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Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do
An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."
Trials will be deemed unnecessary in 2025.
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> No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints -- the new checkpoint can detect if you
> have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building.
In other words, anyone who looks Islamic will be stopped and searched as will a few others chosen at random.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is retarded. Suppose I have to go to the bathroom and look nervous like I won't make it time? I'll probably set off the scanner as a suspected terrorist.
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FTA: "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection..."
And that's supposed to be good? What fraction of the remaining 22% can we expect to be false positives?
[begin sarcasm]
I look forward to a future in which the police stop me more than they already do.
[end sarcasm]
78% accurate in a controlled setting is nothing to be proud of. I'll grant the fact that they're still in the early research stages, as they say, but I'd need to see an accuracy rate of over 99% in a real world application for me to consider it a valid option. Otherwise there will be far too many false positives for it to be useful in a high-traffic situation.
I'll leave it to other people to point out everything else wrong with this kind of system.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
So, when I walk into the airport, in December, at minus twenty, in shorts, nad my skin temperature is about ten degrees colder than the average, and my heart rate is about 20 points higher than the average, and I'm not sweating, and there's snow in my boot, I'm going to be intercepted every time -- for being different. Great.
But really, this time I read the article, and welcome to the same stupid problems for the same stupid solutions. The system is basically a remote polygraph. So you can walk at full speed while it assesses you. So we'll have longer corridors, but the exercise will be nice.
Of course the tests get to measure people's personal intents. Great. So anwser two questions. . .
- do you think trained criminals can learn to pass polygraphs? C.E.O.'s don't seem to have much trouble. Frame of mind and all that.
- so crime will once again shift back to the days of slipping something into someone else's bags. that someone else has no idea that they're carrying a bomb. The criminal may set off the system, but he's got no evidence on him anymore. So what exactly are you going to find? And which plane are you going to check? Even the criminal may not know which random passenger was marked.
This is why security never learns. Criminals have an arsenal of techniques from thousands of years of history. And those criminals get to pick what they want to use today. And those criminals have a darn good reward for picking the correct one. On the other hand, security personnel, and I include this system's designers, try to solve the current problem, and ofter forget the old problems. The criminals know exactly which systems are presently in place, as well as any routines being used by personnel.
So once again, we've managed to stop the dumb criminal with nothing to gain, and amused, or worse challenged, the intelligent criminal with lots to gain.
The FAST system detects physiological signs of stress. In testing it detected "hostile intent" in volunteers. The obvious question is how can volunteers have valid hostile intent? You can't test deception with fake deception. The generalizability of physiological response to stressors is a basic tenet of physiological psychology (the folks who brought you FAST's grand dad, the polygraph).
The volunteers knew they were volunteers in a study and in no danger. In practice, this device will trigger on every person who is nervous about flying, because the physiological markers for stress are the same regardless of the reason. There will be many, many more of those than with 'hostile intent'. The test study was unable to have adequate control (real, naive persons) to prove its claim.
Most people can learn simple biofeedback techniques to control physiological reactions to some degree. Those with hostile intent don't need to get very good at it, they just need to be able to control it better than an untrained person with a fear of flying.
FAST isn't supposed to work. Its owners know it can't. It's just supposed to be believable enough to convince the public that it could catch bad guys to increase public confidence, and to convince the government that further funding is warranted.
Stick the designers in it and ask them if it can tell hostile intent from fear of flying (and base GAO investigation of the program upon the result, to make it more salient). They'll say yes. Either it'll trigger and show them to be lying, or it won't and so it doesn't work.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Firstly, they don't say the false positive rate , they only say the true positive rate. By now many poster here will have picked that up. Even at 1% false positive , pass 10000 person thru the check point, 100 false positive, yada yada law of great number etc...
Secondly It only does detect external signs of nervousness at best and nothing else. Such sign of nervousness MIGHT be displayed by people with malevolent intent, but certainly not only by them. Consider where such detector might be implanted : courtroom, IRS, FBI buildings, airports before boarding. A lot of place where people WILL be more often than not nervous. And what will happens ? Terrorist or any other mal intended smart persons will get an additional training : 1) meditate to lower all sign of nervousness 2) take a nyquil or whatever calm you down.
Thirdly, as the various western governments seem to go toward more and more security of that type, TV camera, drone and whatnot, I have long stopped fearing terrorist (and I barely missed getting in a bomb blast in Paris metro by a few dozen minutes...). Nowadays I fear the police and the governement and their big-brotherisation more than not. I fear that the time for the third box (the munition one) will come way sooner than I ever expected in my dystopian nightmare.
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The chances of being on a plane blown up by a terrorist are so minuscule that to willingly submit to a demeaning treatment and long waits in order to have "peace of mind" seems irrational.
As we saw in India terrorists can just as easily walk into a train station or a hotel and open fire on everyone in sight, so would you like every public place to install metal detectors and strip searches for even more peace of mind? Whatever you do there is some risk involved. I suggest you learn to live with it instead of supporting making everybody life gradually more and more miserable until perfect safety is achieved, which of course will never happen.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
in fact I felt safest[...]after a random gate search turned up illegal drugs
What does that have to do with your safety?
We all seem to have figured out that this system is a joke, so I won't address that.
The bigger problem is that the DHS really thinks something like this kind of system will work. We've seen several different screening systems, fingerprinting systems, etc, and they all share the same "whiz-bang technology" attribute. That is that somewhere, there's some great piece of hardware, software, or black box that's going to save us from "the terrorists" Real Soon Now. I guess I'm more than a little skeptical of this approach to the problem.
I don't know enough about the problem to know what the solution is (maybe just human operatives). But I do know enough about "whiz-bang" technology to know that it's snake oil.
AccountKiller
I have seen more than one person lead away from a gate in handcuffs after a random gate search turned up illegal drugs or other such nonsense.
So, what, illegal search and seizure makes you feel safer ?
It looks like we need to update Pastor Niemoeller's famous poem. First they came from the Muslims...
Here are a few other conclusions from a non-PC but apparently somewhat more objective observer.
Probably the most violent recent religion looking over its history is Christianity. Should we detain all Christians? I bet that'll go down well in the US.
Actually, speaking of the US, they are the only nation ever to have actually used a weapon of mass destruction at a cost of numerous civilian lives, and they have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to go to war other than to protect themselves from an immediate physical threat. Maybe the rest of the world should just nuke the whole US and be done with them?
Then again, the administration of any country that had WMDs could lose the plot and use them based on such dubious arguments, and any administration that has been in power for more than a short time and retains the option apparently has a willingness to consider using WMDs. Maybe it would be better for all of us if they just turned on each other to remove the threat against everyone else?
I'll stop there, because I've pretty much killed the entire world in only three steps by applying the kind of tragic, fear-driven thinking exhibited by the parent post. But I truly hope that 2009 offers us more than a binary choice between PC security theatre and the kind of indiscriminate fear-mongering we see here.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.