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Skeletal Identification
Bruce Schneier noted a story today over at his blog about a new Skeletal Identification System being developed at Wright State. Of course this is just another biometric detection system, but one that would be pretty tough to disguise.
This system could be a real boner for criminals.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Thats no bone!!!
I imagine there may be some issues with irradiating people to identify them. This isn't something on the surface you can just get with backscatter terahertz. Imaging bones means X-ray, and a fair bit of it for a full-body image. They might be able to get it down to the equivilent exposure of one plane flight - but add up all the airports, ports, theme parks and places adults may encouter children each year. That's a potential legal risk, if nothing else.
On the other hand, if someone suggested imposing manditory x-ray exposure as a means to identify pedophiles, most people would probably suggest positive results be given an extra-high-intensity scan just to confirm it with a clearer image.
(Anybody else read The Colors of Space?)
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20796
Oh yeah! Terrorist and for-the-children in the abstract. Another bullshit system that somebody wants to sell to politicians who want to monitor citizens. Regular full-body X-rays for everybody!
"Scientists" and "researchers" that develop these technologies disgust me. Let's hope they are among the first to develop cancer due to their own technology.
Facial recognition software is already notoriously unreliable. I suspect that this system would be even easier to fool, and even more wonky with identification. Unless you could couple a bunch of these systems together, I doubt they would be useful at all. And I'm not even sure they would be particularly useful even if they were strung together. If a fake beard can fool facial recognition, then all I have to do is add an overcoat to deal with the skeletal recognition too.
Besides, how many people share the same basic build? If the system were to get any more specific than that, it would probably require an X-ray or MRI, and that would ultimately cause *way* more deaths than any terrorist (I'll have to pass on the daily dose or radiation, thanks).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Another reason to nuke me with x-rays whenever I want to fly.
How long before there's a false-positive (I don't believe that the skeletal structure is so unique that a body scan from a distance will NEVER make a mistake)? And following the false-positive, a plea for all good citizens to submit to a scan for the database, or to sign a release stating the government can have access to your medical records for the purposes of security and to prevent "unfortunate" mix-ups.
Once you're in the system, you're in it; making the notion that you have "paid your debt to society" when you are release from incarceration nothing more than an illusion. You can make whatever arguments you like about the usefulness of databases for certain types of offenders but systems like these mean that if you ever offend and serve time, for anything you will forever be watched; you won't have to be a terrorist or a pedophile.
I'm just glad this is being done in the name of safety, that's gotta be worth a whole bunch of anyone's liberty...
Oh come on. This is easier to avoid than using glitter to fool mass face recognition.
That is, to have much value, working "at 50 meters," this is a mass detection system. You have to analyze hundreds if not thousands of targets, to known profiles. How do you fool it? Calcium is cheap, real cheap.
better terminator identification
(said in flat austrian accent:)
"I'm a cybernetic organism: living tissue over metal endoskeleton"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That little bitsy wee problem of getting the body scans of terrorists.
I say the US invades Afghanistan with portable boner scanners and... everyone they find.
(Whoops. They've already fucked everyone there, right?)
Myriads of automated, interconnected tracking and identification systems available to all, implemented in any storefront and doorway for security and insurance purposes. Full identification on visual contact. Privacy will become a right on paper only, requiring a vast security team to implement in practice, perhaps even breaking some laws. What should hackers do? Help dying privacy rights, with arcane tools nobody can use? Expose the tracking systems is pointless, everyone knows about them and has one. Leak their data? Leak the identities and actions of those hidden entities, who are abusing the law with it? Eliminating the last of all privacy-capable individuals? Looks to me like Wikileaks is the future for privacy activism. Come to think of it, in any small town in the world, privacy basically doesn`t exist, everyone knows who everyone is by sight, and it's not the end of the world. Expanding information and knowledge is, in a way, eliminating privacy.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
1. Obtain full body x-ray scan of Fall Guy
2. Create a custom skeleton suit based on x-rays
3. Pass through security wearing skeleton suit
4. ???
5. Profit!
This article reads like a parody. Some guy is (supposedly) worried about sex offenders in the neighborhood - I know, let's X Ray everyone everyday ! That will surely keep people safe, until they all die of cancer.
Seriously, are these guys stuck in the 1950's ? Penetrating radiation for bone scans ? On a daily basis ? I can remember when children's shoe stores had X ray machines, so Mom could view how the shoe fit, but such common uses of X Rays were stopped for a reason, and as a screening device this has no chance.
From the article : Depending on the selected technology, a skeletal scan would only expose a person to radiation that is the approximate equivalent of taking one cross-country airline flight
From the World Health Organization, INFORMATION SHEET Nov. 2005, on Cosmic Radiation and Air Travel :
Aircrew are now recognized in many countries as occupationally exposed to radiation, and radiation protection limits for aircrew are similar to those established for nuclear workers.
If you work through the numbers (and I read the above to mean that, at best, radiation exposure would be similar to air travel, so this is a lower bound), a daily scan would thus amount to 2 to 5 milliSievert (mSv) of radiation each year, substantially exceeding the ICRP guideline of no more than 1 mSv exposure to any fetus during pregnancy, and coming close to or exceeding the guideline of 4 mSv exposure for ordinary workers.
This would, at a minimum, mean that anyone at risk of pregnancy should not be scanned, and radiation workers should not be scanned (as they are typically close to their limits). There is thus just no chance that this would be adopted for regular screening of the general population.
They state that "a skeletal scan would only expose a person to radiation that is the approximate equivalent of taking one cross-country airline flight", but If they implement it as they hope, to "scan the skeletal structures of people at airports, sports stadiums, theme parks and other public places that could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks, child abductions or other crimes" - how much radiation is that per year? I suppose that scanning your skeleton is only possible with radiation that is strong enough to "reach" your bones.
Other question: - How many countries have a database of terrorist skeletons just waiting to be used?
The good news is that, we don't have to surrender our privacy, since it's already long gone. We just have to watch out for cancer a little (or a whole lot) more.
It's spelled B'Elanna. Where's the Voyager Sucks troll when you need him?
...BONERS!
*sunglasses*
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
in any small town in the world, privacy basically doesn`t exist, everyone knows who everyone is by sight, and it's not the end of the world
Except in this case it's reciprocal. Everyone knows you and you know everyone, and you still have the privacy of your home. In "our" world large centralized systems watch you, but you don't know exactly who they are, what they know, and what they use this information for.
If knowledge is power, I'm not convinced we should allow governments, corporations, etc. to have too much.
Interesting, but... The scheme fails to account for the fact that human bones remodel and change shape over time. In fact, the premise appears to count on the fact that people's bones will remain unchanged. It's just not so. The skeleton is a changing organ. More info can be found in this wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_remodeling One could imagine a database of "bone information" that is cross-referenced to identity. While it's possible the data would initially be useful, over time the database would become increasingly inaccurate as peoples' bones changed. How often would the authors suggest that people be rescanned to maintain accuracy?
Wait. Stop scrolling for a sec. O.K. Thanks. - P
Just break something. You have 206 chances to fool the system.
Yes it might be able to identify a "potential" terrorist by identifying them. However, if I remember correctly, you are innocent until proven guilty. So we have identified a potential terrorist, legitimately visiting his sick grandma in denver. He is flying with his toothbrush and shorts. So what. What we need to do is identify that the toothpaste is really an explosive. And if he is a good terrorist, he isn't going to carry the stuff on the plane with him, someone else will or it will be planted. We need to identify the potential weapons, as well as the people.
Do we bar a convicted criminal from flying after he has served his "20" year sentence and been released?
Not to mention all of the X-Ray/radiation issues and already suggested methods of potentially beating the system.
If you can meet the following criteria, you're pretty much guaranteed a research grant:
1. Speaks to a perceived counter-terrorism need
2. Concept works at least a little bit, on carefully selected, unrealistic, synthetic data
3. Appears plausible to someone who either doesn't understand the science involved, or isn't interested in the idea's viability for real applications
4. Promises to benefit the resume of someone in the government, such as by making them author of a conference paper without them having to do any research or writing
5. Your resume must be credible looking from the outside, so that everyone's ass is covered
Its unrealistic to assume that an idea makes much sense just because someone's working on it. Some ideas may pan out in a positive manner, most are never intended to. It doesn't matter to most of the people involved, because they're doing fun 'science' and getting paid.
These kinds of scanning do not use x-rays, rather monochromatic red light (primarily for eye-safety). They work by imaging the light by a red laser using a digital camera and transforming a 2D plane into a 3D object (surface) by reconstructing multiple views. The problem using these scanners is not that people would suffer harm from the beam, unless they looked directly into the laser, rather problems would come from artifacts produced by hair, clothing, etc that would mask the shape of the face and body, as well as artifacts that are generated because some artifacts are specular (produce reflections or glare). People would probably have to disrobe and be painted so that these artifacts could be minimized. It is one thing to image a bottle, golf club, or statue and another to image a moving person, who perhaps is sweating because of the trauma of being scanned. It would also require enormous databases and storage that can be rapidly searched for the "best match" against a list of "known" terrorists.
Basically for this to work, you would essentially need to be able to discriminate among terrorists and non-terrorists before you scanned them. Otherwise, you would have no way of determining if the scan you got is that of a terrorist or some poor sap, who "looks like one". Having had some experience with single-plane-structure light range devices, I have my doubts as to whether one could train such systems effectively based solely on scans captured surreptitiously or even in relatively controlled environments such as airports or doctor's offices, for a variety of fairly obvious reasons. Terrorists would probably blow themselves up before they willingly submitted being entered into a database and the number of false positives would probably render their use politically unpalatable, which is not to say that either our military should not look into the technology or that we will likely spend a huge amount of money proving that essentially the technology won't work. Most remember how star-wars laser beams were going to zap enemy ICBMs in the sky? They have proved not only incapable, except in the most manipulated of tests, but now theoretically probably impossible over any significant distance. Laser scanners are likely to fall into the "great hype" but impractical category, but of course that won't stop folks from trying to make some money on the taxpayer's dime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFH9ogq2SVo from minute 2:06
Come to think of it, in any small town in the world, privacy basically doesn`t exist, everyone knows who everyone is by sight, and it's not the end of the world.
You obviously don't live in a small town. I do (actually, just outside one), and there certainly is privacy, even though everyone does pretty much know everybody. (The proof of this is how most affairs only get revealed in divorce court, not in town gossip.) There is also respect, which is even harder to obtain in the modern world.
Ignoring all the other problems, like radiation doses or ability to circumvent...
How the hell do they expect to get an X-Ray scan of every major terrorist? By the time you can get one of those, you should already be able to arrest the bastard. So, are you proposing to get a regular scan of everybody, file it somewhere, and then flag it as "terrorist" when you receive information?
Facial recognition is only feasible because getting a picture of someone is easy. Hell, just find their Facebook account, you'll be good. It has a lot of problems, but it's usable because it can identify people that haven't been sent through the system before. This won't stop any terrorists. None. Putting that word in the article is pure buzzword-based marketing.
Gray, black, official secret and multiple legal data markets are inevitably growing. Like drugs, the law can't eliminate the demand for these things. The biggest problem is privacy rights also getting abused as secrecy. We can download mp3's in privacy/secrecy and private entities can track us in privacy/secrecy. Additionally, there are many positive uses for data sharing which are not possible because of privacy questions. Government and corporate transparency. Universal medical records. Locating lost or kidnapped children. As usual, the problem is ill-intentioned minds, and their uses of the laws and technology meant for other purposes. But with all these possibilities to gather data, drug smuggling may soon take a back seat to data smuggling, as it becomes easier and easier, more demanded, and remains completely illegal. We need to start thinking of the equivalent of legalizing drugs, something like data-transparency laws, not only the data-privacy laws.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
That isn't a problem because the real purpose of this isn't to catch terrorists. It will have "STOPS TERRORISTS AND PEDOPHILES" stamped in glowing letters across the front to obtain funding. Then it will be sold to every idiot with a budget and too much power. Police departments, airports, hell as the article says:
"It could go anywhere," he said. "It could be in every airport. You could put it in a hotel if it gets down to the right scale and cost."
It will be used to "catch" people who owe library books and participated in an anti-war demonstration. Poor schmucks who had the misfortune of being caught pissing in an alley behind a bar and labeled sex-offenders will be tackled by mall security guards.
Also does anyone think there is a problem between this statement:
"a skeletal scan would only expose a person to radiation that is the approximate equivalent of taking one cross-country airline flight."
and this one:
"It could be in every airport. You could put it in a hotel if it gets down to the right scale and cost."
If this guy gets his wish we'll be scanned each time we enter and leave a store, a mall, a library, a park.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Eliminating privacy may not be the end of the world, Eliminating privacy for everyone but the elite and riches is akin going back to slavery and that is the real problem. If you can start eliminating privacy from the top of the society I may have no problem with it, otherwise, I want my privacy.
Let's not be naive, dirty business is mainstream, even if not widely practiced. There are already mass-tracking systems. Of various levels of legality and accessibility, depending on how much law, power, money, access, or friends you have. License plate tracking, credit cards, bank records, cookies, building passes, cameras, on and on. Extra easy to tell where everyone is going or not going combining a few of these. Governments and corporations don`t break the law, they outsource. Somebody gathers lots of stuff and sells it, there is demand and profit, and it just takes place, like it not, legal or not. Just open the phone book and start shopping for detectives or security, say what you want, full confidentiality, pay up, and you're done. It's up to us, the public, to realize and deal with the society we are building. Perhaps another look is needed at why crime dropped so much in the early 90's, to see how much of it was due to the wide availabilty of data on everyone.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Not to mention the rate of,
- false negative.
They specifically mention that broken bone and screws are things that make bone shape individual.
As soon as one ot those "godless pedo-terrorist pirate" breaks a bone, he is a completely different person for this system. Unless you make it mandatory to periodically update the database to know each latest modification the bones have gone through.
- false positive.
There's some variability among population, but is it enough to distinguish reliabily all the population ? Sure that no two persons out of the couple of billion currently on earth won't share similar bones ?
Specially since the articles considers same skeleton / different face as someone who is trying to hide something using plastic surgery (and not as a defficiency in the system ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not to worry then. With the economy going the way it is, nobody is going to have a budget for anything more expensive than a couple of new signs.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Eliminating privacy for everyone but the elite and riches is akin going back to slavery
I believe that is exactly where we are heading. We are let to believe we have privacy and don't complain, but there is a ton of data on everyone for sale. Privacy is becoming more complex and needs hiring specialists, and breaking privacy just means hiring specialists. In practice, privacy for the rich and powerful.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Xrays and backscatters? Bruce Schneier needs none of these things to identify you by your skeleton. Bruce Schneier simply removes your skeleton from your body and gives it a once-over.
(apologies to schneierfacts.com)
Isn't cellphone tracking already capable of doing much of this?
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
hilarious, thanks for that, never saw that before ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
....er /sorry someone had to go there.....
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
OK, one scan may be of no or little risk, but it's only a question of time, or the wrong job, and it cumulates to problematic doses within weeks or even a day. Here a small scan and there, oh, I forgot something, I'll be right back. On the other hand, that might be a great way for terrorists to put a whole population to risk without doing harm themselves. Great, really great. Why don't we just throw the bomb and there would be no terrorist left? Guaranteed.
cb
So.. lets see. to get the identification they must have been scanned before. But if they are a known terrorist, and you have scanned them, shouldn't they already be in jail? Of course you know this will be expanded to anyone who is ever arrested (regardless of eventual guilt) because..well all terrorists must have broken a law. This is such a freaking fail.
> The answer came quickly enough—skeletons. Virtually every person has a unique skeletal structure nearly impossible to alter.
I managed to alter it, pretty easily, fail in the stairs like a dumbass.