- In the wake of last week's terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington, all kinds of fancy machines - from facial-recognition
databases
to advanced luggage scanners to glorified autopilots - have been proposed
as technological fixes in the fight against terrorism. So what do such
technologies have to offer?
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- One popular option is biometrics. A biometric is, as
its name suggests, a measurement of a biological characteristic.
Fingerprints
are the best-known example, but others include hand geometry, iris scanning
and facial recognition. Because biometrics cannot be lost, forgotten or
passed from one person to another, and are hard to forge, they are already
used widely as security measures.
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- Biometric systems are employed for two main purposes.
The first is identification (who is this person?), in which a subject's
identity is determined by comparing a measured biometric against a database
of stored records. The second is verification ( is this person who he
claims
to be? ), which compares a measured biometric with one known to come from
a particular person. All biometrics can be used for verification, but only
those that are unique to an individual notably fingerprints, iris scanning
and facial recognition can be used for identification. As a result,
different
biometrics are used for different kinds of security check.
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- Biometrics are widely employed for access control to
ensure that only authorised people can gain entry to particular rooms or
buildings. Hand-geometry systems, which measure the shape, size and other
characteristics (such as finger length) of some or all of the hand, are
used to control access and check identities at airports, offices,
factories,
schools, hospitals, nuclear-power plants and high-security government
buildings.
Since hand geometry is a verification not an identification technology
(people's hands are more similar than their fingerprints), users are
required
to make a claim about who they are by swiping a card, for example before
a scan. The biometric template of the person they claim to be (which can
be stored on the card itself) is then compared with the scan.
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- A well-known example of the technology is the INSPASS
programme, which allows frequent travellers to the United States to skip
immigration queues at large airports by swiping a card and placing their
hand on a scanner. In theory, this idea could be extended to require
passports
to contain a hand-geometry biometric, which could be compared with the
holder's hand. That would make passports harder to forge. But it would
also require international agreement and co-operation over biometric
standards.
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- The Human Factor
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- There would appear to be considerable scope for wider
use of access-control technology. In security tests carried out at 83 airports last year by America's Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), attempts to g
ain
access to secure areas succeeded 31% of the time, and inspectors
successfully
boarded planes in 82 cases. But a report published by the Department of
Transportation found that most of these security violations were due to
human factors: airport staff failed to ensure that doors closed properly
behind them, and did not challenge people they met in unauthorised areas.
Biometrics cannot do anything about that. This summer, the FAA proposed
new rules under which airport staff could be fined as much as $11,000 for
holding doors open for others, or allowing friends into secure
areas.
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- Another biometric technology that is starting to appear
in airports is iris scanning. This is used in dozens of jails in America
to identify prisoners, staff and visitors, ensuring that the right people
are let in and out. Iris scanners have also been tested by banks in a
number
of countries to identify users of cash machines. Since the iris scan
identifies
each customer, there is no need to insert a bank card or remember a
personal
identification number.
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- Iris scanners are being tried out in several airports
to let frequent flyers step up to a machine and get their boarding cards
automatically. But all this does is to make it more likely that the person
who gets on a plane is the rightful ticket-holder. The terrorists
responsible
for last week's attacks appear to have travelled under their own names
and with their own passports. Iris scanners would not have stopped
them.
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- Facial recognition, on the other hand, is unique among
biometrics in that it can be used passively in other words, an image of
a face can be compared with a database of suspects without the subject's
knowledge. Such systems, connected to a network of closed-circuit
television
(CCTV) cameras, are already used to spot criminals and football hooligans
in Britain. This summer the same technology was installed at Keflavik
airport
in Iceland.
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- Joseph Atick of Visionics, a firm based in New Jersey
that is one of the leading suppliers of facial-recognition technology,
points out that iris scans and fingerprints were not available for last
week's hijackers, but pictures were. One of the hijackers, he says, was
caught on videotape at a Malaysian airport meeting members of the group
that attacked the USS Cole in Aden harbour last year. What we need to
do is to build an international counter-terrorist database with pictures
and faceprints for every dangerous individual, he says. As well as
passively
scanning airports for known suspects, he suggests that everybody should
be required to have a close-up facial scan as they check in, just as your
credit is checked when you buy something with a credit card.
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- Facing Reality
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- The traditional objections to facial-recognition systems
that they violate privacy, and could end up being used to pick out people
with overdue parking tickets, as well as terrorists are likely to be
drowned
out in the fearful atmosphere following last week's attacks. But according
to Richard Smith of the Privacy Foundation, a lobby group based in Denver,
Colorado, even if facial-recognition systems were in place, the technology
would not be a silver bullet. Most of the hijackers, he notes, were not
suspected terrorists, so no pictures of them were available. And in the
case of the two who were suspects, attempts to track them down had begun
only a few weeks before the attack. He concludes that a breakdown in
communications,
rather than inadequate technology, is the problem.
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- Another technology that has been the focus of renewed
interest is advanced forms of luggage scanner, such as three-dimensional
scanners, remote scanners that can look at people at a distance, and
scanners
with threat image projection (TIP). The idea behind TIP is to keep
luggage
screeners on their toes by randomly projecting a fake threat image in
other words, a picture of a knife, gun or explosive device into occasional
items of luggage. When the screener presses the threat button, the fake
image is removed, and the luggage can be checked again for real threats.
In this way, it is possible to monitor the performance of individual
screeners.
TIP-capable luggage scanners are now being installed in America's largest
airports.
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- But however clever scanning machinery becomes, the real
problem, once again, is human. Luggage screeners are paid little, and the
work is tedious, so that it is hard to concentrate for long. Research by
the FAA, which has not been published in detail for security reasons, found
that screeners' ability to detect suspect objects is not improving, despite
the new technology.
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- In any case, last week's hijackers seem to have used
weapons that would not have been picked up as threats by existing scanners.
A really determined hijacker, notes Frank Taylor of the Aviation Security
Centre at Cranfield University in Britain, could use almost any blunt
object,
or even a piece of in-flight cutlery, as a weapon. Already, some airlines
have switched to plastic cutlery as a precautionary measure.
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- Faced with terrorists who may not be carrying weapons,
and are travelling under their own names, another technology that might
help to identify them is computer-assisted passenger screening (CAPS),
which was first introduced by a number of American airlines in 1998. CAPS
uses information from the reservation system, and a passenger's prior
travel
history, to select passengers for additional security procedures. It has
been fiercely criticised by civil-liberties campaigners who accuse it of
picking on members of particular ethnic groups or nationalities.
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- Besides, terrorists expect to be questioned at check-in,
says Mr Taylor. He suggests that CCTV surveillance should be extended to
cover passengers away from areas where they expect to be observed . Some
of last week's hijackers were reported to have had an argument in the car
park at Boston airport. But Mr Taylor admits that this process could not
be automated. There would also be privacy implications, plus the usual
accusations of bias.
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- On Autopilot Into The
Future
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- If spotting terrorists on the ground is so hard, what
can be done to make aircraft harder to hijack in the air? Again, there
has been no shortage of suggestions. Robert Ayling, a former boss of
British
Airways, suggested in the Financial Times this week that aircraft could
be commandeered from the ground and controlled remotely in the event of
a hijack. The problem with this, says Mr Taylor, is that remote-control
systems might themselves open aircraft up to hijacking by malicious
computer
hackers.
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- He suggests instead that automated landing systems should
be modified so that, in the event of a hijack, the pilot could order his
aircraft to land itself, with no option to cancel the command. Another
idea is that existing collision-avoidance and terrain-avoidance systems
could be modified to prevent aircraft from being crashed deliberately.
But such proposals, says Chris Yates, an aviation-security expert at Jane's
Defence Weekly, belong in the realms of science fiction . (Mr Yates
advocates
simpler, low-tech fixes, such as doing away with curbside and city-centre
check-ins, and allowing only passengers to have access to departure
gates.)
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- In short, for every quick fix, there is an unseen
drawback.
Clever gizmos can do only so much, and they may also provide a dangerous
illusion of invulnerability. No matter how advanced the technology, it
has to be backed up with skilled personnel and appropriate procedures.
Until now, people's priorities when travelling have been convenience and
price, not security. That may change. But the reality is that no technology
can neutralise the threat of terrorism. Indeed, nothing ever can.
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