4 ms·

I'm a little disappointed with the response here. This isn't "racial profiling". FAST is designed to track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voi

I'm a little disappointed with the response here. This isn't "racial profiling". FAST is designed to track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voice pitch changes, prosody changes (alterations in the rhythm and intonation of speech), eye movements, body heat changes, and breathing patterns. Occupation and age are also considered. A government source told CNET that blink rate and pupil variation are measured too. This technology should only be used to say "look here" to assist the people behind the technology. Ideally, this will help a few screeners identify people in a crowd who are behaving abnormally. This 'tech' has been used in security for ages. Only earlier we called it "I have a funny feeling about that guy" and now we can say "this man is suspiciously nervous, and here's the science to show it". I don't want to get political, but the politically correct method of pure random screening in airports is horribly ineffective. Security professionals in unstable regions know this, which is why they are trained to look for the exact things this device is looking for. The danger of this technology isn't that it will start issuing arrest warrants based on probable intent. The danger is that the people behind the technology will get it wrong. History shows that we don't need technology to help get it wrong. Please don't confuse this technology with political positions. Has the TSA gotten out of hand? Sure. Are our rights being violated? Probably in many cases. Does this technology have anything to do with that? That only depends on how it's used.

jarrett 15y ago
We can't unequivocally say it's not racial profiling. All we know from the article is that ethnicity is being used as a factor. If a person's race/ethnicity can in any way make it more likely for the system to flag that person, then racial profiling is arguably happening. So the question is: Under this system, can a person's race increase the likelihood of a positive result? It seems the answer is yes. If race is a factor, that means it's somehow being used as in input into the algorithm that determines a person's suspicion score. Maybe it's not something as heavy handed as "boost the suspicion score if the person is of race X." Suppose it's "weigh eye movement more heavily than breathing if the person is of race X." Even then, the effect is to increase the likelihood of a positive result _for some people_ based on their race.
- dkokelley 15y ago
  I missed the explicit part about ethnicity. Rereading that makes me think that those factors are used as a baseline along with age, height, and weight to determine the normal 'indicative' factors like pupil dilation and heart rate, and then flag people who are abnormal given their ethnic, age, height, and weight group norms. It seems that either the phrase in question was poorly worded, or the DHS is in for a serious media storm.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- innes 15y ago
  The article literally states that the prototype screening facility will use ethnicity as an indicator Personally, I'm going to need more evidence than "an article on the Internet makes an outrageous claim, therefore the outrageous claim is true".
jambo 15y ago
The real problem is that it presupposes thought-crime. The DHS document in the sidebar says FAST will "identify individuals with malintent ... *Malintent: the state of mind of individuals intending to cause harm ..." Whether it's really scientific, I doubt we'll ever find out. But people will be more likely to believe it's scientific because it comes out of a box that uses 'algorithms'. Another problem is one that Schneier writes about: profiling leaves vulnerabilities that can be probed, discovered, and exploited. In the case of trying to sense malicious intent, it could be sending someone who doesn't know they're an attacker. Or someone who doesn't exhibit the outward signs that are being profiled.
- innes 15y ago
  The real problem is that it presupposes thought-crime. The problem with that is that it's hysterical bullshit, and implies that people will be prosecuted for thoughts. This is a tool for helping to target effort in the screening process. To be fair, the article itself was guilty of being nonsense first. Mentioning 'ethnicity' as an input to the system was the give-away. Even if true, this would never be admitted by whoever was developing the system in question. When I read that, the red flag went up, and I assumed the entire article was untrustworthy. But then, I wasn't on the lookout for sensational stuff to get worked up about.
- jchrisa 15y ago
  Or just give the attacker Xanax and they'll be cool as as cucumber.
- dkokelley 15y ago
  I agree that a system like this could be probed and exploited. The real issue comes up after someone is flagged as suspicious. Is this person arrested right away? Is this person subject to additional screening? It would violate basic human decency to arrest someone for appearing suspicious, regardless of whether or not he or she was 'scientifically suspicious'. Taking a closer look at suspiciously behaving individuals doesn't seem to cross that line for me. We've been doing that for years. The only difference now is that we have a machine to help scale that effort.
gjm11 15y ago
> This isn't "racial profiling". The CNET article says it's a system that [DHS] hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate. In the CBS News article linked from there, essentially the same claim is made. There's no actual evidence in either article that ethnicity will be used. One of the documents on the EPIC site (fastinstallation.pdf) says "The system is gender-, culture- and age-neutral". I've skimmed through all the documents linked from there and can't find anything that admits to using ethnicity or gender. (There is one paragraph that says that a FAST trial will collect ethnicity and gender information "to understand whether the technology performs differently with different demographic groups", which is a different thing entirely.) If the system is ever deployed, I wouldn't be desperately surprised if it turns out to use ethnicity as evidence of malintent. But it does look as if Declan McCullagh may be making a dramatic claim for which he lacks evidence.

jarrett 15y ago

We can't unequivocally say it's not racial profiling. All we know from the article is that ethnicity is being used as a factor. If a person's race/ethnicity can in any way make it more likely for the system to flag that person, then racial profiling is arguably happening. So the question is: Under this system, can a person's race increase the likelihood of a positive result? It seems the answer is yes. If race is a factor, that means it's somehow being used as in input into the algorithm that determines a person's suspicion score. Maybe it's not something as heavy handed as "boost the suspicion score if the person is of race X." Suppose it's "weigh eye movement more heavily than breathing if the person is of race X." Even then, the effect is to increase the likelihood of a positive result _for some people_ based on their race.

dkokelley 15y ago
I missed the explicit part about ethnicity. Rereading that makes me think that those factors are used as a baseline along with age, height, and weight to determine the normal 'indicative' factors like pupil dilation and heart rate, and then flag people who are abnormal given their ethnic, age, height, and weight group norms. It seems that either the phrase in question was poorly worded, or the DHS is in for a serious media storm.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

innes 15y ago
The article literally states that the prototype screening facility will use ethnicity as an indicator Personally, I'm going to need more evidence than "an article on the Internet makes an outrageous claim, therefore the outrageous claim is true".

jambo 15y ago

The real problem is that it presupposes thought-crime. The DHS document in the sidebar says FAST will "identify individuals with malintent ... *Malintent: the state of mind of individuals intending to cause harm ..." Whether it's really scientific, I doubt we'll ever find out. But people will be more likely to believe it's scientific because it comes out of a box that uses 'algorithms'. Another problem is one that Schneier writes about: profiling leaves vulnerabilities that can be probed, discovered, and exploited. In the case of trying to sense malicious intent, it could be sending someone who doesn't know they're an attacker. Or someone who doesn't exhibit the outward signs that are being profiled.

innes 15y ago
The real problem is that it presupposes thought-crime. The problem with that is that it's hysterical bullshit, and implies that people will be prosecuted for thoughts. This is a tool for helping to target effort in the screening process. To be fair, the article itself was guilty of being nonsense first. Mentioning 'ethnicity' as an input to the system was the give-away. Even if true, this would never be admitted by whoever was developing the system in question. When I read that, the red flag went up, and I assumed the entire article was untrustworthy. But then, I wasn't on the lookout for sensational stuff to get worked up about.
jchrisa 15y ago
Or just give the attacker Xanax and they'll be cool as as cucumber.
dkokelley 15y ago
I agree that a system like this could be probed and exploited. The real issue comes up after someone is flagged as suspicious. Is this person arrested right away? Is this person subject to additional screening? It would violate basic human decency to arrest someone for appearing suspicious, regardless of whether or not he or she was 'scientifically suspicious'. Taking a closer look at suspiciously behaving individuals doesn't seem to cross that line for me. We've been doing that for years. The only difference now is that we have a machine to help scale that effort.

gjm11 15y ago

> This isn't "racial profiling". The CNET article says it's a system that [DHS] hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate. In the CBS News article linked from there, essentially the same claim is made. There's no actual evidence in either article that ethnicity will be used. One of the documents on the EPIC site (fastinstallation.pdf) says "The system is gender-, culture- and age-neutral". I've skimmed through all the documents linked from there and can't find anything that admits to using ethnicity or gender. (There is one paragraph that says that a FAST trial will collect ethnicity and gender information "to understand whether the technology performs differently with different demographic groups", which is a different thing entirely.) If the system is ever deployed, I wouldn't be desperately surprised if it turns out to use ethnicity as evidence of malintent. But it does look as if Declan McCullagh may be making a dramatic claim for which he lacks evidence.