brain scanning may be used in security checks

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Tue May 12 09:25:55 PDT 2009


(these people all need to die. painfully)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/10/biometric-scanning-brain-security-checks/print 

Brain scanning may be used in security checks

* Owen Bowcott

* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 May 2009 23.12 BST

Distinctive brain patterns could become the latest subject of biometric
scanning after EU researchers successfully tested technology to verify
-identities for security checks.

The experiments, which also examined the potential of heart rhythms to
authenticate individuals, were conducted under an EU-funded inquiry into
biometric systems that could be deployed at airports, borders and in
sensitive locations to screen out terrorist suspects.

Another series of tests fitted a "sensing seat" to a truck to record each
driver's characteristic seated posture in an attempt to spot whether
commercial vehicles had been hijacked.

Details of the Humabio (Human Monitoring and Authentication using Biodynamic
Indicators and Behaviourial Analysis) pilot projects have been published amid
further evidence of biometric technologies penetrating everyday lives.

The Foreign Office plans to spend up to #15m on fixed and mobile security
devices that use methods including "Facial recognition (two and/or three
dimensional), fingerprint recognition, iris recognition and vein imaging palm
recognition".

The biometric sensors and systems, it appears, will primarily be deployed to
protect UK embassies around the world. The contract, about which the FCO
declined to elaborate further, also mentions "surveillance" and "data
collection" services.

The Home Office, meanwhile, has confirmed rapid expansion plans of automated
facial recognition gates: 10 will be operating at major UK airports by
August.

Passengers holding the latest generation of passports travelling through
Manchester and Stansted are already being checked by facial-recognition
cameras.

Biometric identity checks are also becoming more common in the world of
commercial gadgets. New versions of computer laptops and mobile phones are
entering the market with built-in fingerprint scanners to prevent other
people running up large bills and misusing pilfered hi-tech equipment.

Among security experts there is a preference for developing biometric
security devices that do not rely on measuring solely one physiological
trait: offering choice makes scanning appear less intrusive and allows for
double-checking.

The holy grail of the biometrics industry is a scanning mechanism that is
socially acceptable in an era of mass transit and 100 per cent accurate.
Researchers are eager to produce 'non-contact' biometric systems that can
check any individual's identity at a distance.

The US government's secretive IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects
Activity) is seeking development proposals to enhance such technologies.
Insisting that it is not interested in 'contact-type' biometrics, it asks for
ideas that will "significantly advance the intelligence community's ability
to achieve high-confidence match performance ... [for] high fidelity
biometric signatures".

The Humabio project, based in Greece, is involved more in blue-sky scientific
thinking than in intelligence work. Its research, highlighted in the latest
issue of Biometric Technology Today, is at a "pre-commercial,
proof-of-concept stage".





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