New Technology Detects Terrorists Before They Strike
All your Big Brother nightmares are about to come true, thanks to an $800,000 award from the Nation Science Foundation. The money is funding computer and behavioral scientists at the University of Buffalo to work on a tracking system that will allow authorities to score an individuals likeliness to commit a terrorist act.
Sound creepy? Well, it gets even better. The system works by monitoring the faces, voices, bodies, and other biometrical data of people while they're being interviewed on video (so make sure you don't get pulled over and interrogated in some special room). Venu Govindaraju, professor of computer science and engineering, says "The goal is to identify the perpetrator in a security setting before he or she has the chance to carry out the attack." We guess innocent until proven guilty is a quaint notion in a post 9/11 world.
The system will also feature the ability to learn over time from interviews with subjects, meaning that having an off day could raise your "malfeasance" score. We're not even sure how to react to this sort of news any more except to remind everyone of Blackstone's formulation, very much at the heart of our legal system -- "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
From Engadget
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