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Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Jan 01, 2009 01:27 PM
from the goes-the-theory dept.
from the goes-the-theory dept.
An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."
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Submission: Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do by Anonymous Coward
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And with a 100% conviction rate (Score:5, Insightful)
Trials will be deemed unnecessary in 2025.
Re:And with a 100% conviction rate (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the last group in the White House, trials became unnecessary on Sept 11, 2001.
Parent
Re:And with a 100% conviction rate (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes you think they even care about catching terrorists? The police state *is* the goal.
Parent
finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, we'll only know what they think they want.
Yes. Like why do women fake orgasms? Because they like to think men care.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Diamonds and shoes.
The rest is of lesser importance.
Disclaimer: This post has an error margin of 22%
Re:finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
> No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints -- the new checkpoint can detect if you
> have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building.
In other words, anyone who looks Islamic will be stopped and searched as will a few others chosen at random.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously - what goals do airport security checkpoins have?
It gets even worse. The TSA is actively working to ensure pilots are now screened before they can enter the tarmac/airplane or leave the tarmac/airplane to enter the a terminal area. It seems the TSA has decided the pilots who fly the planes are a higher threat on the ground where they can do less damage than a pilot in the air flying a jet full of fuel and passengers. Remember, in smaller airports, people (including pilots) still walk on the tarmac
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the shortsightedness of youth. Sit down at grandpa's knee and let me tell you of my youth, when airplanes were hijacked to Cuba by almost everybody, and Japanese people shot up airports, and German and Italian terrorists were almost as feared as the Irish, never mind crew-cut Americans driving rented trucks.
Sure, you can grab all the Muslims, and that might bag you two-thirds of the world's fanatics, but that last third will still kill you dead.
Parent
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
99 percent of any and all past and present attacks against airline travel perpetrated - through passengers or baggage! - were committed by people who a) claimed they were doing it for Islam and b) who have declared as being of Muslim faith.
All "airline terrorists" - against which airport security can provide any protection - are a proper subset of "People is Muslim faith".
Therefore, it is not only logical to exclude non-Muslims from security checks but beneficial, as it wastes less resources and security staff to search improbable suspects.
Yeah, it's not like there were ever any non-Muslim hijacker [wikipedia.org]s that endangered countless lives for non-religious reasons, like, say, money or anything. That wouldn't make any sense. (I know you know are aware of some, but it is hardly 1%)
Even if this were the case, the lack of any non-Muslim terrorists does not mean that there never will be any. Your logic is intensely flawed. "It's [almost] never happened before so let's just assume it never will."
As a third objection, I don't believe in justified racism (or religious discrimination, I don't see any moral difference). You're saying "a few Muslims hijacked planes before, and I don't remember anyone else doing it, so let's just check any and all Muslims and nobody else." People shouldn't be persecuted and harassed (and that's exactly what it would be) because of what they believe, or because of how they were born (Arab, for example). Even if it did make sense (it doesn't) to let everyone else through, the thing is, it's just not fair. Maybe my ideals of equality, be it racial, religious, or whatever, are a little old fashioned for you, but I stand by them.
Parent
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
99 percent of any and all past and present attacks against airline travel perpetrated - through passengers or baggage! - were committed by people who a) claimed they were doing it for Islam and b) who have declared as being of Muslim faith.
All "airline terrorists" - against which airport security can provide any protection - are a proper subset of "People is Muslim faith".
Take this thread to Cuba!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> For those who slept through Modern History class, I'll tell: religion. Specifically Muslims.
> They are the most likely group to set off a bomb on an airplane or hijack it. We can pretend that's not the case (and continue with the current "security theatre" at airports) in order to protect the delicate sensibilities of the PC crowd, but that doesn't change facts.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are more than correct and ONLY muslims will ever hijack or blow up an airplane. How do you pr
Re:Stopping muslims is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like we need to update Pastor Niemoeller's famous poem. First they came from the Muslims...
Here are a few other conclusions from a non-PC but apparently somewhat more objective observer.
Probably the most violent recent religion looking over its history is Christianity. Should we detain all Christians? I bet that'll go down well in the US.
Actually, speaking of the US, they are the only nation ever to have actually used a weapon of mass destruction at a cost of numerous civilian lives, and they have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to go to war other than to protect themselves from an immediate physical threat. Maybe the rest of the world should just nuke the whole US and be done with them?
Then again, the administration of any country that had WMDs could lose the plot and use them based on such dubious arguments, and any administration that has been in power for more than a short time and retains the option apparently has a willingness to consider using WMDs. Maybe it would be better for all of us if they just turned on each other to remove the threat against everyone else?
I'll stop there, because I've pretty much killed the entire world in only three steps by applying the kind of tragic, fear-driven thinking exhibited by the parent post. But I truly hope that 2009 offers us more than a binary choice between PC security theatre and the kind of indiscriminate fear-mongering we see here.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, that -is- racial profiling, but that doesn't mean it's ineffective or wrong.
Retarded (Score:5, Interesting)
This is retarded. Suppose I have to go to the bathroom and look nervous like I won't make it time? I'll probably set off the scanner as a suspected terrorist.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Since I have to be at the airport 2 hours before take off, at least I'll now something to do.
Re:Retarded (Score:5, Funny)
When I was flying back home after visiting a client, I ran towards the men's room at the Cleveland airport and set off an explosion.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
wouldn't that be you dropped a bomb in the men's room at the cleveland airport?
False-Positive Rate? (Score:4, Interesting)
FTA: "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection..."
And that's supposed to be good? What fraction of the remaining 22% can we expect to be false positives?
[begin sarcasm]
I look forward to a future in which the police stop me more than they already do.
[end sarcasm]
Re:False-Positive Rate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What fraction of the remaining 22% can we expect to be false positives?
Those can be justified away. It's the false negatives that folks will (ahem) have a hard time living with.
Seriously now, isn't todays smart terrorist working on "projects" that don't involve airports, airlines, airplanes, and going through an airport security checkpoint?
Love the accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll leave it to other people to point out everything else wrong with this kind of system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
False positives aren't too bad. You just fall back on the old method.
False negatives would be a bigger problem.
Re:Love the accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all, depending on your false positive rate and the predictability of the false negatives. If false negatives are random and you don't let people who are marked as "dangerous" leave and try again, you don't need your false negative rate to be that low -- it still presents a very significant problem to a potential attacker.
False positives, on the other hand, are a big problem. The enormous majority of people are negatives, so with any appreciably large false positive rate, nearly all positives will be
Re:Love the accuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
False positives also affect secondary screening - if you have too many of them, it's hard to get people to take them seriously, and they are likely to miss true positives.
Parent
Re:Love the accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say you have a system that has a 99.9% accuracy rate. What that means is, 99.9% of the time, it catches the terrorist if s/he goes across your magic line. And let's say you have 1 terrorist per million. What this means is that for every million people that cross the line, 1,000 people will be pulled aside for interrogation. Your 99.9% accurate profiling system is 99.9% inaccurate when it comes to discriminating the terrorist from the 9,999 look-alikes.
Oops.
Parent
Re:Love the accuracy (Score:4, Informative)
Even 99% accuracy is useless when the thing you are attempting to detect occurs only 0.000...001% of the time. See False Positive Paradox [wikipedia.org] and Procutor's Fallacy [wikipedia.org].
Parent
Re:Love the accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of system exacerbates the problems that currently exist. Currently 100% of all searches are performed on non-terrorists and almost 100% are performed on innocent people. Wrap your head around that for a bit. The quality of the searching is based on facts from incidents where terrorists were not caught, not based on terrorists who were. That is to say, oh, if people *can* put explosives in their shoes, we'll search all peoples shoes. All a terrorist has to do is try something that has not been tried before and they will be successful - more or less. I can't wait till someone sneaks a liquid explosive on board a plane inside a bladder that encases their crotch. Yes, the TSA's reaction to that will be awesome!
This machine will search 100% of all travellers (for a given set of travellers) and any who are pulled aside for further searching is supposedly equal to a smaller number than are searched now. They will still be innocent, but this justifies the inconvenience to them because a machine detected something. What is the accuracy of lie detectors [usatoday.com] BTW?
Since there appear to be no stories of Gitmo prisoners being loaned out to security equipment manufacturers the probability that any 'real terrorists' were used to test the machine is zero. Does anyone have the statistics handy? How many terrorists that have been caught since 9/11 have been caught anywhere near an airport, never mind trying to board the plane?
This seems to amount to a lie detector test that you are forced to take because you choose the criminal activity of traveling from one place to another by air. Apparently, if you wanted to bomb a bus there is no one to stop you. If you want to poison a water supply there is no one to stop you. If you wanted to sabotage an underwater cable there is no one to stop you. If you wanted to car bomb a public building there is no one to stop you. Think about that for a second or two. Airport security as it is currently implemented is 99% waste of time and resources. It inconveniences all, catches no guilty persons, and robs resources away from efforts to protect other infrastructure etcetera.
What would I suggest we do for security? The same thing we do for security for any other public transportation. The goal of terrorism is to make you waste resources, to make a violent statement that circumvents any implemented security. It's a whack-a-mole game. Catching terrorists should be done long before they strap on the explosives. That's the only effective way to catch them. I don't have links, but I can't remember any story about a terrorist being caught by airport security measures. The only ones that were caught were caught with normal pre-9/11 police measures. Right now, the terrorists are winning.
Parent
As if I weren't different enough (Score:5, Insightful)
So, when I walk into the airport, in December, at minus twenty, in shorts, nad my skin temperature is about ten degrees colder than the average, and my heart rate is about 20 points higher than the average, and I'm not sweating, and there's snow in my boot, I'm going to be intercepted every time -- for being different. Great.
But really, this time I read the article, and welcome to the same stupid problems for the same stupid solutions. The system is basically a remote polygraph. So you can walk at full speed while it assesses you. So we'll have longer corridors, but the exercise will be nice.
Of course the tests get to measure people's personal intents. Great. So anwser two questions. . .
- do you think trained criminals can learn to pass polygraphs? C.E.O.'s don't seem to have much trouble. Frame of mind and all that.
- so crime will once again shift back to the days of slipping something into someone else's bags. that someone else has no idea that they're carrying a bomb. The criminal may set off the system, but he's got no evidence on him anymore. So what exactly are you going to find? And which plane are you going to check? Even the criminal may not know which random passenger was marked.
This is why security never learns. Criminals have an arsenal of techniques from thousands of years of history. And those criminals get to pick what they want to use today. And those criminals have a darn good reward for picking the correct one. On the other hand, security personnel, and I include this system's designers, try to solve the current problem, and ofter forget the old problems. The criminals know exactly which systems are presently in place, as well as any routines being used by personnel.
So once again, we've managed to stop the dumb criminal with nothing to gain, and amused, or worse challenged, the intelligent criminal with lots to gain.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
(a) You can't put a bomb into anyones bag that can drive a plane into a building.
(b) I dare you to even try approaching another persons bag in an airport. People are paranoid about their luggage, and if anything it would be far harder to do this than to get something through security today!
Who says a terrorist has to want to fly a plane into a building? I imagine you could spread terror pretty effectively if you started salting baggages with bombs...
Re:As if I weren't different enough (Score:5, Interesting)
REALLY? I'm not alone?!
I just don't understand. I live here. This is my native habitat. Why should I be any more uncomfortable during in expected weather conditions than any other animal?
So, let me ask you -- because I've never been able to ask anyone before: what's on your list of reasons? I routinely stop traffic within two minutes of shovelling the driveway. I've had couriers pull over and get out just to tell me that I'm crazy. And I've had A&W staff refuse to sell a burger to me because I must be clinically insane.
My more recent responses to "why are you wearing shorts" include:
- I find it more convenient to raise my heart-rate than to carry extraneous clothing.
- I prefer natural methods over artificial ones
- I can't afford pants (while wearing $125 shorts)
- "government project"
- I'm originally from the arctic circle/yukon/canada (this one seems to satisfy just about everybody)
- why is your wife so ugly? just a genetic trait I guess.
- millions of years of evolution
- I have a genetic mutation, my core is thermally regulated (I'm warm-blooded you lizard.)
- I wouldn't stand so close when calling me crazy for fear that I actually am.
- I'm better than you. It's not like I could be worse.
- You can show off your legs, I can show off my legs. My calves are gorgeous. (works for women. substitute legs with clevage as appropriate)
- The same way you enjoy being hot on a summer beach, I enjoy being cold in the winter snow -- with more oxygen, less polution, and no radiation.
Have any of your own that I might borrow?
Parent
stupid idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds pretty hokey to me... As a frequent air traveler, give me the old fashioned pat down search with full baggage inspection - in fact I felt safest after 9/11 when they did random searches at the gate too - I have seen more than one person lead away from a gate in handcuffs after a random gate search turned up illegal drugs or other such nonsense. So the fact that they made it through the gate in the first place points out the fallibility of the current process. IMHO we need MORE hands on security not less, more sniffers and x-ray machines - I can easily factor in a longer wait at the airport, the peace of mind is worth it to me...
Re:stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
As we saw in India terrorists can just as easily walk into a train station or a hotel and open fire on everyone in sight, so would you like every public place to install metal detectors and strip searches for even more peace of mind? Whatever you do there is some risk involved. I suggest you learn to live with it instead of supporting making everybody life gradually more and more miserable until perfect safety is achieved, which of course will never happen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest you learn to live with it instead of supporting making everybody life gradually more and more miserable until perfect safety is achieved, which of course will never happen.
Indeed. The local municipality recently replaced a really nice and wide slide in our local park. (I'm lucky enough to live in a place where taxes are devoted to working and maintained public playgrounds.) The reason: It was too wide. So now instead of a cool slide I can slide down together with the kids there's a boring standard slide which is one person at a time only. Cause somehow two persons on a 1,5 meter wide slide at the same time is dangerous? WTF...
Unfortunately the safety argument seems to work ev
Re:stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
in fact I felt safest[...]after a random gate search turned up illegal drugs
What does that have to do with your safety?
Parent
Re:stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen more than one person lead away from a gate in handcuffs after a random gate search turned up illegal drugs or other such nonsense.
So, what, illegal search and seizure makes you feel safer ?
Parent
Horse Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
The FAST system detects physiological signs of stress. In testing it detected "hostile intent" in volunteers. The obvious question is how can volunteers have valid hostile intent? You can't test deception with fake deception. The generalizability of physiological response to stressors is a basic tenet of physiological psychology (the folks who brought you FAST's grand dad, the polygraph).
The volunteers knew they were volunteers in a study and in no danger. In practice, this device will trigger on every person who is nervous about flying, because the physiological markers for stress are the same regardless of the reason. There will be many, many more of those than with 'hostile intent'. The test study was unable to have adequate control (real, naive persons) to prove its claim.
Most people can learn simple biofeedback techniques to control physiological reactions to some degree. Those with hostile intent don't need to get very good at it, they just need to be able to control it better than an untrained person with a fear of flying.
FAST isn't supposed to work. Its owners know it can't. It's just supposed to be believable enough to convince the public that it could catch bad guys to increase public confidence, and to convince the government that further funding is warranted.
Stick the designers in it and ask them if it can tell hostile intent from fear of flying (and base GAO investigation of the program upon the result, to make it more salient). They'll say yes. Either it'll trigger and show them to be lying, or it won't and so it doesn't work.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Stick the designers in it and ask them if it can tell hostile intent from fear of flying (and base GAO investigation of the program upon the result, to make it more salient). They'll say yes. Either it'll trigger and show them to be lying, or it won't and so it doesn't work.
That might end up being the most valid and useful test of all. I like it.
it does not detect intent (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly It only does detect external signs of nervousness at best and nothing else. Such sign of nervousness MIGHT be displayed by people with malevolent intent, but certainly not only by them. Consider where such detector might be implanted : courtroom, IRS, FBI buildings, airports before boarding. A lot of place where people WILL be more often than not nervous. And what will happens ? Terrorist or any other mal intended smart persons will get an additional training : 1) meditate to lower all sign of nervousness 2) take a nyquil or whatever calm you down.
Thirdly, as the various western governments seem to go toward more and more security of that type, TV camera, drone and whatnot, I have long stopped fearing terrorist (and I barely missed getting in a bomb blast in Paris metro by a few dozen minutes...). Nowadays I fear the police and the governement and their big-brotherisation more than not. I fear that the time for the third box (the munition one) will come way sooner than I ever expected in my dystopian nightmare.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No gait analysis? (Score:3, Funny)
right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And anyone who objects will be called unpatriotic.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I have a better idea. Let's give up our "empire", withdraw from the World and adopt the Swiss stance of armed neutrality. Back it up with our nuclear deterrent.
Right after we figure out how not to depend on any imports, sure.
I was thinking the same thing for the longest time. But I visited Switzerland recently, and I was surprised to find that despite their neutrality and non-belligerent foreign policy, they were still able buy and sell goods and services from and to other nations. So despite conventional wisdom, it may be possible for the US, too.
The Big Picture Problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
We all seem to have figured out that this system is a joke, so I won't address that.
The bigger problem is that the DHS really thinks something like this kind of system will work. We've seen several different screening systems, fingerprinting systems, etc, and they all share the same "whiz-bang technology" attribute. That is that somewhere, there's some great piece of hardware, software, or black box that's going to save us from "the terrorists" Real Soon Now. I guess I'm more than a little skeptical of this approach to the problem.
I don't know enough about the problem to know what the solution is (maybe just human operatives). But I do know enough about "whiz-bang" technology to know that it's snake oil.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
2020 will also be the year of linux on the desktop.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2020 will also be the year of linux on the desktop.
But still no "Duke Nukem Forever"