[Infowarrior] - Homeland Security's Minority Report Ambitions

[Richard Forno]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/homeland-secu-1.html

It sounds far-fetched, but this is the aim of Project Hostile Intent (PHI),
the latest anti-terrorism idea from the US Department of Homeland Security.
According to DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie, the DHS wants to develop systems
that can analyse behaviour remotely to predict which of the 400 million
people who enter the US every year have "current or future hostile
intentions".

PHI aims to identify facial expressions, gait, blood pressure, pulse and
perspiration rates that are characteristic of hostility or the desire to
deceive. Then the idea is to develop "real-time, culturally independent,
non-invasive sensors" and software that can detect those behaviours, says
Orluskie. The DHS's Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) suggests that
these sensors could include heart rate and breathing sensors, infrared
light, laser, video, audio and eye tracking.

PHI got quietly under way on 9 July, when HSARPA issued a "request for
information" in which it asked security companies and US government labs to
suggest technologies that could be used to achieve the project's aims. It
hopes to test them at a handful of airports, borders and ports as early as
2010 and to deploy the system at all points of entry to the US by 2012.