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Forget RFID and implanting chips.. holy big brother.

Submitted by intranets on Tue, 2008-02-12 01:34.

A new patent filed discusses the use of the nifty airport body scanners to not only see through your skin, but also to uniquely identify you.

Go read the patent here and the applications are stunning. For instance, a synthetic aperture radar sitting in a van parked in front of your house. Maybe we have entered some new sci-fi world where you won’t need to carry keys or RealID cards. Just don’t break a rib or you might become a person of interest.

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Not looking to dilute the concern, but

Submitted by bringiton on Tue, 2008-02-12 02:55.

I think this system is unlikely. There is no proof of concept given here, not needed for a patent. My recollection, the Russians did some work on this but the heat generated was extensive. Big enough pulse and you could get an image, but the subject would be very uncomfortable if not lethally cooked. Can’t dig up any supportive references on the net so I’m not calling bullshit on the inventors, but I will say I’m really, really skeptical.

On the other hand, this from WaPo is very real:

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics
$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces

Once this biometrics system is up and running it will grow, they always do, and 24/7 surveillance that can identify individuals and track their movement will be possible. One of these days maybe we could have a conversation about the prospects for privacy and anonymity in the public sphere, including what those terms actually mean in what is rapidly becoming a global village in a literal way.

Anyone who has ever lived in a village knows there is no real privacy and certainly no anonymity in that setting. How we will preserve either in the future is going to be a challenge, and perhaps not possible. The claimed tradeoffs may be too persuasive for public opinion to resist, and if so the only meaningful option will be to shift the argument to regulation and control rather than obstruction.

I don’t have answers, but I do have a lot of questions.

I dunno

Submitted by intranets on Tue, 2008-02-12 04:45.

UWB applications and low power SAR have come a long way. If you can image infantry and cars through foilage, I don’t think it is that much of a stretch to use it for skeletal images.

Well, maybe

Submitted by bringiton on Tue, 2008-02-12 05:57.

I’m not being my usual dogmatic self on this one because I’m not totally sure, but there’s a big difference on what happens to mammalian tissue with that much energy being pumped in at those frequencies versus plants or metal and plastic or ceramic etc. Our ambulatory bags of little water bags tend to scatter the signal, take a lot of oompf to penetrate and get a bounce from bone clean and distinct enough to pick up detail. Maybe, maybe but my spidy sense is tingling.

That facial recognition software stuff is getting pretty accurate though, and that’s going to make the videocamera monitoring a lot more intrusive.