LOS ANGELES — Transportation Security Laboratory Director Susan Hallowell would like to see the day when airline passengers no longer have to take their shoes off after standing in a long line at airport security checkpoints.
To that end, she would like to combine the line and an array of sensors into what she calls a “tunnel of truth.”
The concept — with the somewhat Orwellian name — would have passengers stand on a conveyor belt moving under an archway as various sensors scan them for weapons, bombs or other prohibited items. By the time they step out of the tunnel, they have been thoroughly checked out, she said at a homeland security science and technology conference sponsored by the National Defense Industrial Association.
“You’re in line anyway … why not enclose that in a little glass thing and do your analysis there?” she asked. The lab has given a grant to Penn State University to study the concept, she added.
The lab, located in Atlantic City, N.J., is responsible for testing current screening devices and developing new technologies for both airports and for other public transportation.
Among the new technologies that could be placed in the tunnels are backscatter X-ray machines, which peer underneath clothes, and passive and active millimeter wave sensors that can see the outlines of concealed metal objects. These technologies are already being used in pilot programs.
Puffer machines are also in use and dislodge molecules from the residue gathered during the manufacture of explosives. The human body also gives off a heat signature, and sensors could follow the thermal plume coming off the body as the passenger moves through the tunnel, she noted. Actual bombs, if they are hidden on the body, give off their own heat signatures, and could be detected as well.
Before the concept can move forward, the laboratory will have to perfect all the sub-systems that would go into the so-called tunnel, she said. Meanwhile, the lab continues to test machines designed to check shoes for explosives without passengers having to take them off. So far, it has not found an acceptable solution.
“We’re still working on shoes. We’re not there yet,” she said.
Source
2/17/08
Lockheed Secures Contract to Expand "Big Brother" Biometric Database
The FBI yesterday announced the award of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to Lockheed Martin to develop what is expected to be the world's largest crime-fighting computer database of biometric information, including fingerprints, palm prints, iris patterns and face images.
Under its contract to build Next Generation Identification, the Bethesda contractor will expand on the FBI's electronic database of 55 million sets of fingerprints and criminal histories used by law enforcement and other authorities. The aim is to make the query and results process quicker, more flexible and more accurate.
Lockheed built and maintains the fingerprint database.
"NGI will give us bigger, better, faster capabilities and lead us into the future," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division.
The system will not expand the categories of people whose prints are collected: known criminals, known or suspected terrorists, or foreign visitors to the United States who have been convicted of a crime or an immigration violation, Bush said. But additional types of biometric data, such as iris scans and face images, will be collected from criminals and terrorists. The system also separately houses 17 million civilian fingerprints, mostly of federal employees who have undergone background checks.
To enable global sharing of data, NGI is to be built to technical standards shared by the departments of Homeland Security, Defense and State, as well as by Britain, Canada and other countries, Bush said. The FBI also hopes to offer a service allowing employers to store employees' prints, subject to state privacy laws, so that if employees are ever arrested, the employer would be notified.
Beginning this year, Lockheed will conduct a series of "biometric bake-offs" to evaluate the work of biometric firms who will be competing to develop various elements of the system and the maturity of the technologies. It will first expand the FBI's fingerprint processing capability and add palm print processing capability, officials said.
"We're excited to move to the next generation with the FBI," said Judy Marks, president of Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, a business unit of Lockheed.
By adding new biometric tools and applying them together, "the system will be able to enhance its accuracy and virtually eliminate the chance of mistaken identities," said Walter Hamilton, chairman of the International Biometric Industry Association.
Privacy advocates said that the work is proceeding before the technologies have been proven. "Congress needs to do a better job of assessing how taxpayer dollars are being spent, particularly on programs that impact the privacy rights of Americans," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center washingtonpost.com
2/10/08
Privacy concerns mount amid the 'microchipping of America'
...In 2006, IBM Corp. received patent approval for an invention it called "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items." One stated purpose: to collect information about people that could be "used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."
After somebody enters a store, a sniffer "scans all identifiable RFID tags carried on the person" and correlates the tag information with sales records to determine the individual's "exact identity." A device known as a "person tracking unit" then assigns a tracking number to the shopper "to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas."
Another patent, obtained in 2003 by NCR Corp., details how camouflaged sensors and cameras would record customers' wanderings through a store, film their facial expressions at displays, and time — to the second — how long shoppers hold and study items.
Why? Such monitoring "allows one to draw valuable inferences about the behavior of large numbers of shoppers," the patent states.
Then there's a 2001 patent application from Procter & Gamble Co.: "Systems and methods for tracking consumers in a store environment." It lays out an idea to use heat sensors to track and record "where a consumer is looking, i.e., which way she is facing, whether she is bending over or crouching down to look at a lower shelf."
The documents "raise the hair on the back of your neck," said Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips," a book that is critical of the industry. "The industry has long promised it would never use this technology to track people. But these patent records clearly suggest otherwise."...read more
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