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a story re automatic IDing of your arrival in say an airport -- 'We {Will} Find you...' from Privac
From: David Farber <>
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 19:28:49 -0500
[ This , if it works, could make 1984 look like childs play. If you meet in the street ... BB could be watching you. Seems to me that in the long run, technology used to do things like this could generate either a police state or a counter reaction from the public of technilogical R&D for fear of the potential negative results. .. djf] Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 23:17:29 -0500 (EST) From: Paul Robinson <PAUL () TDR COM> Subject: 'We {Will} Find you...' In an article on the cover of the February 10, 1994 {Washington Technology} magazine of the same name, talks about a specialized use of biometrical information (specific details unique to a person like size, etc.) to identify them. The idea behind this is that in an airport, an infrared camera is mounted near the arriving passengers section, taking pictures of every person who is passing through the facility. This captures the 'aura' or underlying facial vascular system (pattern of blood vessels and such). In 1/30 of one second, it captures the data and forwards it via high-speed data lines to an FBI database that has stored auras of the worlds most-wanted criminals and terrorists, then matches generate an order to nab a suspect, supposedly producing "a piece of evidence that is as rock-solid as any presented to a court." Currently, infrared cameras are being attached to desktop computers to create digitized thermograms of people's faces in 1/30 of a second. The company that is working on this technology, Betae Corp, an Alexandria, VA government contractor, claims that the aura is unique for every single person. The photos in the front of the article show two clearly different thermographic images that are claimed to be from identical twins. The facial print does not change over time (and would allegedly require very deep plastic surgery to change it), retains the same basic patterns regardless of the person's health, and can be captured without the person's participation. The technology will have to show it is a better choice than current biometric techniques such as retinagrams (eye photographs, voice prints and the digital fingerprint. A Publicity-Shy Reston, VA company called Mikos holds the patent for certain technology uses of this concept. Dave Evans of Betac who has obtained certain "non exclusive" rights in the technology claims that "thermograms are the only technology he has seen in his more than two decades of security work that meet the five major criteria of an ideal identification system: They are unique for every individual, including identical twins; they identify individuals without their knowing participation; they perform IDs on the fly; they are invulnerable to counterfeiting or disguises; they remain reliable no matter the subject's health or age," the article said. Only retinal photos are equivalent, but potential assasins aren't likely to cooperate in using them. Right now it takes about 2-4K per thermograph, (it says '2-4K of computer memory' but I suspect they mean disk space) and that's not really a problem for a PC-Based system of 2000 or so people going to and from a building; it's another magnitude of hardware to handle millions of aircraft travelers in airports. Also, infrared cameras are not cheap, in the $35,000 to $70,000 range, which, for the moment is likely to keep small law enforcement facilities from thermographing all persons arrested the way all persons arrested are routinely fingerprinted. But we can expect the price to come down in the future. The writer apparently had to agree with Evans not to raise privacy and security issues in the article, it says, since first they have to show the technology works. But even it raised questions: - The technology could be a powerful weapon in a "big brother" arsenal, with cameras in front of many stores and street corners, scanning for criminals or anyone on the government's watch list? - Does the government have the right to randomly photograph people for matching them against a criminal database? - What guarantees do we have that thermographs are actually unique for every person, or that the system is foolproof? - What is the potential for blackmail, with thermographs to prove people were in compromising places and positions? There are also my own points - While this can be used to protect nuclear power plants against infiltration by terrorists (as one example it gives), what is to stop it, for example, to be used to find (and silence or eliminate) critics and dissidents? I wouldn't give China 30 seconds before it would use something like this to capture critics such as the victims of Tianamen Square. - Long history indicates that better technology is not used to improve capture of criminals who violate the lives and property of other private parties, it is used to go after whatever group the government opposes. That's why people who defend themselves with guns against armed criminals in places where gun controls are in effect, can expect to be treated harsher than the criminal would have been. Existence of criminals supports the need for more police and more police-state laws; defending oneself against criminals shows the ineffectiveness of those laws. --- Paul Robinson - Paul () TDR COM
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