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Replacing Metal Detectors With Brain Scans
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Dec 02, 2008 02:51 PM
from the what-is-it-you-intend dept.
from the what-is-it-you-intend dept.
Zordak writes "CNN has up a story about several Israeli firms that want to replace metal detectors at airports with biometric readings. For example, with funding from TSA and DHS, 'WeCU ([creepily] pronounced "We See You") Technologies, employs a combination of infra-red technology, remote sensors and imagers, and flashing of subliminal images, such as a photo of Osama bin Laden. Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration — signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack.' Sensors may be embedded in the carpet, seats, and check-in screens. The stated goal is to read a passenger's 'intention' in a manner that is 'more fair, more effective and less expensive' than traditional profiling. But not to worry! WeCU's CEO says, 'We don't want you to feel that you are being interrogated.' And you may get through security in 20 to 30 seconds."
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cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Insightful)
wonderful piece of technology known as the polygraph before..... don't polygraphs also rely (in part) on body temperature, heart rate and respiration?
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Also, depth of respiration, skin resistance, and blood pressure.
A good operator can usually tell if someone is deliberately trying to prevent them from establishing a baseline, but people with something to hide used to carry a thumbtack to poke their fingers with during questioning. It was supposed to allow them to concentrate on the pain instead of the questions, and prevent, or mask, the emotional/physical response that the machine could pick up. Then someone got caught and the operators would check for poke marks in the skin.
I guess one could concentrate on a mental image of Sarah Palin in a nipple bra to counter the Bin Laden image. Or, Dick Cheney as a Chippendale dancer.
Must...poke...out...mind's...eye....
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, yeah, a "good" psychic can also usua
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Or, there could be subliminal/sub-aural phrases such as "The Bush", instead of "Bush"...
It would be funny if someone could hack the systems and generate lots of erections and pre-coital drainage in the waiting area... It would be... bemoaned, as it ... could.. become...the wading area...
The men's area could be called... "Area 5.1" (shorter for Area 51, for the obvious dimension."
The VIP lounge could be called "The SHAPE of Things to COME"....
Could give a whole new meaning to "The Day they Earth Stood... STE
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the person being tested doesn't know if he is lying then what is the point of taking the polygraph!
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Insightful)
don't polygraphs also rely (in part) on body temperature, heart rate and respiration?
Polygraphs measure those things, but don't do much with the data. The main purpose of a polygraph is not to detect lies, but to intimidate the person being questioned. The idea is to trick the person into thinking that the polygraph is infallible and can determine when they are lying. This gives the interrogator another way to pressure the person into talking. (The person may incorrectly believe that the interrogator "already knows" or may reveal secrets because they feel that they no longer have any control--they don't feel culpable since they can't hide secrets from the machine.) Of course admitting that this is the purpose of a polygraph would undermine the tactic.
I'm guessing this new technology will be much the same: it won't actually work by measuring anything useful; but it may have a psychological effect that makes people easier to interrogate. This might be (marginally) useful for uncovering the occasional teenager smuggling pot, but I doubt it will do anything useful when it comes to terrorism. This quote is hilarious:
Developers say the combination of these technologies can detect a person's reaction to certain stimuli by reading body temperature, heart rate and respiration -- signals a terrorist unwittingly emits before he plans to commit an attack
For this to be true--for them to actually have calibrated their machine in a rigorous way, so that it can detect "terrorist intentions" with any kind of certainty--they would need to have tested it with a statistically-significant number of terrorists. Somehow I doubt their R&D facility has a few hundred terrorists in lockup (willing to lie and not lie on demand). I'm guessing their actual sample size was closer to zero. In other words they are just guessing that someone with "terrorist intentions" will exhibit similar physiological responses to someone who is nervous for other reasons.
Yet another worthless security measure being sold to worthless security organizations.
Parent
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Funny)
It's an israeli company. They'll probably just calibrate it with everyone who passes through their borders. Everyone would get grouped in to two categories. Israeli or Terrorist.
Parent
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone would get grouped in to two categories. Israeli or Terrorist.
Right. Like when you go through Israeli passport control, and they ask
"Why are you here, business or pleasure?"
"Business"
"Occupation?"
"No, just a two day meeting."
Parent
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another worthless security measure being sold to worthless security organizations.
Let's capitalize on that. We could go into the buisness of selling "anti-terrorism rocks" to the government and airports. I'll get the rocks, you sell it to the security orgs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that wonderful piece of technology known as the polygraph before.....
Nobody said it had to be perfect. It just has to be more useful than the methods they currently employ. This only has to be more accurate then the current practice. The current security is slow, stupid and irrational. Honestly, this doesn't sound that much better. But, unless we totally scrap the system and go back to the 1960's security measures (not freaking likely given the level of politician and media inspired fear), I'll settle for a system that results in less hassle when I fly.
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:cuz nobody has EVER been able to fool that (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a much bigger problem with bombs: They don't require informed consent.
See the case of Nizar Hindawi [wikipedia.org], who attempted to sneak a bomb on an El Al flight by tricking his pregnant girlfriend into taking it with her -- having her go through any intention scanner would show her to be completely trustworthy and innocent -- because she was. That's a problem that is exists for bombs, but not (easily) for guns. After all, it's not like you'd look in your carryon half-way through the flight, find a gun you didn't expect there, and go "OMG! Got to hijack the plane!"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
After all, it's not like you'd look in your carryon half-way through the flight, find a gun you didn't expect there, and go "OMG! Got to hijack the plane!" ...unless someone asked you to, starting the sentence with "Would you kindly..."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why stop at beating them into submission?
Because some people are a bit more civilized than the those who would attempt kill random strangers?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
AC or not, the parent poster hits on a key issue. Flying nowadays has become a stressful enough situation. Trying to make a flight on time, trying to get through a security checkpoint that may have no one waiting, or a line out the wazoo (meaning a possible missed flight), hoping you remembered to take all the metal our of your pockets (change, keys, etc), wondering whether you will get that one airport security guy who insists that you cannot take your lighter with you (for your cigarettes) even though the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The specific problems I thought of immediately were:
1) people who are afraid of flying/crowds/etc or just prone to panic attacks would most likely set this off far more often than terrorists. Not to mention the fear of setting this off causing people to be more nervous.
2) Actual terrorists would probably be organized enough to take this into account and pop a valium or two before going through the security checkpoints. I mean, c'mon. The circumstances are a lot less controlled than a polygraph, and are ther
What if your pissed because of a family call... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the airport can generate anger,fear, and frustration in most people.
How good can this really be?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Somethings wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about someone who is carrying a weapon without their knowledge? That won't show up on the scans. I could see the supplement current screening technologies if it ever is deployed, but not replace them.
Let's not even start about false positives....
Re:Somethings wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Step A. Someone purposely handles explosives or better saturates their shins/shoes with a chemical that would set off the bomb detector.
Step B. Go to an airport and purposely brush by/touch people luggage.
Step C. Watch as airport grinds to a halt with massive numbers of false positives.
Even better spill some of this chemical in a doorway carpet so that lots of people would walk in every direction with it on their shoes.
How would an airport rationally handle something like this?
1. They could simply close the airport and wash every surface (I guess this would considered an physical DDOS)
2. Turn off the devices and go back to manually searching every article. (Slow but people would still get through)
3. Leave the devices on and just process all the people who come up positive. (Slow but people would still get through)
I'm not sure that an airport would have a really good way to combat this. I guess one way would be to put sniffer type devices discretely through the airport that you could use to map out the location of certain chemicals. Then set up the airport with doors that could be closed remotely so that when something like C4 is detected in some area you could seal the area, etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What about someone who is carrying a weapon without their knowledge? That won't show up on the scans.
No problem. All they have to do is ask each passenger if they packed their own bags and if they have been out of their possession at any time. If they lie, WeCU will detect it!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Let's not even start about false positives....
TSA Agent: Sir, please step aside for more screening.
Nervous Traveler: What seems to be the problem?
TSA Agent: You set off our Spazz Detect 1000 by your nervous behavior.
Nervous Traveler: Oh, that. Well, uh this is a bit embarrassing to admit, but you see I'm flying home to my wife and it seems I misplaced my wedding ring. Really.
TSA Agent: Uh-huh. Well, sir, we'd be more than glad to help you look for it. *snaps on rubber glove*
Somebody introduce these guys to Bayes Theorem (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, let's do...
What many people don't realize is that detection procedures with very impressive-sounding statistical properties [wikipedia.org] generally do horribly at catching rare events.
Imagine some very impressive numbers. Suppose that this procedure has 99.999% sensitivity -- it catches nearly every wannabe terrorist who tries to board a plane intending to do harm. And suppose it also has 99.999% specificity -- out of 100,000 innocent passengers, 99,999 will be correctly identified as innocent, and only 1 will be a false alarm. Sounds good, right?
Not really. In a given year, only a very small number of passengers are wannabe terrorists -- say, 10 per year. (That's probably high.) On the other hand, there are 1.6 billion air passengers [worldmapper.org] per year (that may be a low estimate, since it's a 2000 number). So if this were implemented worldwide, then in a given year, we can assume that this profiling procedure will flag 160,010 people as terrorists. Only 6 x 10^-5 of those will be actual terrorists.
Of course, those hypothetical sensitivity and specificity numbers are unrealistically, ridiculously good. With more realistic numbers, the problem gets much worse. Even if the detection procedure is very sensitive and very specific -- and I doubt that it is -- the low base-rate of terrorism means that an enormous number of people will be falsely accused of being terrorists.
Parent
You're in a desert walking along in the sand... (Score:4, Funny)
Can it also detect replicants?
Thoughtcrimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Better not thing any doubleplus ungood thoughts, or have a friend that's Muslim.
Brain scans? (Score:5, Informative)
TFA doesn't say anything about brain scans What's up with that headline?
-jcr
Re:Brain scans? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
I'm sure you don't.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Heh (Score:4, Funny)
I can see it now...someone hacks the system and substitutes subliminal porn images for the bin Laden pictures. Talk about provoking a physiological reaction...
Sir, is that an AK-47 in your pocket?
Parent
Wow, that's creepy (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now it is used to find terrorists, but this technology can be used in reverse. Flashing images of the president and the national flag, anyone don't respond positively get singled out... Such uses are very disturbing.
The article states: (Score:5, Funny)
Well, no. Not unless you start putting Ninjas on every plane. Everyone knows that Ninjas > Kung Fu fighting.
Apparently, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting...
tl;dr WTF?
Recruiting Ninjas is starting a never ending cycle (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Recruiting Ninjas is starting a never ending cy (Score:5, Funny)
Snakes?
Parent
Control (Score:5, Insightful)
And how did they devise a control for this?
AFAIK, there's no biometric scans of the 9/11 terrorists, so it's just like the company is guessing anyway. For all we know, terrorists could be the only completely calm people going through security, as they're the only ones not worried about arriving at their destination late.
Re:Control (Score:5, Funny)
as they're the only ones not worried about arriving at their destination late
But what if they are late arriving in paradise and someone else gets the virgins?
Parent
Re:Control (Score:5, Funny)
But what if they are late arriving in paradise and someone else gets the virgins?
I'm sure they've got that covered as part of the normal course of things. After all, the afterlife is the one place where everyone arrives late.
*ba-dum pssssh*
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And they STAY virgins!
Wouldn't it be ironic if they actually were virgins? "Your going to put WHAT in WHERE?", "Ouch! Ow! Ouch! Stop it! That hurts!" Hardly my idea of a good time ;)
Everyone would fail. (Score:5, Funny)
At some point, people will get so pissed off at getting poked, prodded, searched, scanned, monitored and tracked to see if they are terrorists, that they will wind up deciding that it is actually easier to become terrorists themselves.
It's Worthless (Score:2)
What if random traveler A is thinking about terrorist activities in Mumbai and is afraid for their family right when they happen to walk through the little flashy thing (even if they don't know it)? The system would flag them as TERRORIST PROBABLY and they'll get arrested and cavity searched for no reason. Meanwhile the terrorist who focuses on bunnies and happy flowers and goes about his business wil
This might not actually be so bad if it worked. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no ill intentions, but I hate going anywhere unarmed. Maybe I could finally fly without having to give up my knife and sidearm.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny? Hell, I'm serious.
Mmm... Snake Oil... (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, about the only sinister thing about this is that there are people in officialdom who are so fundamentally brain-dead they actually believe the claims of whatever idiot is trying to sell this.
Even when interrogators have the time and money to hook people up to the most sensitive equipment available there is no technology that can determine to reasonable accuracy whether a person is lying in answer to a given question, nevermind their exact mindset or intentions in the next few hours.
Now we are supposed to believe that some gadget can automagically determine whether or not somebody wants to blow up a plane when they walk past it and are flashed a "subliminal image" of osama bin-laden?
I could go on about the sheer idiocy of assuming that somebody's reaction to a popular hate figure defines their politics or intentions. I could start about how peoples wildly varying mental states and physiologies make such simplistic measurements useless. But frankly it's not even worth deconstructing an idea this stupid in detail. Anybody dumb enough to believe in this fairy story clearly either suffers from paranoid psychosis or is so mentally deficient as to be beyond any form of rational argument.
missing tag: securitytheatre (Score:4, Insightful)
EVERYBODY KNOWS that if some asshole tries ANYTHING on a plane, the only thing to do is for the passengers to immediately stomp the life out of the motherfucker, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Just take him apart.
EVERYBODY KNOWS that, including the terrorists. As a consequence, there is really no point to screening people at airports.
If people want to blow up a plane, it's a lot easier to book a flight, check your bags full of bombs that are hooked up to timers, and then let it rip. The security at the checkpoint is ludicrous, and the security for checked baggage is even worse. So, if you want to blow up a plane, it's not hard.
If you want to commadeer the plane a la 9/11, the passengers will take you out before you even get to the cabin. They know they have nothing to lose.
So, as a consequence, there is NO point in this idiotic security theatre. None whatsoever. And the smiling jackasses who come up with this Orwellian technology are vampiric leeches with their fingers up the butt of the reactionary militarists and an invertebrate Congress.
And all it means is that flying on an airplane is just that much more insulting and that much more irritating, and that much less worth the trouble.
RS
Perfectly Safe World (Score:4, Insightful)
Are there really people out there who think we can achieve a perfectly safe world? Spending more and more money for ever smaller incremental gains in safety? Is the cost really worth it? Is giving up your rights really worth it?
At some point you have to stop and say look, there's an inherent danger in life. Your own body can turn against you. Are you willing to give up all your money and all your rights to feel safe? But what's left to be worth living if you've given everything up?
I cringe every time I hear about somebody dying in some unique way, because I know there are going to be laws that follow to ensure that never happens again. Unfortunately, those laws tend to be far more overreaching and subject to abuse in ways that are far beyond what incident initiated them.
People die. Dying is a part of life.
20-30 seconds...Until you get a False Positive (Score:3, Interesting)
OMFG (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it... if there was any question about where that "too far" mark may be, we can be sure they have gone well beyond that point.
Now they can screen for all sorts of things... "gay"? "pedophile"? Who else can we decide to hate and persecute?
If all this stuff could potentially save my son's life, I still say NO!!
Pause for a moment to let the gravity of that sink in. Now go back and realize that there is more chance of a drunk driver killing him than a "terrorist." Regardless of which may happen, it will always feel tragic and there is no way to effectively protect ourselves from everything. This crap has got to stop.
and any one how shows any smarts does not get the (Score:3, Funny)
and any one how shows any smarts does not get the job.
Re:Testing (Score:4, Funny)
Where do I sign up?
Follow the guys in fancy black suits and shades to the white unmarked van? Sure!
Parent
Re:Testing (Score:5, Funny)
Well thats one virgin, 79 to go.
Any more volunteers?
Parent