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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.
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.
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.
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