Biometric Terrorist Detector

neutralino writes "The Wall Street Journal has this story about a biometric airport security system which uses biometric responses — blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels — to series of questions ("Are you smuggling drugs?") to identify passengers with "hostile intent." According to the article, "In the latest Israeli trial, the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists, meaning that 15% got through, and incorrectly identified 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats, according to corporate marketing materials.""

Desensitized

[iknowcss]

So when this becomes common practice, will you really be suprised when you're asked a string of questions like this?

Re:Force it to be useless and it will be.

[Asic Eng]

Not sure whether that would work - Al-Qaeda seems to have enough resources to circumvent racial profiling. There has already been the case of that shoe bomber, and there was Anne Murphy (that pregnant Irish girl), too.

Re:Fair point but...

[wizbit]

Israeli airlines and airports have the reputation for being the safest in the world.

Can I just point out that they have two international airports?

Israel does a fine job, but let's not assume we can deploy and trust anything like this in an O'Hare, Laguardia, Dulles, LAX, etc without nearly psychic success rates.

Re:Polygraph Tests?

[kansas1051]

Polygraphs aren't admissible in U.S. courts because they aren't considered reliable evidence of anything and not for any reasons related to privacy. As others have pointed out, there are many ways to game polygraph machines to achieve any desired result. Based on this fact, polygraphs fail the Frye and Daubert tests normally employed by courts to determine if scientific evidence can be admitted.

Regarding your second point, the government doesn't need any legal precedent to require you to take a polygraph before boarding an airline. Job applicants at the FBI and CIA are all forced to take polygraphs as part of the application process, even though polygraphs are junk science. As we have no right to travel by air, the government can impossible any conditions it wishes on air travel provided the restrictions are rationally related to safety.