Spotting a Terrorist ‘FAST’ – Future Attribute Screening Technology
Metal detectors, X-ray machines, and dogs are used at security checkpoints to look for bombs. Now a next-generation technology under development in Cambridge will look for the bomber. With funding from the US Department of Homeland Security, Draper Laboratory and other collaborators are building technology to detect potential terrorists with cameras and noninvasive sensors that monitor eye blinks, heart rate, and even fidgeting.
The project, called the “Future Attribute Screening Technology,’’ is aimed at allowing security checkpoint personnel at airports or large public events to make better, faster decisions about whether a person should get follow-up screening.
At a demonstration of the technology this week, project manager Robert P. Burns said the idea is to track a set of involuntary physiological reactions that might slip by a human observer. These occur when a person harbors malicious intent – but not when someone is late for a flight or annoyed by something else, he said, citing years of research into the psychology of deception.
The development team is investigating how effective its techniques are at flagging only people who intend to do harm. Even if it works, the technology raises a slew of questions – from privacy concerns, to the more fundamental issue of whether machines are up to a task now entrusted to humans.
via Spotting a terrorist – The Boston Globe.
The new Screening Technology, designed to help security checkpoint personnel “track a set of involuntary physiological reactions that might slip by a human observer” appears to have flaws that could actually help sophisticated terrorists and criminals get through check points.
In retrospect: the Russian KGB successfully trained spies to monitor their own physiological reactions to pass lie detector tests. KGB training included covertly filming their own agents’ “body language” during a mission; then showing the film to the agent so he or she could review their body language in a given situation. KGB agents were taught to both monitor and implement different body language to prevent theirs from being read. Even if this new screening technology works, the technology might actually make it easier for (similarly trained criminals and terrorists) to pass through checkpoints; especially where personnel have become psychologically dependent on the new technology to stop suspects. The new screening technology to be effective, would have to differentiate-sets of involuntary physiological reactions-in different cultures and ethic groups, for example certain Asian cultures do not always show emotion while other cultures might overly express emotion.
This article states the new screening technology can detect when a person “harbors malicious intent” – as opposed to when someone is late for a flight or annoyed by something else. That is difficult to believe: business people that fly, especially aggressive salesmen, sometimes harbor malicious-intent to bury their business competition once they arrive at their destination: could those salesmen exhibit at a check point, a similar set of involuntary physiological reactions as a terrorist harboring malicious intent? If yes, the new technology might cause a lot of false alerts.