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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."
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'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.
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?
"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.
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!"
and any one how shows any smarts does not get the job.
Where do I sign up?
Follow the guys in fancy black suits and shades to the white unmarked van? Sure!
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.
Well thats one virgin, 79 to go.
Any more volunteers?