Homeland Security is bankrolling futuristic technology to nab terrorists before they strike

Homeland Security's Project Hostile Intent aims to use behavioral profiling technology to catch terrorists before they act. But getting it to work could be a challenge.


The year is 2012. As soon as you walk into the airport, the machines are watching. Are you a tourist - or a terrorist posing as one? As you answer a few questions at the security checkpoint, the systems begin sizing you up. An array of sensors - video, audio, laser, infrared - feeds a stream of real-time data about you to a computer that uses specially developed algorithms to spot suspicious people.

The system interprets your gestures and facial expressions, analyzes your voice and virtually probes your body to determine your temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and other physiological characteristics - all in an effort to determine whether you are trying to deceive. Fail the test, and you'll be pulled aside for a more aggressive interrogation and searches.

That scenario may sound like science fiction, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is deadly serious about making it a reality.

Interest in the use of what some researchers call behavioral profiling (the DHS prefers to call it assessing "culturally neutral behaviors") for deception detection intensified last July, when the department's human factors division asked researchers to develop technologies to support Project Hostile Intent, an initiative to build systems that automatically identify and analyze behavioral and physiological cues associated with deception. That project is part of a broader initiative called Future Attribute Screening Technologies Mobile Module, which seeks to create self-contained, automated screening systems that are portable and relatively easy to implement.

The DHS has aggressive plans for the technology. There will be an initial demonstration for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) early this year, followed by test deployments in 2010. By 2012, if all goes well, the agency hopes to begin deploying automated test systems at airports, border checkpoints and other points of entry.

If successful, the technology could also be used in private-sector areas such as building-access control and job candidate screening. Critics, however, say that the system will take much longer to develop than the department is predicting - and that it might never work at all.

Current research focuses on three key areas. The first is recognition of gestures and so-called microfacial expressions - a poker player might call them "tells" - that flash across a person's face in about one-third of a second. Some researchers say microÂexpressions can betray a person when he is trying to deceive someone.

The second area is analysis of variations in speech, such as pitch and loudness, for indicators of untruthfulness.

The third is measurement of physiological characteristics such as blood pressure, pulse, skin moisture and respiration that have long been associated with polygraphs, or lie detectors.

By combining the results of all three modalities, the DHS hopes to improve the overall predictive accuracy rate beyond what a polygraph - or any other individual indicator test - can deliver.

Источник: www.securitymagazine.com, January 14, 2008


Big deals shake industry for '08

Already, 2008 is looking to be a vibrant year for the security industry, especially if you consider the number of "deals" being made that shape our industry's future.

For starters, consider the acquisition of Bioscrypt by L-1 Identity Partners, the firm which previously had acquired the unified Identix-Viisage biometrics technology firm. Over two years ago Robert LaPenta said that he was ready to unify the then-fledgling biometrics industry, and he has held true to his word.

So, we have the biometrics industry consolidating, and it's interesting to see at the same time that there's been some consolidation in the remote video monitoring market. Just before the new year, iVerify announced it was purchasing a division of Magal (an Israeli firm) which offered full-service interactive monitoring. Like iVerify's own services, this Magal division offered remote video monitoring. Couple that with a steady number of requests from police for alarm verification and customers' requests for faster responses to security breaches, and you can see 2008 shaping up to be an even stronger year for interactive and video-based monitoring services.

The third thing I have seen is a report out from Copley News Service, which had a beat reporter on hand at CES (Consumer Electronics Show). They found an increase in high-tech security, safety and protection equipment being promoted to the consumer market. It's only anecdotal, but I read that as a sign that the consumer market is increasingly sophisticated and ready for technologies that extend beyond the basic alarm panel. If these three trends really take off -- growth in biometric technology, increased video/interactive monitoring, and consumer uptake of high-tech security devices -- then 2008 could be a very good year indeed for our industry.