Fingerprinting air passengers entering the United States is one counter-terrorism method used today . DHS, however, has another idea in the works: a behavioral biometrics monitoring system that gauges small changes in a person’s body, dubbed the “fidget factor,” especially in answer to a question such as “Do you intend to cause harm to America?”
Ellen Messmer writes that DHS has actually developed a prototype for putting subjects on a monitoring pad next to a battery of remote-sensing equipment that can very quickly measure ocular changes, heart, and respiration rates and even slight changes in the skin’s thermal properties as a way to detect suspicious behavior. Dr. Starnes Walker, director of the research at the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) at the DHS, discussed the effort during a keynote address at last week’s Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa.
Read more on Homeland Security Newswire.
Not ready for prime time, though? See Automated Biometric Recognition Technologies ‘Inherently Fallible,’ Better Science Base Needed.