Lie detector tests at our airports? Gotta love that Chertoff!

[fooj]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115551793796934752-4C3OqblQ52Ufnr_74rHtRaJm00s_20070814.html?mod=blogs


Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'?
Biometric Device May Have the Answer

By JONATHAN KARP and LAURA MECKLER
August 14, 2006; Page B1

At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.

With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.

GE Security CEO Louis Parker demonstrates some of the company's airport screening devices.The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.

Neither the TSA nor Suspect Detection Systems Ltd., the Israeli company, will discuss the Knoxville trial, whose primary goal was to uncover the designated bad guys, not to identify threats among real travelers. They won't even say what questions were asked of travelers, though the system is generally designed to measure physical responses to hot-button questions like "Are you planning to immigrate illegally?" or "Are you smuggling drugs."

<snip>

Wow. So much for "hating us for our FREEDOM"!!!

[Kutjara]

1. Thoughtcrime detector.

Your government wants to know what you are thinking. If they decide you're hiding your emotions for 'innocent' reasons, they may not arrest you. If they don't like what you're thinking, God help you. Next stop, Room 101.

[villager]

2. Please arrive 1-2 days before your scheduled flight...

n/t

[ixion]

3. I am generally in an unpleasant mood when I'm in the airport, because

well, it sucks there.

Is that considered 'hostile intent'? :shrug:

[Gormy Cuss]

4. I would imagine the hostile intent meter would need a very high

threshold before alerting because I suspect that your mood is the prevalent one these days.

[MadHound]

5. Excuse me, but why are we relying on technology

That is inadmissable in court? One that has been proven time and again to be faulty. A technology that can be easily beaten if one knows what they're doing?

Why are we now trying to peer into people's thoughts and emotions? Why are we performing such intrusive screening?

If all of this is to protect us from terrorists, I say give it up already, we've lost. We have given away so many civil liberities that our country would be unrecognizable to our founding fathers. Our government is becoming so intrusive that it is starting to make 1984 look like a beginners' manual.

Utterly stupid, incredibly intrusive, and this technology will not, cannot protect us. All that this technology does is strip away our civil liberties, and numbs the populace to the even more outrageous intrusions yet to come:grr:

[elehhhhna]

6. Slap it on teh Reeps (hell, dems too!) for all their speeches & debates.

Now THAT'S your tax dollars at work!

[Hubert Flottz]

7. Lie detector tests for Politicians and their cronies!

Drug tests too for the same bunch. How can we take a chance with people having the power to start wars, lying, or being on dope?

[Matariki]

8. kicked n/t