'Pre-crime' detector shows promise

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/09/precrime-detector-is-showing-p.html

'Pre-crime' detector shows promise

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security
is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people
walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent
tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose
who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more.

Commentators slated the idea that sensors could spot people up to no good
from their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, or fleeting facial
expressions. One likened it to the "pre-crime" units that predict criminal
behaviour in the movie Minority Report.

However, last week, the DHS science unit gave an update on the project, now
dubbed the less-hostile-sounding Future Attribute Screening Technologies
(FAST) programme. And, if DHS claims are to be believed, the research appears
to be getting somewhere.

At an equestrian centre in Maryland, 140 paid volunteers walked through a
pair of trailers kitted out with a battery of FAST sensors, including
cameras, infrared heat sensors and an eyesafe laser radar, called a
Bio-Lidar, that measures pulse and breathing rate from a distance.

Some subjects were told to act shifty, be evasive, deceptive and hostile. And
many were detected. "We're still very early on in this research, but it is
looking very promising," says DHS science spokesman John Verrico. "We are
running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception."

That sounds incredibly high at such an early stage in the research - but only
tests on vast quantities of real people, rather than eager volunteers, will
present any real test.

Questions remain, however, as to how secure the system is. The machines could
reveal health conditions like heart murmurs and breathing problems as well as
stress levels - which would be an invasion of privacy.

But Verrico says FAST has been through stringent privacy controls (pdf) and
that the data is never matched to a name. It is only used to make decisions
about whether to question someone, and then discarded.

The trial technology was installed in a trailer because it is planned to be
easily transportable, so that FAST trucks can appear at any sports or music
event as required. They look set to become as regular a sight at such events
as mobile toilets and catering trucks.

But is going to make a real difference? Or will bad guys learn to play the
system and render it another piece of what expert Bruce Schneier dubs
"security theatre".

Given that the FAST approach is not much different to the long established -
and long established as unreliable - polygraph, that certainly seems
plausible.

Paul Marks, technology correspondent