Machine that predicts terrorists' intent showing progress.

• Author: Wright, Austin
• Position: DECEPTION DETECTION

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Metal detectors screen for the means to commit a crime. The Department of Homeland Security is developing technology that screens for the intent to do so.

The department's Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, uses body scanners to sense the fear in your eyes--and in your skin, your heartbeat and even your movements. The system places these and other variables into an algorithm that may be able to determine whether the sum of certain bodily signals is the result of hostile intent, or just someone having a bad day.

Robert P. Burns, deputy director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, says the technology could help security officers at checkpoints decide which travelers should be called aside for secondary questioning. The technology is still years from completion, he adds.

About 5 percent of Homeland Security's science and technology budget goes toward these reach-for-the-sky endeavors that could have game-changing effects on national security if they succeed. The agency also is developing technologies that would detect drug-trafficking tunnels from above ground, reduce the likelihood of massive power outages and strengthen levees. "We go after the projects or ideas that other people don't want to go after because they are incredibly high-risk and could fail," says Burns, a 1981 Naval Academy graduate who spent 21 years in the private sector. '"We're really pushing the envelope in terms of science and technology."

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The FAST project, which began in 2006, involves 40 to 50 developers from several organizations and so far has cost the agency $20 million. It combines research from a number of academic fields into a futuristic model for stopping crime before it happens. Project collaborators from Draper Laboratory, a Massachusetts-based not-for-profit research company, have been working with the agency to translate decades' worth of physiological studies into algorithms that gauge people's involuntary bodily signals.

"We look at a series of physical cues or behavioral cues that you give off that are a direct relation to your physical and emotional thought processes," Burns says. "You can't base anything on any one of these signals. It's the compilation that we look at and that come together."

The technology could be described as a more comprehensive, less intrusive polygraph exam. Already, privacy advocates are expressing concern. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based think tank, plans to push for laws that would ensure that the federal government doesn't keep records of the FAST system's measurements, and the American Civil Liberties Union is exploring its legal options for trying to halt the project.

"We think that it's an invasion of privacy to read someone's physiological bodily functions without their permission," says Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the ACLU. "It's nobody's business what my pulse rate is. It's a profound invasion of human dignity."

Burns counters that the system was designed as a way to help checkpoint security guards make better-informed decisions about which travelers to call aside for further questioning--and not as an Orwellian device for keeping medical tabs on unassuming citizens. He says he worked with Homeland Security's privacy office to make sure the program adheres to all federal laws. "The system does not record or maintain your information," Burns says. "Once any issues are resolved, the information is dumped."

The program's long-term goal is to allow the public to move with greater freedom through airports, border checkpoints and government buildings, he adds. But in its current form, the FAST system can scan only one traveler at a time, and it requires that each person answers a series of questions. Computer software compares physiological measurements taken during questioning to measurements taken before questioning.

"This is a case where technology has finally caught up to the theory, and each of our sensors has a specific theory behind it," Burns says. The system relies mainly on low-cost...