Another scary innovation.
As with all scientific advances, this throws up a whole load of interesting situations...
Depending on how sensitive and correct this device is, I can see some being installed in London, UK. Mention "terrorist" in England and you get some pretty draconian legal powers (such as extended questioning periods etc) to use and abuse.
So these are set up at airports... "To trap the terrorists"
Then set up at train stations... "To trap the terrorists"
Then set up at tube stations... "To trap the terrorists"
Before you know it, the terrorist threat has disappeared. Do they remove these machines? Hell, no lets have them sniff for drugs/homosexuality/Linux!
Think I'm paranoid? Then on my way to work, how come I drive through 3 manned police CCTV cameras left over from the "anti terrorist" Ring of Steel?

Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
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This is the kind of stuff that should be illegal. Randomly sampling people as they walk by is no better than randomly searching peoples houses.

This is precisely what is described by "Illegal search" (and maybe even seizure, as they are effectively taking pieces of you as you walk by). In a perfect world, I doubt this would stand up in court, as the "due process" required has to be done on an individual basis, not on a broad scope of mostly innocent people.

What kind of people use their engineering talent to make such things? I would refuse. People do not see the long term cyclical nature of government. Everyone should take an Ancient Western Civilization class. Watch how the ancient civilizations grew, became strong, then became oppresive, then were overthrown for the greater good of humanity. This stuff will only prolong the suffering of humanity when the current civilization's time has come, making it difficult for the cycle to advance to the next level. Instead we end up in a totalitarian, invasive sitiuation.

Don't forget the children who have to live in this world we create...

[RAID on the Forest of Horrors] - Legend of the Web Dragon [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Guilty before proven innocent? (Score:4, Insightful) by JatTDB (jat@removeme.rune.org) on Monday July 10, @09:16AM EDT (User Info) This is similar to the arguments surrounding traffic stops. In most areas in the US, it is perfectly legal for the police to stop and check every driver on the road, as long as they check EVERY driver who comes to the checkpoint. It sucks, but the courts have upheld it. On your point about engineer integrity, this is a really tough question for a lot of people who work on such things. Personal beliefs and convictions are a hard thing to overcome; perhaps these engineers sincerely believe that they are working in the best interests of their fellow man. The too-happy and annoying church people that knock on my door from time to time do something that I could not do within my ethical outlook, but from their perspective the privacy violation is justifiable by the chance to save my soul or something along those lines. "The world does not stop and start at you convenience, Donnie!"

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Re:Guilty before proven innocent? (Score:3, Insightful) by Spasemunki (spasemunkiathushmaildotcom) on Monday July 10, @10:43AM EDT (User Info) http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~collier In most areas in the US, it is perfectly legal for the police to stop and check every driver on the road, as long as they check EVERY driver who comes to the checkpoint. It sucks, but the courts have upheld it. They have, because while you might not like passing through a roadblock that stops everyone on New Years Eve, it beats the alternative: Police stopping 1)Only every black person that comes through or 2)Every person that looks suspicious (see above, add "poor people", "people with facial hair", "foreigners", and "people under 30") Random stops on everyone that comes through are a pain. But it sure beats being targeted by security forces because of the color of your skin or the bad rap your belief system gets. I would much rather see every single person that goes through an airport get a DNA or chemical scan than have them target "profiles". The volume of data and the scrutiny involved in tagging that many people is in itself a gaurantee of some privacy (ways to protect privacy: 1) be alone 2) be in a whacking big crowd), whereas only targeting "profiled" and marginalized groups risks everyone's rights (the hangman's story phenomena: eventually, your group is next.) "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!" -The Professor, Futurama

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You americans have an opportunity to make a real stand here, and it will solve the problem of people spying on your DNA - simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info, like for instance, your social security number. If your DNA cannot be used to identify you, this won't be a problem from the standpoint of raw information collection for marketting purposes (although might be valid statistically, for instance, all the caffiene molecules being secreted through the pores of coders in the development building.. heh heh)

As for explosives testing.. the american people need to vote on what they want more: Freedom or safety. You can be perfectly safe, more or less, but you'll be living in a police state. But, this is something the country will decide, personally, I'd rather live in a rural setting where the man doesn't have as many rights to get on my land.

The drug issue is worse though, and it's why I'll never move to the US. What if I toss a couple grams of an illicit substance in your car and then call the cops? What if I sprinkle you with coke in an elevator? The shit will hit the fan, and with the way the US drug laws work currently, your life is over and you very well might lose your car, if I phrase my "anonymous tip" correctly.

Something to think about..

...don't panic [ Reply to This | Parent ]

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Time to get rid of my skin again!
[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Something you can do (in U.S.) to protect liberty

Not that these are actually in use yet, but I can see it someday if we keep going down this path. It seems like we in the U.S. keep giving up more and more of our personal liberties to have a sense of "safety." Americans are whipped into frenzy by the focus of local TV news on sensationalistic crime reporting. Americans believe they are under seige from gun-toting, crack-smoking gangbangers.

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Honestly, scanning your identity this way is about the last thing you should be worried about. The main goal of testers like these is to be able to scan people rapidly, like the metal detectors at airports. They want to be able to tell if someone is trying to smuggle bombs or drugs onto an airplane. That means that you need to know the answer from your test now, not in an hour or two when the guy's already had a chance to pass his stuff to some third party.

At the present, and for the forseeable future, it's just not possible to make a DNA-based individual ID in anything like real time. Even in the lab with nearly ideal samples doing that kind of thing takes time, and a lot of that is not something that can be easily reduced; certain chemical and physical reactions take time and can't be sped up. That puts a pretty strong damper on using this as a DNA vacum to violate people's rights.

OTOH, you can bet that the war against drugs and the war against terrorism will be used as excuses. Pretty soon you won't be able to get on a plane without being subjected to a battery of tests to make sure that you're not trying to put anything illegal onto the plane. Oops, you're a mining engineer who uses explosives at work? Prepare to be hassled every time you try to fly. Your pot smoking brother came over to visit? Prepare to be stopped and have your luggage examined. In the long term those kinds of minor erosions of personal protection are a much more dangerous threat to privacy than some hypothetical DNA screening.

What if there were no hypothetical questions? [ Reply to This | Parent ]