Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
Tuesday , September 23, 2008
By Allison Barrie
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.
Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.
MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.
It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye — signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack.
But this is no polygraph test. Subjects do not get hooked up or strapped down for a careful reading; those sensors do all the work without any actual physical contact. It's like an X-ray for bad intentions.
Currently, all the sensors and equipment are packaged inside a mobile screening laboratory about the size of a trailer or large truck bed, and just last week, Homeland Security put it to a field test in Maryland, scanning 144 mostly unwitting human subjects.
While I'd love to give you the full scoop on the unusual experiment, testing is ongoing and full disclosure would compromise future tests.
• Click here for an exclusive look at MALINTENT in action.
But what I can tell you is that the test subjects were average Joes living in the D.C. area who thought they were attending something like a technology expo; in order for the experiment to work effectively and to get the testing subjects to buy in, the cover story had to be convincing.
While the 144 test subjects thought they were merely passing through an entrance way, they actually passed through a series of sensors that screened them for bad intentions.
Homeland Security also selected a group of 23 attendees to be civilian "accomplices" in their test. They were each given a "disruptive device" to carry through the portal — and, unlike the other attendees, were conscious that they were on a mission.
In order to conduct these tests on human subjects, DHS had to meet rigorous safety standards to ensure the screening would not cause any physical or emotional harm.
So here's how it works. When the sensors identify that something is off, they transmit warning data to analysts, who decide whether to flag passengers for further questioning. The next step involves micro-facial scanning, which involves measuring minute muscle movements in the face for clues to mood and intention.
Homeland Security has developed a system to recognize, define and measure seven primary emotions and emotional cues that are reflected in contractions of facial muscles. MALINTENT identifies these emotions and relays the information back to a security screener almost in real-time.
This whole security array — the scanners and screeners who make up the mobile lab — is called "Future Attribute Screening Technology" — or FAST — because it is designed to get passengers through security in two to four minutes, and often faster.
If you're rushed or stressed, you may send out signals of anxiety, but FAST isn't fooled. It's already good enough to tell the difference between a harried traveler and a terrorist. Even if you sweat heavily by nature, FAST won't mistake you for a baddie.
"If you focus on looking at the person, you don't have to worry about detecting the device itself," said Bob Burns, MALINTENT's project leader. And while there are devices out there that look at individual cues, a comprehensive screening device like this has never before been put together.
While FAST's batting average is classified, Undersecretary for Science and Technology Adm. Jay Cohen declared the experiment a "home run."
As cold and inhuman as the electric eye may be, DHS says scanners are unbiased and nonjudgmental. "It does not predict who you are and make a judgment, it only provides an assessment in situations," said Burns. "It analyzes you against baseline stats when you walk in the door, it measures reactions and variations when you approach and go through the portal."
But the testing — and the device itself — are not without their problems. This invasive scanner, which catalogues your vital signs for non-medical reasons, seems like an uninvited doctor's exam and raises many privacy issues.
But DHS says this is not Big Brother. Once you are through the FAST portal, your scrutiny is over and records aren't kept. "Your data is dumped," said Burns. "The information is not maintained — it doesn't track who you are."
DHS is now planning an even wider array of screening technology, including an eye scanner next year and pheromone-reading technology by 2010.
The team will also be adding equipment that reads body movements, called "illustrative and emblem cues." According to Burns, this is achievable because people "move in reaction to what they are thinking, more or less based on the context of the situation."
FAST may also incorporate biological, radiological and explosive detection, but for now the primary focus is on identifying and isolating potential human threats.
And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.
Burns noted his team's goal is to "restore a sense of freedom." Once MALINTENT is rolled out in airports, it could give us a future where we can once again wander onto planes with super-sized cosmetics and all the bottles of water we can carry — and most importantly without that sense of foreboding that has haunted Americans since Sept. 11.
Allison Barrie, a security and terrorism consultant with the Commission for National Security in the 21st Century, is FOX News' security columnist.
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I was SURE this was an Onion piece!
There is no way that machines can do this. It is beyond the capability of current technology. This has to be a joke!
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"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
FOX News lie?
Who knows. Maybe they just want us to think that they can. I only caught a snippet but, I think Katherine Albrecht talked about it in her show yesterday.
http://mp3.wtprn.com/Albrecht08.html
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"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corpora
That device would make it
That device would make it easier to arrest someone arbitrarily. It's like the opposite device for appointing a president arbitrarily - Diebold voting machines.
exactly, Juan & Dicktater
The machine doesn't have to *work* -- people just have to perceive that it works. For example, lie detector machines are notoriously unreliable and invalid: Some excellent liars can control their physiological responses, and the obverse is also true (some truth-tellers get very aroused just being hooked up to the machine).
Fox News must think their "news" consumers are brain dead.
E
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"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams (from the poem 'From')
Fox News KNOWS...
... their "news" consumers are brain dead.
FOX teevee is probably the most outrageous conductor of teevee mind control techniques. It's way, way, way beyond subliminal suggestion creating popcorn cravings.
All of the others do it, too.
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Though human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than men.
US Army Invests in 'Thought Helmet'
US Army Invests in 'Thought Helmet' Technology for Voiceless Communication
http://www.physorg.com/news141314439.html
A thought helmet (not pictured) could allow soldiers to silently and securely issue and receive commands. Image credit: Jeff Corwin Photography, Boeing.
In the future, soldiers may be communicating silently with sophisticated "thought helmets." The devices would harness a person´s brain waves and transmit them as radio waves, where they would be translated into words in the headphones of other soldiers.
The US Army has recently awarded a five-year $4 million contract to researchers from the University of California at Irvine (led by UCI´s Mike D´Zmura), Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland to study the concept. It will likely be a decade or two before the thought helmet becomes a reality, but the rough technology is already under investigation. Researchers have been working on other brain-computer interfaces, such as Emotiv Systems´ brain-wave headset for video games, which is expected to be available commercially next summer.
The Army's version would of course be more sophisticated and reliable than the gaming headset. To make the thought helmet a feasible piece of equipment for soldiers, scientists need to combine advances in computing power together with our understanding of the human brain.
At the moment, the thought helmet concept consists of 128 sensors buried in a soldier´s helmet. Soldiers would need to think in clear, formulaic ways, which is similar to how they are already trained to talk. The key challenge to making the system work is a software system that can read an electroencephalogram (EEG) generated by the sensor data, and pick out when a soldier is thinking words, and what those words are.
Because the brain is a complex system and generates such large amounts of data, researchers must also make improvements in computing power. Soldiers will also have to be trained to think "loudly" to make it easier for the system to pick out their words from the brain´s background noise. Also, every individual´s EEG signals are a little different, so users and computers will have to be calibrated so that computers recognize each person´s unique mental pattern.
In early versions, recipients will most likely hear messages rendered by a robotic voice in their headphones. But the researchers also think it´s possible to render commands in the speaker´s own voice, as well as indicate the location of the speaker relative to the listener.
For people concerned about the ethics of the technology, Elmar Schmeisser, the Army neuroscientist overseeing the program, reassures that the technology will not allow mind-reading. As he explains, since every user has to be trained with the system, it would be impossible to use the technology against an individual´s will and without their cooperation.
Instead, the researchers are interested in potential civilian benefits. One such application might be a Bluetooth headpiece which could read speakers´ thoughts and transmit them to the person they´re calling - eliminating those loud, one-sided conversations in public.
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Though human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than men.
Army Awards Contract: "High Speed Portable Portal Iris Capture"
Army Awards Contract for “High Speed Portable Portal Iris Capture Solutionâ€
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
(infowars copy - original link no longer available)
September 23, 2008
A scene from Steven Spielberg’s Minority report: John Anderton has his retinas scanned.
Sarnoff Corporation today announced it has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to develop and demonstrate a high speed biometric capture technology solution for iris-based identification. The system will be designed to be ruggedized for field use and quickly deployable.
The new iris recognition system will leverage Sarnoff’s patent-pending Iris on the Move(R) (IOM) technology for fast and reliable identification. IOM is a proven biometric identification system that quickly captures the iris image of a person in motion. The technology is ideally suited for force protection, civil-military operations, and combat situations.
Other iris scanning technologies require users to stop, line up their eye properly, and stare directly into a scanner for a period of time. IOM technology verifies identities at speeds of up to thirty people per minute, allowing subjects to walk through the system at a standard pace, without stopping. In addition, Sarnoff’s design will automatically adjust for subjects’ height without slowing throughput.
"Current biometric ID systems take too long to identify people in high traffic areas and cause long lines to form at checkpoints," said Dr. Don Newsome, President and CEO of Sarnoff Corporation. "This is inconvenient and poses a security risk. The IOM technology makes it easy to set up iris scanning checkpoints that are as reliable as other biometric-based options but quick enough to keep lines moving rapidly."
The IOM system delivers accurate identification regardless of whether the subject is wearing prescription glasses, most sunglasses, or contact lenses. In addition, IOM technology can capture iris images from farther distances than any other commercial iris scanning technology.
Sarnoff has delivered IOM technology to several secure government facilities and private corporations. The technology can be used for a broader range of applications including banking ID verification, border crossing initiatives, event security, payment systems, and employee access.
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Though human noses have an impressive 5 million olfactory cells with which to smell, sheepdogs have 220 million, enabling them to smell 44 times better than men.