Security Tech of the Future Like Minority Report

It might not be telepathic, but the security checkpoints of the future will be able to predict what people will be planning on doing before they actually do it.

For all that it might be necessary, going through security screening at an airport can be a real pain in the neck - especially if it's a busy day. Those days will eventually come to an end, reports TechFragments, with the development of new security technology that can effectively predict one's actions before it happens.

The system, dubbed FAST (Future Attribute Screening Technology,) uses incredibly precise cameras to track minute variations in things such as the rate someone blinks, their pupil size, where they're looking, and so on. Combined with a laser system that tracks heart rate and respiration, and a thermal camera that monitors one's body temperature, FAST has already demonstrated promise even in the early stages of development. Back in September, a Homeland Security test of the system found that out of 140 subjects, FAST could accurately determine hostile intent with a 78% detection rate, and an 80% detection rate for intent to deceive.

The numbers aren't high enough to put FAST into the field right away, but for such an early stage in the project's lifetime, the technology certainly is impressive.

Still, is the convenience of just walking quickly through a security checkpoint worth any potential ambiguity in the system - whether catching innocent people or letting dangerous ones slip through the cracks?

What do you all think?

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Invasion of privacy much?

I can't trust this stuff ; and I can give one valable argument:
What if I am just in a bad mood ?

I think I'm going to start an airport for those who would like to take the chance. No security except a locked cockpit door. And if it should happen that it got highjacked, the pilots would be instructed to crash the fucking thing in the water!

But on topic, if it works it's a good idea, IF it speeds up the process getting from A to B otherwise it's just more expensive junk. a few hundred people here and there is acceptable casualties since flying is the safest form of travel. You know that all form of transportation could kill you, and if some loony pulls a toothbrush on you in a plane it is a calculated risk. If you want to avoid highjacking equip all employees with a weapon of sorts. (stun gun?) which would solve most of the problems.

THOUGHT POLICE!

sirdanrhodes:
Invasion of privacy much?

Personally, I'm quite content with Airport security knowing what kind of mood I'm in if it further increases the chances that the plane won't get blown up or smashed into a building.

Anyways, not as much bs as Minority Report's version, you'd get arrested before you even decided to do something wrong.

incal11:
I can't trust this stuff ; and I can give one valable argument:
What if I am just in a bad mood ?

I completely agree. What if you just had a bad day or had a fight with your girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever?
I mean this may sound insane but sometimes when I'm going somewhere my mind wanders off into thinking about slitting the throat of the guy who's looking at me funny (nuts right?)

Anyway if that happens I'll be locked up in a room and will be interrogated for hours explaining how I just had one of my sick mind moments.

Sorry , bad connection , I refreshed and somehow it reposted my message .
if a mod see this post , please delete it

I don't think we are to the point that we know enough about the human brain to use something like this.

I'm sure it will incorrectly accuse someone of bad intent when they are just in a bad mood. Then they miss their flight for no reason other then, 'Your zen just wasn't right'.

Chill man...

FAST - Federation Against Software Theft

Coincidence?

This technology is a close approximation of good old fashion lie-detector autonomic measurements. The neat bit of it seems to be the ease of application...no elaborate wire setup to test each person. As neat as it is, it suffers from all the same limitations: e.g. people able to control their heart rate/pupil dilation/etc can sneak by the system, and false detection of jittery folks as "iffy".

I suspect that people detected by this new system would go to another line, rather than get thrown directly into an interrogation cell. This line would probably be more like what we're used to nowadays. Of course, I'm talking out of my ass here...who knows what the plans are?

Still, it appears very possibile that a "hostile risk" could slip past this system, which sacrifices today's "thoroughness" for convenience. The selling point of convenience is great, but at what cost?

The_root_of_all_evil:
FAST - Federation Against Software Theft

Coincidence?

Yes, they plan to read your mind and arrest you before you pirate software again, you dirty criminal mastermind.

xitel:

The_root_of_all_evil:
FAST - Federation Against Software Theft

Coincidence?

Yes, they plan to read your mind and arrest you before you pirate software again, you dirty criminal mastermind.

Well, I wouldn't steal a baby.

Sennz0r:

incal11:
I can't trust this stuff ; and I can give one valable argument:
What if I am just in a bad mood ?

I completely agree. What if you just had a bad day or had a fight with your girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever?
I mean this may sound insane but sometimes when I'm going somewhere my mind wanders off into thinking about slitting the throat of the guy who's looking at me funny (nuts right?)

Anyway if that happens I'll be locked up in a room and will be interrogated for hours explaining how I just had one of my sick mind moments.

I agree as well, and it's not that nuts, or maybe I'm just nuts too :D

Just what we need right now: A way to make fewer jobs.

Hostile intent to them means being told that the person should do something. If I just sat near it and told everyone entering the building that by boarding they're helping me do something, would that make them more likely to show up as "hostile"?

If you just have to walk through, I'm hosed. I have a higher body temperature than normal, I'm usually flushed, have heart palpitations, look around for cameras (I like to see them seeing me), and look shady (long hair, unshaven, teenage male).

The future's so bright, just not for me.

Grand_Poohbah:
THOUGHT POLICE!

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Calobi:

If you just have to walk through, I'm hosed. I have a higher body temperature than normal, I'm usually flushed, have heart palpitations, look around for cameras (I like to see them seeing me), and look shady (long hair, unshaven, teenage male).

The future's so bright, just not for me.

^^^^^^^
this. What about those of us with a slighty higher than normal body temperature?

I read years ago that we could expect some sort of airport security where it was essentially a room that used retina to identify you, as well as sensors and x-rays to make sure you weren't carrying anything you weren't supposed to have. It was supposed to end the worthless and time-consuming TSA. Needless to say, it hasn't happened yet, and it probably won't. I personally don't like all these "New Technology Promises New Innovations!" reports because most of them amount to nadda. They'll tell you by 2020, but they mean by 2075.

stompy:

Grand_Poohbah:
THOUGHT POLICE!

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I also no longer have words in my mouth. It's getting kinda lonely in there.

I'm against this. Thoughts/emotions are not actions, and aren't always indicative of future actions. This seems like the kind of gadget that'd do well in the LAB, but might really mess up in real situations.

...If it reads heat and pupil size as indicators...What if one is high while passing though said checkpoint?

sirdanrhodes:
Invasion of privacy much?

It's not reading you mind. Although I feel sorry for all of the Profilers that do this for the government now.

I'm not paranoid about it or anything. It sounds like a good enough idea on paper (electrons?) but I can see where there might be problems. For instance, security checkpoints and large crowds make me nervous as a guy on a blind date discovering Chris Hansen on the other side of the door. I'd be a false positive every time.
And I'm curious as to whether someone with malicious intent can "beat" the machine through some mad yogi skillz or pharmaceutical assistance.

^Yep and TSA is still crap, it pisses me off whenever we fly(alot cause we are nonrev) and they pull aside my sisters <ten years old and do the whole pat down thing. Which is ridiculous because we are a nicely dressed family(nonrev requirement) Also apparently one of our names is on the terrorist watch list so it's always an issue when getting tickets(they also wont tell us which name it is so we can fix it). Gah I hate TSA.
The pat down and random bag searches are a pain and a invasion of privacy enough. Screw this machine thing.

Calobi:
Hostile intent to them means being told that the person should do something. If I just sat near it and told everyone entering the building that by boarding they're helping me do something, would that make them more likely to show up as "hostile"?

If you just have to walk through, I'm hosed. I have a higher body temperature than normal, I'm usually flushed, have heart palpitations, look around for cameras (I like to see them seeing me), and look shady (long hair, unshaven, teenage male).

The future's so bright, just not for me.

Well, if it's like a lie detector, it first takes a "baseline" sample and then looks for any increases.

Samurai Goomba:
I'm against this. Thoughts/emotions are not actions, and aren't always indicative of future actions. This seems like the kind of gadget that'd do well in the LAB, but might really mess up in real situations.

This process seems to think that humans have no inhibitions to committing the crimes we think of. That's the biggest worry; it doesn't differentiate between someone's thought and whether or not they actually plan to carry it out... which'll lead to a lot more people, many innocent, in prison.

Give a technology like this to a corporation or a government, and they WILL abuse it. Period. History has proven, time and again, that governments can not be trusted to exercise restraint when dealing with anything that will enhance their power. This is just the kind of thing that really could spark real rebellion.

CantFaketheFunk:

Calobi:
Hostile intent to them means being told that the person should do something. If I just sat near it and told everyone entering the building that by boarding they're helping me do something, would that make them more likely to show up as "hostile"?

If you just have to walk through, I'm hosed. I have a higher body temperature than normal, I'm usually flushed, have heart palpitations, look around for cameras (I like to see them seeing me), and look shady (long hair, unshaven, teenage male).

The future's so bright, just not for me.

Well, if it's like a lie detector, it first takes a "baseline" sample and then looks for any increases.

If it takes two indicators (which the article doesn't say it does or doesn't) then even if you were planning on doing something it would always read "Safe" because chances are you realize you have malicious intent before going through phase 2.

stompy:

This process seems to think that humans have no inhibitions to committing the crimes we think of. That's the biggest worry; it doesn't differentiate between someone's thought and whether or not they actually plan to carry it out... which'll lead to a lot more people, many innocent, in prison.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I'm a wee bit crazy when I have to wake up at 6:00 A.M. for a six hour flight across the country in a tiny aircraft. I'd get caught for nothing every single time.

Statistically, actual hijackers are a drop of water amid an ocean of ordinary travellers. Even if this thing is 99.9% accurate, thousands of people will be misidentified daily, and the higher the false positive rate, the easier it is for the one real threat to slip by; if every flagged person is a false positive, then that's what security will be expecting - another false positive. And that's IF the automated thing even notices the one real terrorist.

More likely, the guy who wants to blow up a plane would have been prepared for the system, trained to control his pulse, breathing, stress levels etc, and pass through like every other ordinary passenger. There really is no way in hell that this thing would help... pure security theatre, or the thin end of a wedge to get us to accept more monitoring everywhere else.

Hell, who even says terrorists are trying to hijack planes any more? They did that one time, and then the security went batshit for a while, I know I wouldn't choose it as the follow up attack method (for one thing no-one's going to sit by while you hijack their plane any more - before 9/11 people expected to survive that kind of thing if they kept quiet, now they'll be a little more motivated to stop you)

Bored Tomatoe:
...If it reads heat and pupil size as indicators...What if one is high while passing though said checkpoint?

Using drugs is illegal, mind you. One should not board a plane while high on something. Word.
And if it's medical stuff, you should have documents proving that.

THOUGHT POLICE!

Not really. This machine only measures your bodily functions from outside, it's not EEG, MRI or anything like it. As it has been said, it's a new version of the good ol' lie detector.

I really question the usefulness of such machine. How about paranoid or other mentally ill people? Their reactions could cause problems. Also, who REALLY want to get through that machine, can learn to control these bodily functions through training. Buddhist monks can do it, for example.

I'm not convinced. This technology is not against bad people... it's for population control. That machine does not discriminate, it does scan EVERYONE, not just the bad guys, and it's scanning YOU not your luggage or your clothes.

I wonder who is it good for? Us, or the people now knowing exactly what mental state we are in... hmm...

EDIT: BTW, this is my 100th post. Yay! Go me! \o/

Playbahnosh:

Bored Tomatoe:
...If it reads heat and pupil size as indicators...What if one is high while passing though said checkpoint?

Using drugs is illegal, mind you. One should not board a plane while high on something. Word.
And if it's medical stuff, you should have documents proving that.

I know that it is Illegal, I was just imagining a confused pot-head being brutally beaten and arrested in an airport.

Wow.

More baffling than this are the people who say stuff like "I'm quite happy for them to know what i'm doing if it means there's less chance I get blown up"

WELL DONE - YOU'VE BEEN TAKEN. That's exactly the kind of attitude these governments are relying on to get all their BS in place. Then before you know it you're getting charged $5 every time you jerk off IN YOUR OWN HOUSE.

:p

Also, any of these people who are going on about "high" people ever been high? Obviously not. NOTE TO FBI: I am not in any way admitting that I have been high, before you come knocking the door down.