Biometric Terrorist Detector 322
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.""
Guantanamo Boom (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally unnecessary... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you've ever seen a 6-foot tall crew cut tough as nails El Al employee ask you about your luggage, you know what I mean. They'll paw thru yuour luggage, pull out an orange, shove it one half inch from your nose and ask: "AND *WHAT* is *THIS*!??"
"role-acting"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:8% false positives? Absolutely useless. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fair point but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Blood Pressure Detector? Useless! (Score:4, Interesting)
Force it to be useless and it will be. (Score:2, Interesting)
We know a great deal about the people who have or tried to attack airliners. We have age ranges, ethnic backgrounds, countries of origin, and other factors. Unfortunately its not nice to use these in the process.
Apply this technology and similar to people who fit the above categories and your false alert numbers are more manageable. It will never happen.
Apparently 3000+ lives is not enough to pay versus being politically correct.
Hmmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
systems that identify liquids in carry-ons, systems that detect material on clothing that are common in bomb making, etc... are MUCH better options.
Putting people in a two hour long queue to go thru this system and then flagging them for being upset, sweating, etc... is just plain idiotic.
Re:Totally unnecessary... (Score:2, Interesting)
Device is useless (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming the marketing literature is right about the detection rates, that alone renders the device useless. Consider this: for every terrorist there are at least a thousand legitimate travellers in any given airport. At an 8% false-positive rate, you'll incorrectly tag 80 innocent travellers during screening. Assume you tag the terrorist as well. You've now got a group of 81 people, 80 of whom are innocent. What's the public reaction going to be when, after the delays and the hassles to all those people, it turns out that 98.77% of the time your "detector" is wrong? And this is conservative, assuming a low number of travellers and a high percentage of terrorists. It wouldn't suprise me if a major airport like Heathrow handled several tens of thousands of travellers every day and only saw any terrorists at all on one day a month if that often.
Re:Totally unnecessary... (Score:2, Interesting)
Normally I just go right through (I fly a lot and they know who you are before you even set foot in the airport), but one time (not in band camp) this nervous security girl gave me a real grilling, so I asked her if she was new in the job.
She got very upset, they don't like it when you ask them the questions.
Uhh, that math = HORRIBLE system (Score:3, Interesting)
"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"
Assume say 2,020 people. 20 are terrorists.
The machine will identify .08 * 2000 plus 20*.85 = 177 people called terrorist by the machine
Of those only 17 are really terrorists (less than 10%), the rest are innocent. 90% wrong decisions
Of the people called 1843 "innocent" by the machine, 6 would real be terrorists. Less than 1% wrong decision there, but even 6 are 6 too many.
This machine looks to do nothing but provide a false sense of security, while causing MAJOR trouble for a huge number of innocent people.
This is basically just a Lie detector, used for a VERY bad methodology. Lie detectors ARE usefull, if used correctly. Specifically you use them to confirm knowledge, not motive.
I.E. "Lie detectors" can NOT detect lies said by the suspect, they detect Nervousness. The proper way to use them is simple. Say you have a woman killed when someone cut her throat. You take suspect, before he has seen the body, or heard anything about her murder and you ask him:
1 "Did you blow up the victim?"
2 "Did you cut the victim's throat?"
3 "Did you shoot the victim?"
4 "Did you run the victim over in a car?"
If the man is innocent, he will be no more nervous on question #2 than the other questions. If he is guilty, chances are question #2 will cause a HUGE jump in nervousness, as compared to the other questions.
Even this is not fool proof (if the suspect happens to be afraid of knives/was cut by a mugger, bad results are likely), but it is certainly a lot more helpfull than the standard practice.
too long a delay and not worth flying (Score:3, Interesting)
"I would much rather be safe than happy on a flight"
For sure but too much of a delay and it's just not worth travelling. London to Paris is 1 hr 15 minutes (approx), right now we're being told minimum 2 hours wait time to get on the plane for European short hop flights. It's one thing to queue for 3 hours for your London -Australia holiday flight but another if you want to get somewhere across Europe, have a meeting and fly back the the same day. Luckily I don't have to do this any more but a lot of people do.
I'm off to Copenhagen next week for a conference from London, 2 hour flight. A two hour wait in the airport I can just about cope with but when they start talking about 3,4,5 hour delays, heck, you got to wonder if it's worth it. Maybe we just have to rethink about how we do business in remote locations. I reckon the train and ferry companies are probably pretty happy right now, and the videoconference people as well!
Re:8% false positives? Absolutely useless. (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I'm wrong; I can't really say what goes on in the mind of a mad bomber, but testing for nervousness might not be the best way to go. Here's a better test: Anyone who willingly takes a bite of bacon or pork chops can board the plane with no further hassles... everyone else is subject to screening and bag searches. Sucks for the vegetarians and peaceful Muslims, but almost everyone in the U.S. has no problem eating a small piece of bacon.
I'm sort of joking with that last comment, since this whole topic is kind of a joke. There's no real way to tell for sure what's going on in a person's *mind*. The GP poster mentioned that the false positive rate for this test is unacceptable and will likely always be so... basically the same problems with all lie detectors. If it has any use at all, it will be as a second, or third, line of defense.
Re:This is so freaking far from perfect (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? You think that a system that produces thousands of potential terorrist suspects a day at an airport like O'Hare is going to be treated seriously enough that it actually catches the one real terrorist that crosses through it every few months?
Um, no. The way we filter out most terrorists is by searching for physical evidence that actually indicates intent and which makes false positives easy to identify. That we have already accomplished. The only way this buzz-word-wrapped version of a shitty polygraph is going to make planes a less attractive target for terrorism is by ensuring that nobody wants to fly so there isn't a target in the first place.