Abu Dhabi Starts Using Facial Covid Scanners at Malls and Airports (bloomberg.com) 51
Abu Dhabi will use facial scanners to detect coronavirus infections at malls and airports starting Monday, after a trial of 20,000 people showed "a high degree of effectiveness." From a report: The technology can detect infections by measuring electromagnetic waves, which change when the RNA particles of the virus are present in the body, state-run WAM reported. The results showed 93.5 per cent sensitivity, reflecting the accuracy of identifying those infected. The scanner was developed by EDE Research Institute Abu Dhabi, a unit of International Holding. The United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is part, has one of the world's highest vaccination rates, but daily new cases have continued to hover around 2,000 since March.
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like hogwash. Viral RNA does not have a unique electromagnetic signature that is detectable through layers of skin.
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Surveillance state (Score:4, Insightful)
Because COVID is clearly an excuse for rolling out ubiquitous face scanning tech and expanding mass surveillance. Viruses come and go, but the plan is for privacy to disappear permanently.
Re:Surveillance state - cover face (Score:2)
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" electromagnetic waves, which change when the RNA particles of the virus are present in the body, state-run WAM reported" The US already has Homeland Security, Space Force, and other fairly dystopian sounding titles. I guess onceCNN & FOXNews merge whatever that corp is, it will be "state-run reported news" too.
Almost certainly just an excuse to put in facial recognition. At this point we as members of society should really start thinking about the 'Black Mirror' effect of technology, because we ar
Re: Nonsense (Score:3)
Oh come on. We've had the Three Minutes Hate for decades, it's very popular with millions of viewers, citizen. Every two years we have Democracy Simulator(tm) so you can feel all the "responsibility" of running your government without all the hassle of knowing what's going on, how laws effect society as a whole, or realizing that corporations already run the country with our assistance. So calm down, here...here's another movie/TV Series/ video game to keep you distracted and docile. That's a good citizen..
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Nope. Just good ole graft. (Score:2)
With a dose of security theater.
It is literally a mobile app that takes a photo of someone's face (with the mask on) and declares them "Negative".
How does it know they're negative? Well it says so right there on the screen.
"NEGATIVE (-) The presence of COVID 19 viral infection was not detected." [youtube.com]
You know it's correct cause the textbox is green.
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This sounds like hogwash. Viral RNA does not have a unique electromagnetic signature that is detectable through layers of skin.
But... an implanted microchip tracker could. >;)
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They don't list false positives, and I'm wary of penetrating EM radiation, though it could be lower frequency and pretty much fine.
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The Abu Dhabi police would do well to go down to the address on the site and see what is going on for real.
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This sounds like hogwash. Viral RNA does not have a unique electromagnetic signature that is detectable through layers of skin.
TFA doesn't say viral RNA has s unique electromagnetic signature that is detectable through layers of skin, it says it detects electromagnetic waves that change when the RNA particles of the virus are present in the body. It is possible that the electromagnetic waves our bodies radiate can change in a particular fashion when viral RNA, or any foreign matter, are present. Everything produces electromagnetic radiation, and it's not a stretch of the imagination to assume that the EMR emitted by an object is
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If it's measuring skin temperature using thermal radiation - it's reading EM signature.
So it's a infrared camera detecting fever.
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As a microscopist who makes a living out of studying the "EM radiation" biological matter produces under various excitation, I still call hogwash. It might be that they are just detecting IR (heat), in other words detecting a fever more sensitively.
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I didn't say it wasn't hogwash, I simply pointed out your incorrect interpretation of the articles statement. I also, in a somewhat kinder fashion, agreed with you in my last two sentences. The science is sound, we're just not at a point technologically where we can detect the EMR on such a level.
I am a bit confused by your quotes around the "EM radiation" though. Are you inferring, as a scientist who claims to make a living out of studding EMR in biological matter, that EMR doesn't exist unless the obje
Color me sceptical (Score:4, Insightful)
My bet is thst this is simple IR thermography. If they actually can read genetic information remotely, this spells the end of privacy.
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But a boon to medicine.
BAH! We've already got one! (Score:3)
Re:Color me sceptical (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed -
"by measuring electromagnetic waves, which change when the RNA particles of the virus are present in the body" sounds like woo-woo fancy-talk for "infected people run hot, and we can see that with infrared"
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Came here to say this... wish I had mod points for you.
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they are iPhones running some kind of app
Perhaps this [flir.com]?
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It screams snake oil and fraud.
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Your bet that it's measuring IR doesn't seem like much of a stretch. Infrared is indeed electromagnetic radiation and please note that the article made no claim of reading genetic info remotely. It merely said that the EM emitted from a human changes when infected by COVID. We already know that's true in most COVID cases as well. A heightened temperature is one of the classic signs your body is under attack from.. well.. anything and that would change your EM reading. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki [wikipedia.org]
93.5% Not Good Enough (Score:3)
93.5% means that about every 12th person is wrongly identified. Yes, sometimes it's all in how you present the data.
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That would depend entirely on how it's wrong and what positive identifications are followed up with.
Maybe it's close to 100% right but with some false positives. If you follow up positives with a higher accuracy test, it's not a bad thing. We do this all the time in software.
I'm not saying it is, or isn't, but is can be desirable to trade accuracy for speed or cost in all kinds of engineering scenarios in systems that account for it.
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According to the fine article, the scanners have 93.5% sensitivity, which means 93.5 true positives for every 6.5 false negatives. But if only 1% of the population is actively infected at any time and the specificity is 100%, that would make it very close to 100% right overall.
Or, put another way, talking about the sensitivity is pure marketing (read: whatever expletive you prefer) unless you also give the specificity, and ideally you'd give the in
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Since the bullshit figures are entirely made up, they picked the "93.5% sensitivity" figure for no other reason than that it makes the scam sound good.
RNA is integral to protein synthesis; it's all through your body all the time, healthy or not. You cannot detect "RNA particles of the virus" (by "particles" they mean "molecules", of course) using EM radiation.
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I am also sceptical, and my first reaction on reading the summary was to laugh out loud. But there's more than one way to deceive, and the figure might not be made up: the talk of "EM radiation" might refer to IR or visible light, and the positive cohort might (consciously or not) be selected to have a range of symptoms including fever and coughing (which I expect a neural net could be trained to pick up in video footage - if it's not picking up on hospital gowns or different image backgrounds, or ...). If
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Would be damn good if it were true.
No test is ever 100% effective. Being able to get a result instantly with such an accuracy would be really helpful.
Somebody has been scammed (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of the time Iraq bought (and apparently may still use) a bunch of "bomb detectors" which were basically a dowsing rod in a tactical plastic grip that would swing out in the presence of a "bomb", or rather when the person holding it unconsciously made it swing out.
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Ever used a dowsing rod? Weirdest thing ever... I never believed in any of that crap until I saw my father in law do it, and even then I was skeptical... and then I picked them up myself, and could actually *feel* them pulling when I walked over known metal objects.
The effect is much stronger when walking over things like energized electrical lines, which scientifically makes sense... two ferrous rods held in parallel passing through a magnetic field generated by an underground energized electric line. No
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James Randi would offer a large cash prize to dowsers who could demonstrate their ability to detect water, wire, minerals etc. He'd dig a large square of land and bury a hose under it and invite dowsers to correctly plot the route the water took. They never did. He eventually upped his prize to a million dollars and still nobody took it.
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The USA is a country that collectively spends 70 years *per day* in kidney dialysis - mostly a result of being obese.
but muh covid
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for billionth time, determining cost and risk compromises is extremely different for conditions that are transmissible
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I wish my eyes could see electromagnetic waves. (Score:2)
-got fever?
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Have you tried LSD?
Scientology deja vu (Score:2)
Reminds me of that gizmo they used.
At least itâ(TM)s more pleasant than China (Score:1)
Looks like the dowsing devices ... (Score:2)
It seems that an fraudster managed to sell them a dowsing device that looks like a camera, much like those fake "molecular detector" devices used for bomb and drug detection, such as ADE 651 [wikipedia.org], GT200 [wikipedia.org], Alpha 6 [wikipedia.org], and many others like it.
They were sold to various countries, and is still in use there, despite being exposed as useless ...
COVID or surveillance? (Score:2)
... I would guess there is an IR scanner buried in the sensors that's looking for a heat signature if this is a scam.
Or the more paranoid would say it's just a clever-ish way of getting high quality surveillance images ...