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Brain Scanning May Be Used In EU Security Checks
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Guardian: "Distinctive brain patterns could become the latest subject of biometric scanning after EU researchers successfully tested technology to verify identities for security checks. The experiments, which also examined the potential of heart rhythms to authenticate individuals, were conducted under an EU-funded inquiry into biometric systems that could be deployed at airports, borders and in sensitive locations to screen out terrorist suspects."
The same article says that "The Home Office, meanwhile, has confirmed rapid expansion plans of automated facial recognition gates: 10 will be operating at major UK airports by August."
I wonder what Bruce Schneier would have to say about such elaborate measures.
Because we can (ab)use this technology to identify brain patterns of illegal behavior.
The identification would be fool proof, but who cares when you can catch terrorists and pedophiles.
Do terrorists have distinctive brain patterns that would cause an alarm to go off?
All this does is help to confirm that the passport holder is the person to whom the passport was issued. The 9/11 bombers would all have passed this test, as they were travelling on their own passports.
Using this in conjunction with the new Google Brain search should make spotting nefarious terrorists, murderers, drug traffickers and torrenters easy. The program should be run by Alfred Bester.
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
This passenger has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of a plane-jacking terrorist.
Distinctive brain patterns could become the latest subject of biometric scanning
Time to start journeying to Wild Divine. Learn to change your mental state for fun and profit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Enough security at airports, we get it, they're "safe." The real security threats are against soft targets with no protection at all. Any location with a large crowd is a target and they're also impossible to defend.
I can see why you want fingerprints on passports, but all the insane stuff since then (e.g. "makes you naked" (Backscatter) child porno vision) is just over the top and adds an insanely small amount of additional protection.
Let's remember:
- All 9/11 passengers used valid ID
- All recent terrorists have also used valid ID
A former coworker who is a Syrian expatriate and I were talking about Islamic terrorism, and the conversation turned to Saudi Arabia. If you look at the profile of international Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia is disproportionately represented in terrorist groups around the world. I don't know if it's still true, but at its peak, half of the insurgents we killed in Iraq on any given day were Saudis.
If Western countries simply prohibited Saudi nationals from staying for any length longer than a vacation or business trip, it'd be easier to keep out suspected Islamic terrorists. If Western governments would also start shutting down Saudi-financed mosques and Islamic schools, that'd be even better. The Saudis are funding the radicalization of Islam around the world, and we'd be doing the majority of Muslims a favor by targeting Saudi Arabia and Saudi nationals for very direct, special attention as the majority of Muslims would be left alone to live in peace if that's their desire.
But of course the worst thing a Western government can do is to appear to be discriminating against someone for something, and to possibly even be limiting the expression of a religion, no matter how violently hostile and alien it is to the host society. We think we're taking the moral high ground when all we're doing is importing people who want to tear down our societies, and in the end we're hurting the honest immigrants who really want to flee that bullshit like my former coworker as much as we're hurting our own people.
What if airport security accidentally invokes brainscan with the --format flag? Also, does this mean brains are open source now?
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Slow Poke
They'll have to up the minimum requirements for being the security check person from "some highschool" to "med school graduate"
Now offering free prostate exams with every flight!
They seem determined to abuse technology as far as *the abuse* can go.
Phrase: "Quantum of Terror"
"Hmm. Our ID test runs on heartbeats, measured in a comfy lab with plush seats and chocolate mints. But we Don't Like This Guy.
" 'Hey, you're a terrorist!!' "
(Subject's heart races)
"Oh look, he fails. He MUST be a terrorist! Wheee!"
It's Schrodinger's Nightmare.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
hmmm, I wonder how could that be?
The problem is that a "moderate Muslim" is really an oxymoron. Islamic law very explicitly says that it *must* be applied to every circumstance in life, without exception.
This situation is very well analyzed in this book. Islamic scholars like Sayyid Qutb have put the situation in the following terms:
1) One must choose between evil or good
2) If one chooses the path of good, one must be consisten in it
This is a logical argument, no one can say anything against it. The problem is when people like Sayyid Qutb and his followers assume that "good" is equal to Islam, and any deviation from the strictest interpretation of Islam is evil.
Unfortunately, this interpretation is consistent with a careful reading of the Quran.
Differently from the Bible, which is a compilation of writings from different authors from many different times and places, the Quran was written in a short time at one place. The Bible has reports of historical and legendary events, intermixed with moral teachings. The Quran is mostly moral teachings alone.
Reading the Quran leaves many people with a strong sense of duty to perform those acts, to lead a life of moral righteousness, much more than the Bible does because it's much more concentrated on the moral commandments. I have read a translation of the Quran and was impressed on how those commandments seem to be worded in such a stronger way than in the Bible.
There are also some extremely radical Christians, it's true, but they have never reached such a high number of sympathizers as radical Muslims, at least not in the last few centuries.
I believe that if someone want to be a Muslim without following the radical path, then he must make an effort to study and analyze the Quran, like the radicals have done, and try to verify in which manner the moderate interpretation can be validated by the text. It seems to me that the radicals have been more successful in putting forward their interpretation.
We can't read thoughts. Our current equipment is far too crude to even identify specific neural pathways. All we can do is detect electrical activity or oxygen use in *regions* of the brain. At best they might be able to determine you are (possibly) anxious or fearful. So about as useful for reading thoughts as a polygraph (aka not useful at all).
I doubt we will ever be able to read thoughts because of the difficult of isolating neural pathways, and the fact that thoughts aren't encoded in a way we even understand. It isn't as simple as making a sensitive detector and then decoding a stream of data.
IAAPS (I Am A Psychology Student).
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
How do you mean revert back?
If brain activity is detected, then you are not a Senator.
>>>it ain't so bad.
"The right of the People to be secure in their persons...... unless a warrant has been issued by oath....." The government is violating your body by making intimate scans of your internal organs. You might as well tattoo numbers on your skin, because the offense against your property (your body) is as severe.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
First, we have not even been able to eliminate the false positives from facial recognition ! How in the world do you propose to eliminate false positives from a pattern set that is orders of magnitude less understood than optics? I mean really, patterns of consciousness vs. patterns of light reflection seems like quite a jump.
Second:
We just need to make sure enough "good people" are descion makers in the new paradigm.
The fact that you think this way scares me. Just re-read your own sentence a few times. Start thinking about Power and what types of people gravitate to power. Re-read your sentence again. Take a look at the world today. Re-read your sentence. How do you propose that we "make sure" enough "good people" are the decision makers? We seem to have done a pretty piss poor job of it even in the last 100 years, even in the past 20.
Really, isn't that the ultimate crux of the world today? It will all work out if enough good people are decision makers, in government, industry and as individual citizens. Yet it turns out that those decision makers with the most power routinely put their own personal interests ahead of the good of the people they profess to serve.
We are all human.
Yes. But humanity has a wide range of available states of consciousness. Some of them clearly need de-populating. How do yo propose we screen these individuals from becoming decision makers? I know - lets use brain scanning techniques!
oh, wait...