Slashdot Mirror
IBM Patenting Airport Profiling Technology
An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek's Wolfe's Den reports that IBM has filed a dozen applications to patent a sophisticated airport security system which supports passive software-based profiling of potentially dangerous passengers off of pre-programmed rules. The setup uses a collection of sensors — video, motion, biometric and even olfactory — in terminals and around the airport perimeter, to supply raw data. 'These patents are built on the inference engine, which [analyzes sensor data and] has the ability to calculate very large data sets in real time,' says co-inventor Roger Angell. A small grid of networked computers delivers the necessary processing power. Two applications go one better than Israeli-style security, analyzing furtive glances to detect, according to the title of the patent application, 'Behavioral Deviations by Measuring Eye Movements,' as well as measuring respiratory patterns."
The new whipping boy that SCO has fallen off the narrow /. radar. Hoo-freaking-ray!!!
Ever vigilant against the dog with the shifty eyes.
The need for this just appalls me. Hate it. It's amazing what a small group of "dedicated" people can do with a few airplanes.
I feel horribly for the loss of life, but I can't imagine those terrorists ever expected it to get this far.
Stupid.
Sent from your iPad.
You cannot have such stupid mechanisms to detect terrorist activity at airports. At best, you can use them to support other mechanisms. Like as an example maybe to reduce the number of people you want people to go under the scanner. I am sure with patents published online, someone can figure out a way to beat the detection. IMHO, at airports we should use scanners to detect drugs/chemicals/weapons etc. Everything else must come before granting visa like performing a thorough background check !!
I thought the Israeli "trick" were these long interviews face-to-face by trained humans looking you right in the eye.
I doubt 2 pieces of software are better than a trained human.
The setup uses a collection of sensors -- video, motion, biometric and even olfactory
"Hey guys! This dude smells like Garry Kasparov!"
I think I'll just drive or take Amtrak.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Must be funny........
1. Latch on to terrorism like a limpet.
2. Patent method relating to supposedly fighting said terrorism.
3. ???
4. Profit!
It sounds like a useless system with a ton of false positives possible whilst the people who should be under suspicion get away. The dodgy people with something to hide learnt how to defeat this kind of system long ago, and it'll be even worse with an automated system with little to new human intervention (bad idea for this sort of thing by the way). You just stay relaxed and look bored.
This terrorism racket isn't bad money.
Is back! New and improved.
after all, didn't they provide sophisticated technology for efficiently tracking and "managing" people who were not like the ordinary folks to a certain German government in the past ?
I suppose eating Chipotle before boarding a flight *could* be considered terrorism...
...(if granted) never stand up in court unless something truly novel was listed because this sort of 'data fusion' has been going on in the security industry for the past 10 years.
There is a very specific reason you will only see this sort of 'product' in testing for the next 10 years - 'false positives.' That's a very very important phrase in the security industry because software based solutions are supposed to act as force multipliers (although historically they're used to reduce forces in order to lower costs through automation, not to augment it) and if you've a high 'false positive' rate (as ALL of these behavioral analysis systems do) you actually impede normal security operations. Research in this area of physical security is active and ongoing, but veyr unlikely to produce anything usable except in very specific scenarios (objects left behind, loitering, et cetera.)
Loading...
They were working with experts on profiling.
Would actual terrorists behave or have other characteristics all that different that would definitively distinguish them from millions of others? I don't think so.
So really, in their efforts to find a needle in a haystack, many innocent people are going to be harassed.
Also, also with the needle in the haystack issue, I don't see this system effective in catching all actual terrorists, since they will be doing their best to "blend in" with the crowd and not stick out anyway.
So expect to have high failure rates of both type 1 and type 2 natures.
And so, the billions of dollars to deploy this system is justified how?
Not to mention all the civil rights issues with the government monitoring your biometrics without your consent or knowledge. Who knows what will be done with the data, and how it may affect you in the future? There are expectations of privacy violations here, which will be fought out in the courts.
Meanwhile, another "terrorist" will go "BOO", and you'll see hearings and blame-pointing and everything else at why this high-tech expensive system failed to catch the needle in a very big haystack "terrorist".
And now I am about to cause the paranoid US to spend billions more: BOO.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Patenting should have been stopped when life was being patented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
With these advanced sensors, they can observe pupil dilation, increased heart rate, perspiration, and rapid breathing. This is especially handy considering the fact that all terrorists are sporting a woody to the notion of a 72some. But hey, if all else fails, the technology will at least let the security guards know who to hit on.
A device claimed to “smell” snake oil is being marketed as identifying terrorists by detecting “snake pheromones” in sweat.
“The challenge lies in the characterisation and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of complete bollocks,” said project leader Professor Tong Sun of City University, “especially the fear of losing funding for security theatre. If we can reliably detect this fear, we should be able to land some eyewateringly lucrative contracts in the very near future.”
The research is funded by the Home Office. “The project relies on a government with a firm commitment to policy-based science, but the Tories look as craven over David Nutt’s firing as Labour, so we should be coining it in for a good while yet.”
The technology will assist airport security officers in picking out suitable subjects. Sensors can reliably detect if someone is a bit brown, or a bit foreign-looking, or has a non-Anglo-Saxon name, or if they might be thinking of giving cheek to security officers. It will work in conjunction with the millimetre-wave “naked” radar, currently used to identify terrorist subjects with large breasts.
The false positive rate will be only 5% on a terrorist detection rate of 1 in 100,000, meaning only 99.95% of subjects flagged will be a complete waste of time to finger up the arse with a latex glove. “But we’re sure the government will agree that mere statistical evidence is meaningless in the face of the vital necessity to send the right message,” said Prof Sun, “that if you make trouble the government will quite literally forcibly fuck you in the arse until you bleed. So just shut the fuck up and keep giving us money.”
http://rocknerd.co.uk
To hand out free curry and kebabs outside of security control.
Funny for bystanders when you get towed in by security for terrorist activities, that is.
More insanity coming from a mentally degenerate elite. Der Geist der Zeit: Faschismus.
They would be better off patenting application of science to everyday problems (beware not to forget) by use of a computing device.
On a side note, I am sure that these 'see thru' scanner pictures will be part of the game, as I anticipated.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Sure, some politically-motivated criminals hijacked some planes and flew them into buildings.
Since then, the real terrorism has been carried out by Americans against each other. Media, government, law enforcement, local politicians -- all jumping on the bandwagon to terrorize their populace and make them easily give away the rights their ancestors FOUGHT AND DIED FOR.
We should not be afraid of terrorists, in fact we should LAUGH AT THEM and openly mock them. (And kill them whenever the chance arises, of course). But those who would give away their liberty for a little temporary security (or worse, for the illusion of security! For "security theatre"!) deserve neither liberty nor security.
Maybe the system works? When was the last time anyone heard of an attack on an El Al airplane?
And that the latest perp succeeded only in catching his pants on fire, points to some success. If there were no three-ounce rule, or no even haphazard searches, he wouldn't have bothered with the explosive underwear and instead just packed some C4 in his backpack.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I am left wondering where they are going to find some bonafide terrorists to calibrate their setup.
We still don't jump at every unattended suitcase though one day we will need to. The day when a car parked in the wrong spot becomes an issue. No, we got it easy.
The simple facts are that your more likely to die of natural causes or from a car accident in the US than terrorism. The terrorist just want you to think otherwise and are more than willing to try. So of course we need a computer/software to do this surveillance for us because then we can divorce ourselves from the feeling we are picking on people. Far better to let a computer do it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Our machines have determined that you are a security risk. Our machines aren't capable of stating any reason, so there is nothing you can point to to clear yourself. Our machines just have a hunch, a gut feeling based on their heuristics and rules. We can tell you what the heuristics and rules are, but not how applying them led to your identification as a security risk. You can cross-examine the people who wrote those rules in court, and they will testify that the code contains no known bugs, but you cannot cross-examine the machine that actually made the identification in court."
As always, inexorable mathematics guarantee that most of the identifications will be false positives. Say the machine fingers one traveller in ten thousand, and one traveller in a million is a terrorist; then even if it correctly identifies every terrorist, 99% of its identifications will be false positives. If you don't like those numbers, plug in whatever ones you think are plausible.
If this happened to me I would be so upset and hostile that it would induce suspicious behavior in me, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I suppose eating Chipotle before boarding a flight *could* be considered terrorism...
Even since the airlines stopped providing service, I hit one of the many "bistros" in the concourse and take on a large bowl of chili or some roast beast affair, and at least 2 pints of Bud, maybe a shot. Onboard, I pop open a crudité in a Rubbermaid, full of brok-oh-lie, radishes, celery, and cauliflower, with a big cup-o-ranch. Then I move on to a deli sandwich made at home or picked up along the way in. To finish it off, I try to pick up some spicy tuna rolls. Let's see them try to classify my gas as "terroristic".
Actually, most other passengers look a little jealous when I start laying out the buffet.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Analyzing furtive glances", ey?
So every time a pretty lady walks through the airport, there are 250 terrorist alarms going off.
Well, when I read "airport profiling" I thought how convenient it would be to be able to avoid all the suspicious airports during my travels. A profile of airport conditions would be nice to have.
I mean, seriously, that's what it's coming down to. How can I minimize the risk of undue and irrational harassment while en route to my destination? As it is, I try to avoid travel through the United States entirely, and that's a shame, because it's a nice place once you get away from all the people waving guns around.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Every last terrorist who has ever tried to hijack a US airplane has one thing in common: they are Arabs, they are Islamic, and they have brown to light brown skin. Why do we not give extra scanning etc. to people who fit this description as a matter of policy? So why are we stopping little old ladies and inspecting their bags? Why is profiling so wrong when we did not choose this enemy and cannot help that they all have so much in common that makes them so identifiable?
However, when we used our data fusion algorithms to augment the history of a person at a checkpoint (simulated) false positives were okay, they just enhanced the interrogation.
The problem is false negatives which is much harder to quantify. Of course we had access to a scintillator that could identify trace radioactive potassium from the banana you had for lunch...
IBM did a great job for Germany in the 1930's and 40's with their control grid. Imagine what they can do for us today!
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Seriously, I wonder if just the Voight-Kampff test after being given a set of questions, when cross-referenced could detect terrorists. Domestic or Foreign terrorists have to be so programmed / screwed up to not have many human responses left inside.
Apparently Today's IBM Management is not so perfect. From the 1st article cited
Only IBM Management would lay off primary inventors thinking it has enough to carry the idea forward to reality without the inventive father(s).
However the management greed from the 30's and 40's still remains.
er, wouldn't the 'terr'ists' kinda act normal so as not to attract suspicion ?
This is the funniest thing I've read this year (not hyperbole...yet).
Could we at least bring what we wanted into the plane again? Cut down on security? Allow people to meet their S.O.s after they come off the plane? Bring things back to the good old days?
Because obviously this technology is so great, and all.
Something tells me, though, that we will be subjected to this in ADDITION to the security theater we are already forced to endure.
There's a brilliant demonstration of this system in the first 30 minutes of the movie ROBOCOP. As you can see, the terrorist was correctly identified and eliminated as a threat. There were no glitches or errors of any kind and the project was a complete success.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Well, up until 2 years ago I was the software architect for a software company (bought by SIEMENS 3 years ago) that did nothing but sensor fusion and I can tell you that false positives are the entire roadblock to deploying production solutions. We had tons of great demos - that if you happened to match the scenario requirements you could use, unfortunately those perfect fits were rare. The software was still valuable, but gathering useful metrics and or discerning an 'alarm' condition with behavioral analysis is generally speaking, not currently feasible. A simple thing, to a human, such as someone leaving an object behind (a bomb scenario) is frightfully difficult to pull off in just about any environment you'd actually wish to monitor for such activity. Simply detecting someone moving in the wrong direction is incredibly difficult to handle in general usage scenarios. Simple to demonstrate, difficult to put to practical use, that's the current story of behavioral analysis.
Loading...
Behavioral Deviations by Measuring Eye Movements
Prior art - see Voight-Kampff.
...unless they also manage to watch for people that are furtively scratching their crotches. Only a crotch-bomber would ever do such a thing.
They might get a few false positives from baseball players, though. Crotch-bombers and baseball players.
And maybe guys. Crotch-bombers and baseball players and guys. Then they're all set.
You will note that the best scoring criteria for our data fusion was when an individual went between checkpoints, and was interrogated by a trained guard. What I meant by enhanced interrogation at checkpoints is a little more subtle.
As opposed to:
Danger: Phil is in facility X!
consider
Guard at checkpoint:Phil, we noticed that you went into facility X where you don't normally go, could you tell us why?
As the Israeli's will tell you, nothing beats a good, well trained, interrogator, and the more information he has the better. I will agree that our facilities had far fewer people in them than in an airport so what it boils down to is that you can't interrogate everybody so triage will need to be done.
And you are quite right that detecting objects being left behind was quite complicated. We had two particular benefits (1) We were more worried about objects leaving the facility than entering and particular objects at that and (2) we were in complete (almost) control of the facility with regards to checkpoints.
All that being said, the intrusion detection system from EDS simply sucked. Our best success was using it to toggle the camera priorities, i.e. we didn't show alerts we just cycled the cameras to view the hotspots first, again we used it to guide human intervention rather than supplant it.
I think more airport profiling is a good thing. Remember the utterly broken baggage handling system at the Denver airport? Profiling would have caught this earlier. Or the airport that always seems to have a trick up its sleeve? Again, profiling would have caught this airport before it even was allowed to put down its runways. Sure, airport profiling might result in some racial profiling, like whether it was made by this or that construction company, but this can be managed.
maybe it was Footfall? but maybe some other book, sci-fi anyhow. In it the earth had been invaded by aliens. They had telepathic powers and could tell when they were going to be attacked. One group of people found a kid they were able to train (of Arabic descent if I'm not mistaken) who could keep his mind clear of angry and destructive thoughts as he stalked aliens. He would think in his mind how beautiful, and admirable, and majestic the aliens as he pulled the trigger. His advent eventually drove the aliens insane, or off the planet. Seems to me that such a person would easily get past IBMs awesome trap. Really they are after people with no self control who are nervous about what they are doing etc.
Agreed. Sadly using the cameras to monitor hotspots is the fate of many a multi-million dollar camera system (just ask the US Border Patrol, lol.)
Loading...
I predict a suit from NLP practitioners "modelling" patent trolls.
Sorry folks, our sophisticated computer system that protects you has blue screened. Please exit the terminal and we will process everybody through security again.
All of the major countries that have sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan have had terrorist incidences.
The Founding Fathers warned about a professional military and foreign entanglements.
Terrorism and constant wars are what the US has gotten for ignoring their advice.
Neutrality is the way to go.