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.

Technologically driven social, political and cultural stratification in the coming decades

During the last election, we saw technology play a large role in political organizing. The campaign of Barack Obama effectively used newly created technology to communicate and organize political and financial support efficiently to out manuveure all of his competitors. All of this efficiency made possible by new internet technologies, which much of the older demographics which make up much of the republican base will never adopt. Organization of this demographic is limited to old media of radio and television. It lacks the ability to personalize information sent to supporters. It lacks the ability to put information in the hands of supporters at will with specific targeted messages.

One of the differences between John Kerry and Barack Obama campaigns, is that in 2004 Youtube and Facebook did not exist. Two technologies that Obama used effectively in his campaign to communicate with and organize supporters just four years later. What's more, it continues to communicate by text, email, twitter and facebook to millions of supporters about what they are doing, what they hope to do, and what supporters can do to help.


As technology accelerates, how will the early adoption of new communication and information technologies which can be leveraged for greater efficiencies of organization by younger generations influence the politics of the coming decades? What will those game changing technologies look like? Will they be the remote technologies which the young will adopt to stay connected to their friends, accessing live remote broadcast by their friends, and keeping constant awareness of the location and activities of friends and family which are rapidly developing today? Perhaps it will be the adoption of man-computer interfaces and direct interfaces with the brain which provide a total state of connection expected in the next decade?

The impact of inter-generational differences in the adoption of new communication, information and bio technologies is going to be hard to predict. I speculate that even the adoption of new technology will become a political issue, with the potential to precipitate a new generation of 21st century Amish, who fore swear both coming technologies as well as political involvement on religous grounds, as even the definition of what it means to be human is brought into question by the rapid explosion of technology. It's also possible that rapid technological growth will lead to a backlash of popular political neo-ludditism and anti-technologism from the right and the left.

Whatever the outcome, uncertain future, here we come.