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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Precrime In America

The U.S. Department of Homeland security is working on a project called FAST [6], the Future Attribute Screening Technology. FAST will remotely monitor physiological and behavioural signals like elevated heart rate, eye movement, body temperature, facial patterns, and body language, and analyse these signals algorithmically for statistical aberrance in an attempt to identify people with criminal or terroristic intentions.

It’s useful to briefly talk about a few of the practical problems that such a system would face.

Firstly, the level of accuracy in remote monitoring. Is it possible to engineer a system that can remotely tell you the heart-rate of a hundred passengers passing through a TSA checkpoint? Yes. Is it possible to do so accurately? That is much, much harder. The obvious conclusion is that such a system, were it to be deployed in the wilds of airports (and presumably, other locations where our ever-benevolent technocratic overlords determine “terrorists” or “criminals” may be operating) would — given a large enough number of scans — produce a lot of false positives stemming from erroneous data.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everyone will simply have to stop being so sensitive.It's coming to this and we all know it.TSA agents need to be able to correctly do their job without fear of being sued or accused of profiling.Mass scanning technology will improve in the coming years.With that perfected people won't feel violated.

Anonymous said...

No, were not a police state at all..

Anonymous said...

No 10:50. What IS coming you refuse to acknowledge. Many Americans realized a long time ago that change at the ballot box isn't possible. Many more will wake up after the coming election as the government continues along it's path to tyranny and socialism. It has happened this way with virtually every civilization since the beginning or recorded history where the government gets larger and larger little by little crushing stripping people of human rights. Part of transition into a state of revolution has always been a facet of the nation that either agreed with what their governments were doing or they refused to see that it was actually as bad as it was - much like the proverbial ostrich that sticks it's head in the sand thinking that if they refuse to see the danger it simply doesn't exist. You seem to be the ostrich type. Fortunately there are many others that are of the "Braveheart" type who will usher in the coming revolution regardless of the personal sacrifice.

I quote Mark Twain.... "In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, Brave, Hated, and
Scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs NOTHING to be a Patriot."

The timid will not be so fortunate this time around.

Anonymous said...

There is no way any machine can predict the future. IF so this country wouldn't have to worry about the debt it is in. It is hilarious people can still shove this "terrorist thought process" or "for your safety" crap down our throats and no one can question them. America is done, the America that we used to live in at least. You know "land of the free, home of the brave". It is now more like "land of the gov't, home of the largest fraud in the history of this planet".

Anonymous said...

Wow. If my heart rate is up and I'm sweating because I'm worried about running late for my plane, I'm going to get popped as a terrorist?