Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind - actual headline

[Beeker]

[top]Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind

Tuesday , September 23, 2008

[top]By Allison Barrie

I don't really need to explain what this type of device will be used for, do I? Comes with a propaganda video only FOX NEWS could produce.

I love the writing style of Allison Barrie SOOOOOO much!

This person actually plays with the low IQ of the average FOX NEWS reader by calling this device, "Orwellian-sounding" as if that's something great for the average citizen under Big Brother.

Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.

Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.

MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.

It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye — signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack.

But this is no polygraph test. Subjects do not get hooked up or strapped down for a careful reading; those sensors do all the work without any actual physical contact. It's like an X-ray for bad intentions.

Currently, all the sensors and equipment are packaged inside a mobile screening laboratory about the size of a trailer or large truck bed, and just last week, Homeland Security put it to a field test in Maryland, scanning 144 mostly unwitting human subjects.

While I'd love to give you the full scoop on the unusual experiment, testing is ongoing and full disclosure would compromise future tests.

But what I can tell you is that the test subjects were average Joes living in the D.C. area who thought they were attending something like a technology expo; in order for the experiment to work effectively and to get the testing subjects to buy in, the cover story had to be convincing.

While the 144 test subjects thought they were merely passing through an entrance way, they actually passed through a series of sensors that screened them for bad intentions.

Homeland Security also selected a group of 23 attendees to be civilian "accomplices" in their test. They were each given a "disruptive device" to carry through the portal — and, unlike the other attendees, were conscious that they were on a mission.

In order to conduct these tests on human subjects, DHS had to meet rigorous safety standards to ensure the screening would not cause any physical or emotional harm.

So here's how it works. When the sensors identify that something is off, they transmit warning data to analysts, who decide whether to flag passengers for further questioning. The next step involves micro-facial scanning, which involves measuring minute muscle movements in the face for clues to mood and intention.

Homeland Security has developed a system to recognize, define and measure seven primary emotions and emotional cues that are reflected in contractions of facial muscles. MALINTENT identifies these emotions and relays the information back to a security screener almost in real-time.

This whole security array — the scanners and screeners who make up the mobile lab — is called "Future Attribute Screening Technology" — or FAST — because it is designed to get passengers through security in two to four minutes, and often faster.

If you're rushed or stressed, you may send out signals of anxiety, but FAST isn't fooled. It's already good enough to tell the difference between a harried traveler and a terrorist. Even if you sweat heavily by nature, FAST won't mistake you for a baddie.

"If you focus on looking at the person, you don't have to worry about detecting the device itself," said Bob Burns, MALINTENT's project leader. And while there are devices out there that look at individual cues, a comprehensive screening device like this has never before been put together.

While FAST's batting average is classified, Undersecretary for Science and Technology Adm. Jay Cohen declared the experiment a "home run."

As cold and inhuman as the electric eye may be, DHS says scanners are unbiased and nonjudgmental. "It does not predict who you are and make a judgment, it only provides an assessment in situations," said Burns. "It analyzes you against baseline stats when you walk in the door, it measures reactions and variations when you approach and go through the portal."

But the testing — and the device itself — are not without their problems. This invasive scanner, which catalogues your vital signs for non-medical reasons, seems like an uninvited doctor's exam and raises many privacy issues.

But DHS says this is not Big Brother. Once you are through the FAST portal, your scrutiny is over and records aren't kept. "Your data is dumped," said Burns. "The information is not maintained — it doesn't track who you are."

DHS is now planning an even wider array of screening technology, including an eye scanner next year and pheromone-reading technology by 2010.

The team will also be adding equipment that reads body movements, called "illustrative and emblem cues." According to Burns, this is achievable because people "move in reaction to what they are thinking, more or less based on the context of the situation."

FAST may also incorporate biological, radiological and explosive detection, but for now the primary focus is on identifying and isolating potential human threats.

And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.

Burns noted his team's goal is to "restore a sense of freedom." Once MALINTENT is rolled out in airports, it could give us a future where we can once again wander onto planes with super-sized cosmetics and all the bottles of water we can carry — and most importantly without that sense of foreboding that has haunted Americans since Sept. 11.

Allison Barrie, a security and terrorism consultant with the Commission for National Security in the 21st Century, is FOX News' security columnist.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Scary shit, thanks for posting

[fiveleggedrat]

I'll choose no liquids on flights as opposed to evil mind reading machines.

Would these machines not pick on nervous/anxiety ridden people?

[juanathan]

i sense a little freedom restoration!!!

[FlakeyPink]

just think of vagina when getting screened...youll pass with flying colors

[Woodman]

You've gotta be fucking kidding me!

Holy shit! The link looks legit.

WTF!!!!

[Heretic.Ape.]

Hum... I can't even think of something witty to say; I'm stumped. You gotta be fucking kidding me right? What are they going to do about all the people who are afraid of flying... or of terrorists for that matter?

[elpatto]

This is fucking unbelieveable. Thought screening at a airport!!

Next thing coppers are gonna have a radar gun they can shoot at suspects that tell them what they are realy up to.

The current scanning system we have at the moment is crazy anyway. SWIM remembers his travel size shampoo confiscated, like the little ones you get in a hotel, yet after his flight found a lone gram of grass in his bag.

I wonder what will happen if the questioning after the failed though screen leads one to miss their flight. I mean there is no way to completly prove another's thoughts, even a polygraph will not stand as hard evidence in almost every court.

I better start eating government cock right now to ensure my own place in the "Inner party".

Peace out.

[Alfa]

Reminds me of a video that the US army released during operation desert storm 1, of invisibility suits and other technology that they would have.

[DrewCeasa]

Swim knew the government was mind readers.... s w i m.... 0_o

[Euthanatos93420]

Definately Orwellian. I mean will we really restore our freedoms? All it is is one more piece of supposed 'evidence' they will be able to use to detain and arrest anyone they feel like. Furthermore, a good deal of meditative discipline can easily pass the test just like a lie detector though perhaps not so easily. They'll argue the machine is impartial but like 'vote counting machines' it is still the people who use the system who determine abuse. Furthermore it's not as if such a thing couldn't be hacked anyway.

I stand by my case, there is no Deus Ex Machina. Only an illusion.

[Panthers007]

I call "Bullshit." Though the CIA and the KGB* did study this possibility extensively back when the Cold War was in high gear. In the US the project was the infamous MKULTRA, which also went about slipping unsuspecting citizens LSD in barrooms and taking the zoned-out Joe to a CIA-run whorehouse for filming them as they went at it with one of their whores.

* secret intelligence apparatus of the former Soviet Union (USSR).

[Euthanatos93420]

Lets not forget that MKULTRA was composed of of Nazi scientists recruited after WWII