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."

Comments

Re:The system works?

[digitig]

but it can always work better.

I agree, but we need to be careful about how we define "better". Security specialists will tend to define "better" as "more secure", no matter what happens to convenience or civil liberties. Passengers are more likely to consider "better" to be "more convenient", although they will want security to be adequate. Livertarians are likely to consider "better" to be "more liberty" or "more equality", with less regard for convenience or security. "Better" might be a case of finding a balance between conflicting interests that is more acceptable to the population as a whole, but in general it will be improving one or more criteria without significant detriment to the others.

The issue with profiling is what happens to the innocent that unfortunately match a profile. They are likely to be significantly inconvenienced, and the more we trust the profiling the worse it is likely to get for the false positives. The usual tendency of civilisation is to spread risk more evenly (eg, insurance) as well as reducing it. Unless it is extraordinarily well implemented, profiling goes against that trend, making things better for the majority but making things very much worse for an unlucky few.