Scientific Dictatorship

Big Sis Pre-Crime System to Scan Americans For “Malintent”

Guilty until proven innocent – physiological sensors and DHS interrogations to control behavior at sports stadiums, malls, train stations, airports and other public places

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 30, 2011

Chilling technology straight out of Minority Report that would subject Americans to pre-crime interrogations and physiological scans to detect “malintent” at sports stadiums, malls, airports and other public places has moved closer to being implemented after Homeland Security’s FAST program passed its first round of testing.

“Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast,” reports Nature.

The system works by using a computer program that studies physiological indicators of a person, such as heart rate and the steadiness of a person’s gaze, and then uses the data to make a judgment on whether that individual has “malintent”.

Of course, the mere sight of TSA goons conducting grope-downs, radiation-firing body scanners, iris-scanning devices and the routine stresses of travel are all likely to raise heart rates and cause anxiousness in people, so the program will undoubtedly snag innocent travelers. The well-trained, cool and composed terrorist will slip right through, rendering the entire exercise obsolete.

But this isn’t really about catching terrorists, if it was then the DHS would mimic Israel’s highly effective human intelligence system that is far more likelier to spot real bad guys. This is about guilty until proven innocent, and forcing every American to prove that they are a well-behaved drone who won’t complain about a low grade pervert sticking his hand down their pants.

Remember, the TSA already has “behavior detection officers” whose job it is to watch for people who express dissatisfaction at being groped, including not smiling. Not enjoying having your junk fondled by a complete stranger is now a “suspicious activity”. FAST’s primary purpose is to chill dissent about harassment dished out by TSA goons, by intimidating travelers into thinking they will be prevented from flying, taking the train, entering a mall or a sports stadium, unless they accept the grope down or the body scan with complete subservience.

“Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. “I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated,” he says. “Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade.”

The report claims that, “FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject,” and yet in DHS’ promotional video for the program, participants are bombarded with questions to ascertain whether they are terrorists.

The clip above shows individuals who attend “security events” being led into trailers before they are interrogated as to whether they are terrorists while lie detector-style computer programs analyze their physiological responses. The subjects are asked about their whereabouts, and if they are attempting to smuggle bombs or recording devices into the “expo,” proving that the technology is intended to be used at public events and not just airports. Individuals who do not satisfy the first lie detector-style test are then asked “additional questions”.

The fact that Homeland Security’s own internal reports list supporting political candidates like Ron Paul, flying US flags, owning gold, displaying political bumper stickers, or owning firearms as signs of behavioral malintent that could be linked to terrorism or extremism tells you all you need to know about how FAST checkpoints could be used to snag political dissidents who commit the thought crime of believing they still had any rights under the US Constitution that Janet Napolitano is gleefully ripping to shreds.

In the coming years, staying away from airports won’t be enough to avoid a run-in with TSA goons. Homeland Security has embarked on a massive gestapo-like occupation of America where “security” checkpoints will litter highways and roads, transport hubs, as well as public events and anywhere crowds gather.

DHS has already announced that TSA agents and VIPR teams will be expanding their mobile radiation-scanning checkpoints from rest stops to highways and roads in general, as Big Sis accelerates Soviet-style levels of control over the population.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Labels: big brother, Department of Homeland Security, FAST, Homeland Security, Minority Report

“Minority Report” Scanners Are Coming: Company Receives $15 Million to Develop Long-Range Facial Recognition Technology

Singularity Hub

Ever heard of a company called Digital Signal Corporation? Neither had I.

Well, remember the movie “Minority Report,” how cameras everywhere would scan Tom Cruise, instantly recognizing him to either welcome him into the shopping mall or send the cops after him? The same sort of facial recognition technology is exactly what Digital Signal Corporation is into–except these guys are for real.

Marketwire recently reported that DSC received $15 million to develop three dimensional long-range biometric facial recognition technology...[Full Article]

Labels: big brother, biometrics, face recognition, Minority Report

Pre-Crime Technology To Be Used In Washington D.C.

Computers predict what crime will be committed where, by who and when

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Aug 24th, 2010

Law enforcement agencies in Washington D.C. have begun to use technology that they say can predict when crimes will be committed and who will commit them, before they actually happen.

The Minority Report like pre-crime software has been developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Previous incarnations of the software, already being used in Baltimore and Philadelphia were limited to predictions of murders by and among parolees and offenders on probation.

According to a report by ABC News, however, the latest version, to be implemented in Washington D.C., can predict other future crimes as well.

“When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is ‘what level of supervision do you provide?’” Berk told ABC News, intimating that the program could have a bearing on the length of sentences and/or bail amounts.

The technology sifts through a database of thousands of crimes and uses algorithms and different variables, such as geographical location, criminal records and ages of previous offenders, to come up with predictions of where, when, and how a crime could possibly be committed and by who.

The program operates without any direct evidence that a crime will be committed, it simply takes datasets and computes possibilities.

“People assume that if someone murdered then they will murder in the future,” Berk also states, “But what really matters is what that person did as a young individual. If they committed armed robbery at age 14 that’s a good predictor. If they committed the same crime at age 30, that doesn’t predict very much.”

Critics have urged that the program encourages categorizing individuals on a risk scale via computer mathematics, rather than on real life, and that monitoring those people based on such a premise is antithetic to a justice system founded on the premise of the presumption of innocence.

Other police departments and law agencies across the country have begun to look into and use similar predictive technologies. The Memphis Police Department, for example uses a program called Operation Blue CRUSH, which uses predictive analytics developed by IBM.

Other forms of pre-crime technology in use or under development include surveillance cameras that can predict when a crime is about to occur and alert police, and even neurological brain scanners that can read people’s intentions before they act, thus
detecting whether or not a person has “hostile intent”.

It is not too far fetched to imagine all these forms of the technology being used together in the future by law enforcement bodies.

The British government has previously debated introducing pre-crime laws in the name of fighting terrorism. The idea was that suspects would be put on trial using MI5 or MI6 intelligence of an expected terror attack. This would be enough to convict if found to be true “on the balance of probabilities”, rather than “beyond reasonable doubt”.

The government even has plans to collect lifelong records on all residents starting at the age of five, in order to screen for those who might be more likely to commit crimes in the future.

Another disturbing possibility for such technology comes in the form of a financial alliance of sorts between Internet search engine giant Google and the investment arm of the CIA and the wider U.S. intelligence network.

Google and In-Q-Tel have recently injected a sum of up to $10 million each into a company called Recorded Future, which uses analytics to scour Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information, which is used to “assemble actual real-time dossiers on people.”

The company describes its analytics as “the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence” and says it can also “predict the future”.

Recorded Future takes in vast amounts of personal information such as employment changes, personal education and family relations. Promotional material also shows categories covering pretty much everything else, including entertainment, music and movie releases, as well as other innocuous things like patent filings and product recalls.

Those detached from any kind of moral reality will say “If you’ve got nothing to hide then what is the problem with being scanned for pre-crime? If it keeps us all safe from murderers, rapists and terrorists I’m all for it”.

How far towards a literal technological big brother police state will we slip before people wake up to the fact?

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor at Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and regular contributor to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

In the video below, Alex Jones explains how Google’s plan to end the Internet as we know it ties in to the wider surveillance agenda and the total information awareness network under the CIA and Homeland Security.

Labels: D.C., Minority Report, precrime, software, Washington

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBdPEK5pNtE

First posted September 24, 2009

Labels: Minority Report, Patriot Act, precrime, prolonged detention, Rachel Maddow

Billboard Watches You Shop

RETAILERS are targeting individual shoppers with digital billboards like those in the hit Tom Cruise film Minority Report.

Cameras in the advert hoardings identify the age and sex of passers-by then display relevant products.

Labels: big brother, Minority Report, privacy