has some remotely controlled bomb for example planted on them? They would not even know. I don't think it so wise to eliminate the metal detector yet.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
All this crap is about as scientific as asking a 4 year old to stick out their tongue to see if they are lying.
Because soon the only people that could be bothered getting past airport security will be terrorists.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
Actually, let's do...
What many people don't realize is that detection procedures with very impressive-sounding statistical properties generally do horribly at catching rare events.
Imagine some very impressive numbers. Suppose that this procedure has 99.999% sensitivity -- it catches nearly every wannabe terrorist who tries to board a plane intending to do harm. And suppose it also has 99.999% specificity -- out of 100,000 innocent passengers, 99,999 will be correctly identified as innocent, and only 1 will be a false alarm. Sounds good, right?
Not really. In a given year, only a very small number of passengers are wannabe terrorists -- say, 10 per year. (That's probably high.) On the other hand, there are 1.6 billion air passengers per year (that may be a low estimate, since it's a 2000 number). So if this were implemented worldwide, then in a given year, we can assume that this profiling procedure will flag 160,010 people as terrorists. Only 6 x 10^-5 of those will be actual terrorists.
Of course, those hypothetical sensitivity and specificity numbers are unrealistically, ridiculously good. With more realistic numbers, the problem gets much worse. Even if the detection procedure is very sensitive and very specific -- and I doubt that it is -- the low base-rate of terrorism means that an enormous number of people will be falsely accused of being terrorists.
Hes thinking about naked women like all the other men, wonder why theres seventy two of them though...
...employs a combination of infra-red technology, remote sensors and imagers, and flashing of subliminal images, such as a photo of Osama bin Laden. Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration.
Are you testing whether I'm a terrorist or a lesbian, Mr Deckard?
0 1 - just my two bits
seriously. metal detectors are far more effective for this sort of thing. if you want to prevent hijackings, then you need to deny entry to the necessary tools and raise the bar for 'necessary tool'.
i'll gladly sit next to someone on a flight who intends to bomb it if i know for a fact they are completely incapable of doing so.
...stays mainly in the plain.
My Fair Lady could surely pass these scanners!
I'm already scared of flying, now I have to be scared that my fear of flying will trigger a red flag labeling me a terrorist...... great, I'll never fly again if they implement this craziness.
Oh, I am soooo getting the tin foil hat back out!
It does not show for a fact whether or not you are infiltrating dangerous/hazardous material that could help carry out terrorist activities...
People react differently under stress. IMHO, this system will trigger a lot of false positives while the real criminals go in because they have been trained to bypass these detection systems.
You counter with Ninjas, then they counter with Pirates. You think the Ninja's will stand a chance against Kung-Fu Pirates? I shudder at the thought of what they will be stopped with.
Snakes?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...I am surprised CNN did not unveil such a device during the election day coverage.. But probably didn't have the time with their hologram reenactment from Empire Strikes Back..
Oh wait.. we do.. via the government via grants. And for those who will try to point out that it's an Israeli company, who do you think bankrolls pretty much all of the IDF?
Regardless, file this one with all the other "we'll smell the terrorists' fear" startups. It's totally insane. How many people go on planes every day with the irrational fear that they're going to die in a crash? Is the plan to drag them into a side room for interrogation? Flash subliminal images of Osama bin Laden?? WTF??!! Is the pleasure center of a terrorist brain suddenly going to light up? "Yes, we caught him when he started smiling broadly.."
As a former sufferer of panic disorder, I can not begin to describe how fucking stupid these projects are. They might work to some limited extent in a sterile lab environment with a well-established baseline but the idea that this is going to be valuable addition to security is just insane.
Fast heart rate because you're going to commit a terrorist act?? Take some propranolol and... problem gone. Musicians and politicians take it all the time as it quashes tremors, sweating, fast heart rate, etc.
Can we please remember that the 9-11 hijackers would have been totally defeated with a $15 padlock and instruction to pilots (which El Al airlines has always had) that they NEVER OPEN the cockpit door?
I'm not sure who I despise more.. the people who give millions to startups like this or the "reporters" who smell a good story and don't bother asking the will-this-ever-work department.
What about all of us people with metal plates in our heads?
Have gnu, will travel.
imprinted sleeper agents.
On a Plane? Seems far-fetched to me.
I say in honor of ghostbusters we all think of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. That will show them.
A rock is too simple. No government agency would buy that. You need to sell them a sophisticated multistatic wide-spectrum digital sensor array, connected by high-speed fiberoptic network to a rock, which in turn is connected to a nationwide database.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I'm pretty sure I could trigger a false positive almost every time. I have such a general dislike for humanity that even if I'm getting on a plane, I'd still love to see it plough into a building. Okay... So maybe that's not precisely a "false" positive, but just because I want the plane to turn into a ball of fire doesn't mean I intend to do it myself. I'm far too lazy for anything like that.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
bombs ;-)
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
From the submitted story text... ...detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration â" signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack...
And nervous ordinary folk who have fear of flying, but must fly to somewhere anyway because of job/family/whatever, don't exhibit these very same kinds of physiological responses???
Especially when these days we add fear of terrorist hijackings and security gestapos in airports on top of their already being afraid to fly in the first place.
You've got to see this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo6AWwbn998&feature=related . All the military installations under federal control are being converted to mass prisons. Fort Dix is just the bottom of the list. Just look for the railroad contractors back in Illinois that abandoned their jobs 75% into completion: rail cars for over 4 million people capacity with bench seating, and all the original contractors stopped because they refused because it was finally disclosed at the end that there was ground-floor leg shackles at each bench seat. There are more prisons in America as though they're trying to keep all the people tied down from being sucked off the surface.
I just heard on PrisonPlanet's Infowars inernet radio about how the Nazi's staged the Reichstagdt fires by grabbing the first documented mentally-ill dutchman from his psycheward, stuff him full of drugs, and blamed him as being the anti-Germany arson; he was beheaded, Hitler passed The Enabling Act, and the rest was history of the staged Nurrenberg Trials. Then to continue, the earliest Israeli 60-day war and such was uncovered that Israeli's sprayed LSD over all the Arabs. Sounds like that if you don't fit the profile for psychological-assistance conscription then they'll use those *influences* to get you caught and needful of their assistance. Sounds like you and your scooling terminated at the right time and you didn't suffer as much, unlike the others.
With economies of scale, this will make CAT scan cheaper. So, instead of paying $1000 for a scan you can spend much less for a round trip ticket and get the scan from DHS!
That's it... if there was any question about where that "too far" mark may be, we can be sure they have gone well beyond that point.
Now they can screen for all sorts of things... "gay"? "pedophile"? Who else can we decide to hate and persecute?
If all this stuff could potentially save my son's life, I still say NO!!
Pause for a moment to let the gravity of that sink in. Now go back and realize that there is more chance of a drunk driver killing him than a "terrorist." Regardless of which may happen, it will always feel tragic and there is no way to effectively protect ourselves from everything. This crap has got to stop.
Of course not. They want machines. People who think are people who can be unpredictable.
They must have read Sundiver
Do you believe that your average flyer today has the courage and determination to go up against a determined person wanting to damage or bring down the aircraft?
They would if everyone who boarded an airliner was issued a Louisville Slugger baseball bat as they entered the front door of the airplane and by law had to hold it for the entire duration of the flight. This would work as a wonderful deterrent for anyone who otherwise would be an obnoxious passenger. Everyone would be very polite to one another.
Yup, I'm sure they will have no shortage of test subjects and whenever they need more, they can go and round them up. However, no amount of test subjects can make a bad machine work.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"And you may get through security in 20 to 30 seconds."
Either that, or you get shot in 20 to 30 seconds.
But I think you will no be going anywhere since you can't function while on meth.
However, if properly run, is a better method of getting real terrorist or criminals.
Metal detectors may stop some people but Richard Reid has shown that they will use other methods that device detection will miss. However a criminal mind will be hard to mask so no matter what the criminal uses (ie 3-ring binder).
You can look at prisons and they banned virtually everything yet they have created interesting weapons from what we call "safe" things. It is not the device that makes the weapon but the mind of the criminal.
"NOT A TERRORIST" and "TERRORIST" shirts?
Sell 'em in front of airports.
Make sure to print the "NOT" part in bigger, red letters to prevent false positives due to misreading of text.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Before 9/11, airport security was reasonable, although not using half-wit high-school dropouts for security agents would have made things better.
After 9/11, some security improvements actually helped. Standardized airport security? Sure. Scan all checked luggage? Sure. No vehicles over a certain height in short-term parking? Strictly enforce curbside parking? Sure. But that's where real security stops and security theater begins.
Bans on everything imaginable have been a joke. Undercover TSA inspectors are still getting guns, knives, and bombs right through. The standardized security agents are no better than the local idiots they replaced. The liquid ban only benefits drink vendors on the sterile side of the checkpoint.
If someone sneaks something through security, it's going to be an inside job. Or just order a steak at a restaurant beyond the checkpoint, steal the steak knife, and take that on board with you.
I fly very little (it's been almost 2 years now), and I don't exactly look forward to it. I've been looking for a breaking point where I say "That does it, I'm not flying". Brain scans would be one. So would X-Ray full-body scans. If either one of those happens, I swear off flying. If I have a wedding in California to go to, I'll take a week off work and use Greyhound. I think I'll have plenty of people with me on this.
I would say I could use Amtrak, but "infrastructure damage from Hurricane Katrina" shut down the Amtrak route through here in 2005.
Try this, and you can be sure you lost at least one customer.
i refuse to participate in this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Soon on a street corner near you, and your local burger doodle.
Remember its 'for your safety'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I really wonder how this or similar systems will respond to people who are living their own nerdy/geeky lives, or people from remote places of this planet, who are not proficient in the mainstream culture.
How will this system respond to people who have never seen the stimuli thrown at them?
A nerd/geek occupied with ham radio or assembly programming may have only accidentally seen images of Osama bin Ladin while rarely browsing non-technology sites or maybe while looking at newspapers at a kiosk while trying to find the magazine with the most recent GNU/Linux DVD. And bin Ladin may really mean nothing to a person from Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Siberia, Nunavut, Amazonia, Patagonia, or Antarctica.
AntiHero www.myspace.com/an_anti_hero says this is bull, the big brother new world order police state needs to collapse or put down by the intelligent american people, for being part of 9/11, undeclared wars based on lies that claimed over 4,000 american servicemen and womens lives, for swindling trillions of dollars from the american taxpayer, these wallstreet criminal thieves and war criminals in washington like rumsfeld and ashcroft all need to be put in Prison! Boo to their police state! Boo to their control grid society! Boo to them! No more corporations! Gold Money Standard Monetary System!
The .45 Auto and .357 SIG are both good, but I'm sticking with the 10mm -- 180 grains at 1300 fps beats anything short or a .41 Magnum ballistics.
How did you come up with that figure of 1 in 1,000,000,000?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Fabulous! Now our airport security can be just as accurate and useful as a lie detector! ...Wait a minute...
The more fanatical Moslems don't believe images of the human form are that great an idea. So how is some bomb-carrying lack-wit from a village so far in the hinterlands that the town prostitute is a goat going to know what Osama looks like? And how is he going to react to a picture of him, except to think that the damned infidels are mocking his religion again?
Just wondering.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
These things keep coming up, therefore I must keep repeating myself. Every time any sort of "screening" for terrorists comes up, I point out the problem of overfitting. This comes into play in two ways:
1) It's a simple mathematical fact that if you do not have a suitably large training set (i.e. *actual terrorists*) to study while developing your model, then your model is 100% horse crap, no matter how many anecdotes or pet theories you put behind it.
2) Even if you do have enough *actual terrorists* to study, there is no guarantee that your model actually predicts terrorists when applied to new subjects. It is more likely that your model is latching on to some coincidental pattern in your training data, then actually predicting anything. The problem gets worse as you add more parameters to your model. To reduce overfitting, you need a very large sample, and you need more samples to test your model after the fact. Even then, overfitting can still occur.
Fact: We *do not* have a large sample of actual terrorists that we can freely study for developing a model for predicting terrorist behavior.
Inescapable conclusion: This will result in a *huge number of false positives*.
Additional problem: The *actual terrorists* can learn your (flawed) model by performing their own tests on your system, and by choosing people who routinely get through your system, they can *increase their success rate*. This was proven in a paper a few years ago.
Oh well, here's to tons of wasteful spending that will inconvenience (and sometimes physically harm) honest people and increase the likelihood of successful terrorism!
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
The test hinges on potential terrorists showing signs of stress and apprehension, and responding to subliminal visual queues. The test doesn't detect "intent", it detects "apprehension" and "emotional response".
So for the dedicated terrorist organization the remedy is simple: find people who are calm and collected before they commit an act of violence by nature or by indoctrination. People who are naturally relaxed before lapsing into violence exist and in a civillian environment they are called psychopaths. In a military environment they are often highly respected members of the special forces.
People can also be trained up to be calm before going into action, and religion is an especially good way of doing this. As is combat experience. When people are totally at peace with what they are going to do and what will happen to them as a result, they don't show up as anxious.
In addition you can train people to pass the test by first sending them through security without weapons, but with the firm intent to deceive. Those who are successful can be sent through with (allowed) plastic knives (or whatever) to see if they pass again. Then you send them through with a sealed bag and a phone and instructions that they will receive an signal on their mobile phone when they are to act (after passing through security of course so it doesn't necessarily show up). Everything risk-free and above-board, but as a terrorist organization you *do* get to find out the sort of fatalistic dupe who would be suitable for an operation. And when you finally mount your terror attack, it will work fabulously because all airport scanners have been replaced by "apprehension scans", which the people you are sending in can successfully negate.
Used alongside conventional scanners, the proposed scheme might, just might, be able to increase the detection rate. Which will produce generous amounts of false positives anyway since the number of terrorists amongst the thousands of passengers who fly each day is extremely low (how many hijackings do we get per week, eh?).
Sorry, but this scheme sounds idiotic to me.
As long as we're gonna throw bullshit ideas around on Israeli thoughtcrime machines, let's seem them stop these.
http://bob-basset.livejournal.com/60879.html
That is a real, rather large tanto knife, made from industrial sapphire. Forget ceramic kitchen knives- bring this with you. I always knew these were possible to make, and if I had a sizeable chunk of sapphire window from a scanner laying around, I could make one of these too (trained in lapidary)
He has made others too.
As long as stuff like this exists, nothing can catch everything. I don't care what you try- there is no way they could build a sapphire detector. X-rays pass through it, unless doped with another metal.
Security is futile. Work on eliminating reasons for terrorists to recruit, and you'll see results. IE- get our men out of the middle east, and make some sensible foreign policy!
Israel has determined that the best way to spy on the world is to be the country that produces all the spy equipment used by the rest of the world.
They've been involved in developing the CALEA wiretapping equipment used by the FBI - until the FBI shit a brick when they found Israelis selling wiretap info to drug gangs in Los Angeles. Factions of the FBI also have complained that Israeli employees of the companies involved had too much access to the systems. So I believe the Israeli companies were cut out of the loop. However, you also don't know who is involved in what - many US companies deploying this sort of thing, if you look close, have an Israeli on their Board of Directors or executive staff, or are subsidiaries of Israeli companies, or funded by Israeli investment companies.
Many of these Israeli companies in turn are funded by either the Mossad or the Israeli Defense Force under specific programs designed to finance high-tech startups with intelligence or military value. Do a Google on this subject and see for yourself.
This sort of tech would be just what Israel needs to basically spy on every human being going through an airport anywhere in the world. Depending on the software - which you can bloody well bet is NOT open source! - they will be able to identify and track specific people everywhere - whether they are "terrorists" or not.
As for the basic uses for which it is supposed to be designed, this is on a par with lie detection equipment - it's pseudoscience. The number of false positives will head to infinity.
And you thought metal detectors were bad!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Of course, if this device finds people who are planning to attack a plane, the logical next step for a terror attack is to plant a bomb on some unsuspecting traveler. If they don't know that they are part of a terrorist attack, they'll sail on through this new, improved security device.
You counter with Ninjas, then they counter with Pirates. You think the Ninja's will stand a chance against Kung-Fu Pirates? I shudder at the thought of what they will be stopped with.
Then we counter their pirates with RIAA lawyers. They will be sued into such deep debt that not a single virgin (let alone 72 virgins) will have anything to do with them.
This space unintentionally left blank.
The pirate, the ninja and the Snake on a Plane.
Is this sequel to The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe?
doesn't a person who's nervous about flying emit the same bodily signals?
couldn't this technology also be misappropriated to force a person to unwittingly give up their sexual orientation?
Sounds like biometric discrimination to me.
They're using their grammar skills there.
because this is seriously the biggest load of it I've ever seen. A person could exhibit half of the mentioned symptoms after a fucking sneeze.
Someone needs to arrest the head of the FBI and the DoHS, because they've long since lost their fucking minds and are just hurting us in the long run.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, one day they should start to check whether travellers have genuine patriotic feelings towards the USA, if not, make them disappear. I'd say the unimaginable drop in travellers could persuade them finally that it isn't a good idea to produce ever increasingly humiliating checks.
As to the test at hand, I have a somewhat elevated blood pressure - always had -, I always am nervous when in contact with every kind of security people - I can't help it, I was a kid in a strongly communist country, some feelings can't be easily eradicated -, also on 9/10 times when flying I have to really hurry on airports - since I prefer quick connections to waiting many hours at airport lounges. Combine all of these and I'll be an easy target.
As always, it's not the false positives in themselves that bother me - although I know pretty well how most of the biometric systems work and fail - but the delays and inconveniences such false picks can cause you, from lost flights and luggages to time spent explaining things you shouldn't need to, and so on.
And, at the same time, most of the terrorists will just as easily pass security as they've always have. From the top of my head, let's just say there could be 1 terrorist out of 1million passangers. Knowing the average true positive recognition rates, around 10000 passangers could easily be falsely picked out, while that one terrorist could easily slip through.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
So wait... you want me to trust the TSA employee (who gets suspicious about the fact that I have two cellphones with me) to accurately read a machine that picks up biometrics? Give me a fucking break.
"We don't want you to feel like you are being interrogated." Yea and the nazi's didn't want the jews to feel prosecuted either.
[quote]
by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration
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So now you can get locked up in Guantanamo for 10 years without a trial because you had the flu when you tried to board a plane?
In the past I have been convinced that the most effective defense against hijackers lies in psychology and some very convincing evidence emerged here in New Zealand only a few days ago.
Aboard a domestic flight one very terrifying middle aged woman pulled out a knife and demanded the plane be flown all the way to Australia. When told the plane wouldn't have enough fuel to get there she demanded the plane be flown there even if it would crash into the sea or she would detonate a bomb (she then started fingering buttons on the cellphone in her other hand).
At this point a female passenger who was a clearly highly trained professional psychologist tried to calm the hijacker and negotiate for a surrender... to then be stabbed in the hand.
So the shrink sat back down and grabbed of all things her Psychology textbook to fend off more stab wounds... distracting the hijacker just long enough for the copilot to kick the knife and phone out of the woman's hands thus saving the plane and all aboard.
This shrink was clearly a hero. Just imagine what else she could achieve if she reads the textbook again!
Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater?
If all this stuff could potentially save my son's life, I still say NO!!
Pause for a moment to let the gravity of that sink in.
You'd kill your child to save a terrorist? *gasp*!
Obviously we are going to get more instances of this as technology advances. As for myself I'm pretty sure I'd be showing some nasty signs if scanned in front of a TSA goon or as I see the 3 year old kid in front of me being carried away for a body search due to being flagged as a terrorist.
Yet another abuse and powergrab by the government bureaucracy. Once these procedures have been established and "legitimated", they'll bleed all over the place.
I live in the Northwest US.
They don't have "every right". In fact, they don't have "rights" at all. What they have is authority, and that authority is questionable.
TSA was given too much arbitrary authority that is arguably unconstitutional.
So, if my reactions trigger the "intention alarm" do I get arrested? Or politely escorted out of the building?
After all, I haven't committed any crimes.
A blipvert of Osama bin Laden will scare or anger a lot of normal Americans, which will lead this brilliant software to think that they're hiding something.
Someone disestablish the TSA, please. All its ideas have been bullshit.
Same thing really. I like reading history, and those Jews weren't very nice either. Ask the poor occupiers at the British embassy when the place was called the british palestinian mandate. Terrorism is wrong, it's wrong when it is performed by American bombs, wrong when Arabs crash planes or blow themselves up. Just plain wrong.
There are now 5 million "displaced palestinians" and 5 million Israeli's. The P's are growing at a birthrate of 6 to 7 kids/woman while the I's are growing at 3k/w
When the P's decide to move back home, I wonder how much they will outnumber the Jews, and how many Americans will have to die fighting the war against those evil Muslim terrorists. I personally won't help either side because terrorism is wrong and all sides are doing it.