Big Brother Blue (IBM) seeks biometric anti-terror patents • The Register

"IBM has filed applications for a dozen patents that seek a whole new level of airport security.

Forget full-body scans, which are currently being touted as the Next Big Thing™ in security in the wake of the Christmas Day Nigerian crotchbomber. We can't even be sure they would have stopped him.

The IBM patent applications, turned up by InformationWeek's Alexander Wolfe, outline technologies that track you as you stroll through an airport, sniff you, check out what you're eating and drinking, scrutinize your attire, watch for 'furtive' eye movements, and employ a host of other sensors.

That information is then fed to an inference engine that compares the sensors' data to a knowledge base and alerts security if its set of rules determine you might be a threat. And all of this will be done in real time - or, at least, real enough to nab you before you get on an airliner and activate your lethal underpants.

The core idea of the patents is to use a variety of sensors arrayed throughout an airport, both indoors in out. These sensors attempt to both spot suspicious activity and find already-identified suspects, matched to a knowledge base of possible terrorists."...more

THE INSANITY CONTINUES TO GROW: Crack New Scanner Looks for Bombs Inside Body Cavities

"The “underpants bomber” has renewed calls for new and more invasive security measures. Already, there’s a push to install scanners that show travelers’ naked bodies through clothing, using either millimeter wave or backscatter X-ray imaging. But even those scanners might not have caught the terrorist who nearly brought down Northwest flight 253.

That’s why one company is trumpeting a sensor that can supposedly “detect substances such as explosive materials … hidden inside or outside of the human body.” First step: Actually build a human-sized machine.

There has already been one report of a suicide bomber carrying explosives internally. Many sources, including the BBC, carried an early report suggesting that Abdullah Hassan Al Aseeri adopted the new tactic of “carrying explosives in his anal cavity” for an attack in September. The target, a Saudi prince, survived, but Aseeri was reportedly blown in half by the blast. Later reports suggest the explosives were actually sewn into his underwear, but security experts believe there is a real danger of “internally carried” bombs, a technique used for years by drug smugglers."...more

Mind-reading systems could change air security

"CHICAGO – A would-be terrorist tries to board a plane, bent on mass murder. As he walks through a security checkpoint, fidgeting and glancing around, a network of high-tech machines analyzes his body language and reads his mind.

Screeners pull him aside.

Tragedy is averted.

As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer's head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year.

On Thursday, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt over Detroit, President Barack Obama called on Homeland Security and the Energy Department to develop better screening technology, warning: 'In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary.'

The ideas that have been offered by security experts for staying one step ahead include highly sophisticated sensors, more intensive interrogations of travelers by screeners trained in human behavior, and a lifting of the U.S. prohibitions against profiling.

Some of the more unusual ideas are already being tested. Some aren't being given any serious consideration. Many raise troubling questions about civil liberties. All are costly.

'Regulators need to accept that the current approach is outdated,' said Philip Baum, editor of the London-based magazine Aviation Security International. 'It may have responded to the threats of the 1960s, but it doesn't respond to the threats of the 21st century.'

Here's a look at some of the ideas that could shape the future of airline security" ...more

EU funding Orwellian artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

"A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as 'agents' to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the 'automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence'

Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a 'sinister step' for any country, adding that it was 'positively chilling' on a European scale." ...more
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Biometric technology opens new security frontiers

"WASHINGTON - Iris scanners and facial-recognition cameras aren't just for spies anymore.

The futuristic technology once found mainly in James Bond movies and science-fiction novels is becoming increasingly pervasive throughout the nation, showing up everywhere from hospitals and high schools to docks and airports, including Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

And it could become the dominant way for Americans to identify themselves if Congress moves ahead with efforts to create a biometric employee-verification system to ensure that only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants get jobs.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs the Senate's immigration subcommittee, has said that a verification system based on fingerprints, iris scans or some other form of biometrics must be part of any comprehensive immigration-reform bill.

The plan is controversial with civil libertarians, who say it poses a threat to Americans' privacy. But supporters say it is the only reliable, tamperproof way to stop the identity theft and fraud that plagues the current E-Verify system.

For such a proposal to work, Americans would need to provide their fingerprints or other biometric information to the government to help create a federal database that employers could use to identify would-be workers as legal U.S. residents.

It would be the most widespread use of biometrics in the nation, but it would not be the first.

Biometrics is the measurement of a person's unique physical characteristics, using digital fingerprints, handprints, iris scans or facial-recognition cameras.

'Biometrics have become fairly ubiquitous now,' said James Ziglar, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and the recently retired president and chief executive of Cross Match Technologies, a Florida-based biometrics firm" ...more
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