Alvin Shubert gets funky in an aluminum suit - Round Oak, Georgia, 1997.
Posted on 05/21/2003 9:07:59 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
Every step you take, new system will know it's youEARLY WARNING: The US military wants to design and build a radar surveillance and analysis system that can identify individuals at 180m
AP
Wednesday, May 21, 2003,Page 7
Watch your step! The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk, for use in a new antiterrorist surveillance system.
Operating on the theory that an individual's walk is as unique as a signature, the Pentagon has financed a research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology that has been 80 to 95 percent successful in identifying people.
If the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, orders a prototype, the individual "gait signatures" of people could become part of the data to be linked together in a vast surveillance system the Pentagon agency calls Total Information Awareness.
That system already has raised privacy alarms on both ends of the political spectrum, and Congress in February barred its use against American citizens without further review.
Nevertheless, US government documents show that scores of major defense contractors and prominent universities applied last year for the first research contracts to design and build the surveillance and analysis system.
DARPA is the federal agency that helped develop the Internet as a research tool for universities and government contractors. Its newest project is massive by any measure.
In its advice to contractors, DARPA declared, "The amounts of data that will need to be stored and accessed will be unprecedented, measured in petabytes."
One petabyte would dwarf most existing databases; it's roughly equal to 50 times the Library of Congress, which holds more than 18 million books.
Conceived and managed by retired Admiral John Poindexter, the TIA surveillance system is based on his theory that "terrorists must engage in certain transactions to coordinate and conduct attacks against Americans, and these transactions form patterns that may be detectable."
DARPA said the goal is to draw conclusions and predictions about terrorists from databases that record such transactions as passport applications, visas, work permits, driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, arrests or reports of suspicious activities.
TIA is an effort to design breakthrough software "for treating these databases as a virtual, centralized grand database" capable of being quickly mined by counterintelligence officers even though the data will be held in many places, many languages and many formats, DARPA documents say.
Poindexter's plan would integrate some projects DARPA has been working on for several years, including research headed by Gene Greneker at Georgia Tech. At a cost of less than US$1 million over the past three years, he has been aiming a 0.3m2 radar dish at 100 test volunteers to record how they walk.
Elsewhere at Georgia Tech, DARPA is funding researchers to use video cameras and computers to try to develop distinctive gait signatures.
"One of the nice things about radar is we see through bad weather, darkness, even a heavy robe shrouding the legs, and video cameras can't," Greneker said in an interview. "At 600 feet [183m] we can do quite well," he said.
And the target doesn't have to be doing a Michael Jackson moonwalk to be distinctive because the radar detects small frequency shifts in the reflected signal off legs, arms and the torso as they move in a combination of different speeds and directions.
"There's a signature that's somewhat unique to the individual," Greneker said. "We've demonstrated proof of this concept."
The researchers are anticipating ways the system might be fooled.
"A woman switching from flats to high heels probably wouldn't change her signature significantly," Greneker said. "But if she switched to combat boots, that might have a difference."
Yes, I learned all about the dangers of radar while on the Ike. Some guy forgot to tag the equipment, and was on the main tower. Someone hit the on button, and someone yelled. It was on for less than 30 seconds. The guy went straight to medical, they checked him, he seemed fine. Within 30 minutes he was dead, his organs cooked!
I had written to him the following:
Okay, I have problems with a radar being aimed at me "to catch my walking gait". Radar can be damaging to humans, for many reasons.
I remember working with a guy nicknamed "Tuna" at the first company I worked for after graduating from College - who was a radar expert. I remember being around after 5 and walking around to the Ladies Rm. not knowing that he was there, doing some form of experiment. He said something like, "Take another step and you're not going to have children". Remember, radar is in our microwaves? It's what jangles proteins enough to cook them?
I have also read that radar, like the kind that sweeps airports can be harmful to eyes, and cause cataracts. I lived and worked on a Naval Air Station in Spain, and worse, walked inside an "array" to go to work every day. Not good to my thinking. Having this building inside the array meant that it was safe from any "signal intercept" but I'm not sure the humans walking in and out of the building were safe from anything.
Perhaps this is all speculation, and perhaps my reading has been at the fringe of science - I don't know. It is possible to read articles that sound official and truthful and based on science, and they can be pure hokum. But from what I've learned about radars, I'm not thrilled to know that one can be aimed at me in public spaces, airports, shopping malls, wherever they decide to put them. What I do know is that getting my feet fluorscoped as a child at the Buster Brown Shoe store (where they used Fluorscopes to make sure that the shoes fit perfectly without the knowledge about radiation exposure to a child. A great idea. NOT) gave me thyroid tumors, requiring surgery when I was 30. Radiation to the body is accumulative, and I'm not thrilled with what I read in this article. At all.
Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland World of united States Government. Success is measured in how many terrorists are captured, not how many honest citizens are inconvenienced, incarcerated, bankrupted, or otherwise permanently harmed in the process. Just like in economics, success is measured in stock price, no matter how many are unemployed, nor how much money the company has lost.
And this is designed to keep me safe? This country is doomed.
Our government needs everything it can get for the War on Terrorism! You are opposing our government? Hey, everyone is with or against us, and you are against us! I bet you're against the Patriot Act, now aren'tcha? C'mon, fess up!
That was the very first thought that went through my mind. Great minds must think alike. ;)
Would that be the convicted felon Poindexter?
It's all for your benefit comrade. Now that Republicans are in charge, big gov't is a good thing.
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