Even for FOX NOISE, this article is beyond belief. Homeland Security will read your mind.

[robertpaulsen]

All right, for the initial shocker, here's the opening title and paragraphs:


Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.

Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.

MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security's directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.



Admitting this machine is "Orwellian-sounding", a rational person might get the idea that this article is sympathetic to the notion that this idea is fascist to an absurd degree. But as the article takes Homeland Security's defense of this machine into account, the tone of the article becomes more clear:


This whole security array — the scanners and screeners who make up the mobile lab — is called "Future Attribute Screening Technology" — or FAST — because it is designed to get passengers through security in two to four minutes, and often faster.

If you're rushed or stressed, you may send out signals of anxiety, but FAST isn't fooled. It's already good enough to tell the difference between a harried traveler and a terrorist. Even if you sweat heavily by nature, FAST won't mistake you for a baddie.

"If you focus on looking at the person, you don't have to worry about detecting the device itself," said Bob Burns, MALINTENT's project leader. And while there are devices out there that look at individual cues, a comprehensive screening device like this has never before been put together.

snip

But DHS says this is not Big Brother. Once you are through the FAST portal, your scrutiny is over and records aren't kept. "Your data is dumped," said Burns. "The information is not maintained — it doesn't track who you are."

DHS is now planning an even wider array of screening technology, including an eye scanner next year and pheromone-reading technology by 2010.

snip

And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.

Burns noted his team's goal is to "restore a sense of freedom." Once MALINTENT is rolled out in airports, it could give us a future where we can once again wander onto planes with super-sized cosmetics and all the bottles of water we can carry — and most importantly without that sense of foreboding that has haunted Americans since Sept. 11.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,426485,00.html

I believe there is someone here on DU with a signature that says Orwell intended 1984 as a warning, not an instruction manual. My thoughts exactly. But then I guess I better learn to start hiding my thoughts from now on.

[robertpaulsen]

1. Self-kick

:kick:

[Holly_Hobby]

2. Cue Rod Serling

:hi: