I’ve been waiting to see signs of this and, after seeing airline security alert levels raised today, the stories are starting to emerge. Here’s a story about a technology that uses video cameras to scan luggage for suspicious items by monitoring the electromagnetic energy given off by different objects. So explosives can be theoretically be detected by their electromagnetic signal. Cool.

But the really interesting aspect of this story is that this same technology can be used to monitor *people* and watch for signs of “distress” and “erratic body movements” that can somehow lead to suspicious behavior. How this will be used in practice is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see police start using this to catch “furtive movements” giving rise to probable cause to detain and search suspicious individuals. Sounds far fetched now, perhaps, but it’s getting very hard to determine where adequate security from terrorists begins and sufficient protection of individual liberties and privacy ends. We’re facing a real sea change of expectations.

Read the story here. Thanks to Stacy Jones for the story.

RP

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Software, Hardware, Miscellany, Cool Science, You Won't Believe This. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.