People who complain about full body scanners at airports are ludicrous. There is no great civil liberties issue here.

Will some people get a thrill looking at my "privates"? My guess is that after they've examined their first 100 crotches even the most pruriently minded guards will suffer extreme boredom. Having your body scanned seems to me to be at worst a minor indignity – if indeed it is an indignity at all.

But what's coming looks far more intrusive. Imagine a machine that can read your mind.

Quote:

"The aim of one company that blends high technology and behavioral psychology is hinted at in its name, WeCU - as in "We See You."

"The system that Israeli-based WeCU Technologies has devised and is testing in Israel projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, company CEO Ehud Givon said.

"The logic is that people can't help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn't help but respond."

End quote

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/01/08/general-health-care-us-airport-security-the-future_7259910.html

See also:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/981986.html

Will this sort of technology stop at airport security? Might it, for example, be used to check out potential employees without their knowledge? Maybe you won’t get that job because you reacted "inappropriately" to some stimulus of which you were barely aware.

I can imagine banks using this technology to assess credit risks and countries using it to decide who gets to immigrate.

Steven

"People who complain about full body scanners at airports are ludicrous. There is no great civil liberties issue here."

Contrary to your sweeping pronouncement, there is in my view a very real civil liberties issue here. The thought of ones body image being scrutinized by some bored security officer wouldn't personally be as much of a concern to me, as the fact of being forcibly subjected to an unnecessary dose of radiation - not that it would necessarily pose any greater health danger, than the already very real risk of toxic aero fuel contamination once on board. Flying in itself is already enough of a health risk, without airport security adding to the problem.

On the matter of civil liberties, I have always objected to being frisked in the name of routine security procedure. I've even gone to the trouble of proving I had nothing on my person to set off the alarm, but to no avail. I was given the most intrusive frisk imaginable by some jumped-up female security officer for my trouble. I did learn however that the alarm goes off routinely, irrespective of what you have on you. Fair enough, if you're genuinely causing the thing to beep, but to be frisked on the say-so of some automatically programmed piece of machinery is I think a definite invasion of ones civil liberties.

As for a machine reading ones mind, you obviously have far more faith in modern technology than I do. :)

Bronwyn,

Sorry I should have been more explicit.

I have ZERO faith in the ability of a machine to read your mind.

I have ABSOLUTE faith in the ability of managerial types and government officials to DELUDE themselves into BELIEVING they have a machine that can read your mind.

In fact, it's already happening.

Quote:

"... India has become the first country to convict someone of a crime relying on evidence from this controversial machine: a brain scanner that produces images of the human mind in action and is said to reveal signs that a suspect remembers details of the crime in question."

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/asia/15brainscan.html

And:

"Neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan claims his Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test is so accurate, it can tell whether a person committed or only witnessed an act. In June, an Indian judge agreed, using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiancé. Scientific experts are calling the decision 'ridiculous' and 'unconscionable,' protesting that Mukundan's work has not even been peer reviewed. How reliable should a test have to be, when eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible? Does a person have a right to privacy over their own memories, or should society's interest in holding criminals accountable come first?"

See: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/15/1238246&from=rss

I do not know whether the unfortunate woman has appealed or whether her appeal would be upheld.

Perhaps you should all read the the story of Kurt Haskell and his wife on the subject of flight 253 and Farouk who was the alledged terrorist.Kurt and his wife witnessed Farouk and an Indian man try to get Farouk on board without a passport.After protests from the woman at the luggage check in,she was over ruled by a higher authority and this known so called terrorist was allowed to board.They cannot find the Indian man who helped him board.The whole scenario has areal smell to it.
See http://www.911oz.com

Steven,
I'm even less convinced than you that it will really increase security much less be able to get worth while results.

Polygraphs can be fooled there are a number of ways.

It might work on "Lie to me" in one of their very very exaggerated plots or in principal. There are just too many variables. Many are unlikely to be considered in order to be programmed in.

Likewise CSI is exaggerated and devoid of the practical realities.

As for the body scan, I personally not fussed but I can see some of the more salacious mags printing scans of 'celebs'', Boob jobs, prostheses, plates in heads et al. The bored guard(s) selling them to the press. Where there's money there's some idiot who will try.

To me it's yet another example of Capitalism finding another imperfect niche through which to extort more money. Proof again that so long as there is emotion (fear) there's money to be made, regardless if there is actually any improvement or not.

There are mixed reports on the radiation risks to body scans. I wonder if in a few years time there will be discussions about compensation for those frequent travellers who were highly exposed.

Are we being too concerned with the level of threat of terrorism? It is now at Medium since 9/11.

Terrorism has been around for a long time, but now there is a perception that we are more at risk and it is no wonder technologies like this are developed in response. It might be as examinator alluded, another niche for capitalism and as such it would not be out of order to be wary of the potential to exaggerate the threat. Nor is it unreasonable to expect the empire building nature of some of our National Security bodies to influence perceptions.

Personally I believe the threat has increased on our shores, moreso perhaps in the US and UK. Recent terrorism cases in Australia and events in the UK and US certainly indicate the threats are are real.

It is a complex issue. How do you maintain previously enjoyed civil liberties while at the same time reducing the risk of a terrorist event, or allowing a potential terrorist into the country?

It is an issue which the public could certainly be involved given it is both our safety and civil liberties at risk.

The best remedy for terrorism is better diplomatic efforts internationally and avoiding those vested economic interests that produce the fertile breeding grounds for terrorism.

Privacy concerns aside, it is not at all clear full body scanners are worth the effort:

http://j.mp/81syDh

In summary: full body scanners are just a more convenient form of metal detector. More convenient in the sense that they can see the metal that set off the detector was you shoe, so they don't have to stop you. So they don't catch people with plastic explosives taped to their body. They are strictly nail file detectors only.

It is not at all clear that the scanning we do now is worth the effort. I was on an international flight last year that used metal cutlery, yet would have had a nail file removed from me if I were carrying one. The US "do not fly" lists are obviously a complete waste of time. And I am sure the only things those airport sniffer machines catch is recreational drug users.

Besides, it is a bit of a mystery to me why these nut cases who strap small quantities of explosives to themselves don't just take a suite case full of the stuff as travel baggage and set it off during the flight using a wireless signal. You are allowed to carry any number of wireless signal generators (phones, laptops, iPods) and power supplies onto a plane.

Which is not to say every security measure implemented after 9/11 was useless. They have done one thing that would have prevented 9/11. It is dirt cheap, inconveniences almost no one and has 0 running costs. It is the full metal door to the flight deck is now kept closed at all times.

Bronwyn, examinator, rstuart,

Perhaps we have all been too dismissive of the ability of machines ONE DAY to read our thoughts – or at least give some indication of what we are thinking. In yesterday's PLoS One scientist from Carnegie-Mellon University claim to have cracked a part of the brain's "dictionary.

See: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008622

The Carnegie-Mellon website gives a lay person's explanation.

http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2010/January/jan13_braincodesnouns.shtml

Quote:

As the researchers report today in the journal PLoS One, the three codes or factors concern basic human fundamentals: (1) how you physically interact with the object (how you hold it, kick it, twist it, etc.); (2) how it is related to eating (biting, sipping, tasting, swallowing); and (3) how it is related to shelter or enclosure. The three factors, each coded in three to five different locations in the brain, were found by a computer algorithm that searched for commonalities among brain areas in how participants responded to 60 different nouns describing physical objects. For example, the word apartment evoked high activation in the five areas that code shelter-related words.

In the case of hammer, the motor cortex was the brain area activated to code the physical interaction. "To the brain, a key part of the meaning of hammer is how you hold it, and it is the sensory-motor cortex that represents 'hammer holding,'" said Cherkassky, who has a background in both computer science and neuroscience.

The research also showed that the noun meanings were coded similarly in all of the participants' brains. "This result demonstrates that when two people think about the word 'hammer' or 'house,' their brain activation patterns are very similar. But beyond that, our results show that these three discovered brain codes capture key building blocks also shared across people," said Mitchell, head of the Machine Learning Department in the School of Computer Science.

End Quote

Steven,
I was aware of the article and perhaps I mis understood it.
However, it is still too crude to be specific, out side of a MRI and even then I doubt that the science is much more than "the sand in the hand" or "pointing the bone" credibility. If a good lawyer can challenge DNA in court and win then this would provide the same lawyer with a field day.

Notwithstanding, The anti terrorist laws in the US, according to Naomi Kline, the legal niceties might be a moot point. To that end the US has long since been a place I go to willingly. As it stands today my days of going to the states are mercifully over. Now PNG or NZ...... but then again such technology there?
Besides which we're talking Australia so long as security remains in Fed/state Police I'm not that worried.