Big Brother Is Smelling You

National Review Online ^ | 12/19/2002 | James Plummer

[GeneD]

DARPA is at it again. Sure, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency laid the groundwork in the 1970's for the very Internet you're using right now. And more recently, you've probably heard much about the Information Awareness Office run by Iran-Contra vet John Poindexter, with their proud seal of a crypto-Masonic pyramid's all-seeing eye casting a death ray over the entire globe. Or whatever that's supposed to be. If you're a regular reader of the National Consumer Coalition's privacy website, you've read about how they want to ID people by how they walk, and how they're plugged in to the database that screens at check-in air passengers' credit, travel, criminal history, et cetera ad infinitum.

And now, if DARPA's newest mad plan works out, those swarms of unionized federal government employees at the airport will have a new toy to annoy you with — robot sensors sniffing you to make sure you're not a smelly terrorist.

Yes, DARPA's Army Research Office, a cousin of Poindexter's Information Awareness Office (with a less-scary pyramid in its logo) published on December 13 a "Presolicitation Notice" of bids for its new "Odortype Detection Program." According to the full 18-page notice, the ARO hopes to have the technology fully functional and ready for use some time around 2008. The thinking behind the plan is that like your genetic code, every person's odor is unique — in fact, it's determined by your genetic code. If the whiz kids at DARPA can prove that, they want to move on to develop filters that will distinguish between the smell of your genes and the smell of whatever foods or drugs you've been putting in your body. To that end, "It is envisioned that this will involve experiments using both rodents and humans." Since the idea behind this program evidently sprang from observations on how mice react to the "chemosignals" given off by each others' "urinary odor," such experiments could easily prove to be an . . . interesting . . . use of your hard-earned tax dollars.

What does all this mean for privacy? Technology itself is neutral, of course, but there is often a case to be made against massive expenditures of tax dollars to develop it. If, a few years from now, "electronic noses" and "biological sensors" sniff out your genetic code and your breakfast and subsequently offer you personalized advertisements as you stroll through the subway a la Minority Report, it won't have been because of voluntary choices made in the marketplace. It will rather have been due to the efforts of men in white coats sitting on piles of involuntarily confiscated tax dollars and rat urine. It's a kind of state-sponsored distortion of a free society.

And if you ask me, it stinks.

— James Plummer is a policy analyst at Consumer Alert, Washington, D.C., who originated and publishes www.nccprivacy.org.

[dfwgator]

I fart in their general direction.

[gundog]

No wonder they don't want people smoking in public places.

[freeeee]

From the Stasi Museum

"The exhibits are housed in part of the old Stasi (East German secret police) headquarters. About a month after the Berlin Wall came down, East German citizens occupied Stasi buildings here and in other cities to prevent officials from destroying documents. Anyone can apply to see their Stasi file.

"These really made an impression on me. Our guide called them "odor fingerprints." The example he gave was of a doctor being told to wipe a piece of fabric over a patient. The fabric would then be preserved so that if the person disappeared he or she could be tracked by dogs."

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

[APBaer]

I wouldn't piss in his mouth
if his heart were on fire.

[pabianice]

More than coincidence?

[dfwgator]

Smell 'ya later.

[CJ Wolf]

The concept reminds me of the security machines in the Ministry of Information in the 80's movie Brazil.