Malintent Detection Comes To An Airport Near You

Since reading James Halprin's The Truth Machine in late 1998 I have been looking for technology like this to come on the scene. The argument laid out in Halprin's book, that mankind's future in a world where technology increasingly leverages the power of the few or the one to cause damage or death to an ever larger number of people, is going to be dependent upon the development of technologies which can to all intent and purposes read peoples minds to determine whether the person has intentions to cause harm to others.

Nature reports that the Department of Homeland Security has been conducting tests of Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) over the past few months in northeastern states. The technology is designed to identify individuals who intend to commit a terrorist act using public transportation.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

The technology is hardly fool proof. DHS claims a 70% success rate in it's tests, which of course means that 30% of the simulated perpetrators got through the system. The concept has received a great deal of criticism, with critics pointing out that there are a number of aspects of traveling on public transportation which can cause a persons heart rate to rise or have other physiological responses. Nature reports the response of one critic:

Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. "I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated," he says. "Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade."

I think we will see technologies with this goal continue to be developed and to quickly get better over time. Technologies like this represent a double edged sword to our traditional understanding of liberty, and brings up basic issues like the question of individual privacy vs public safety which will be difficult to resolve. What does privacy mean when, in the near future, the government has the right to read your mind whenever you get on an airplane?

Check out The Truth Machine. It is an interesting read.