Skybird
08-12-07, 03:14 PM
According to this article
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article1100086/USA_machen_Jagd_auf_verraeterische_Emotionen.html
The DHS wants to set up robots that will automatically scan passengers at airports and other sensitive spots for physiological variables that correlate with certain emotional states. While this screening of facial expressions and behavior patterns currently is done by specially trained personnel, leaving this to machinery that also scans for blood pressure, temperature, perspiration etc. , is a new step towards technologically implemented total control - at least potentially - of people, and society, imo. It also is one more step to establish profiles and rules of how an ordinary citizen should be like in order to be seen as a valid or harmless memevber of the community. I talk of social uniformity here, as has been seen in several regimes in the past that also seeked for social conformity of the people they "possessed". I see the extremely high risk that definition files of machinery in the future will determine an individual's fate within society (add to this the problems of genetics a la "Gatecca", the movie). That the DHS said in answer to an according question that one would be willing to use such technology even if it produces an immense quota of errors and false alarms as long as it only helps to increase the security of the Us even minimally only, is reaveling. since some years I got the impresison now that there are powers at work that are willing to almost annihilate all private sphere and liberty of wetsern societies in the name of total control of security risks. But as we have learned from history, power and control always leads to corruption, and abuse, and if it is total power and total control, that it probably also causes total corruption and total abuse. In other words: there is the growing danger that the so far illegal abuseand violation of restrictions on laws protecting and guaranteeing the individuals' freedoms and private sphere will be declared the general case, and thus becomes the legalized rule.
Totalitarianism and police states never sneak into your home under their real names. And I am certainly not the first warning of the US in the future turning into a police state. I live since long by the impression that man has invented scientific and technologcal abilties that work wonders, but in no way he has developed the ethical sense of responsibility to make use of these options in a responsible way. I think there is zero reaosn to assume that this all of a sudden wil change in the future.
It seems to me that we, in the name of fighting terror and criminal threats, are willing to hollow out all of the acchievements of Western cultural civilization and laws and basic rights our ancestros have fouzght for in the past. We mindelssly give it away. either to those politicians who found out that fear of threats (Fish's thread!) is a formidable way to maintain themselves in power and make socieity follow there demands, or by submitting to hostile ideologies in advance that we do not have the greatness and courage anymore to reject and fight against. That way, it seems to me, we are living under siege - by internal structures and personnels of our own societies, and by threats that infiltrate our societies from the outside.
That way we do not talk about a fight to defend us and protect what is ours, but we talk about total destruction of ourselves. We get crushed between them and ourselves, so to speak.
The German BKA, (our pendant to the FBI here) this year has tested 3 or 6 (don'T exactly remember) different face recognition systems at railway stations during a testing period. The president of the BKA has recommended NOT to install these systems, since their reliability even under most optimal light conditions did not raise beyond a meager 30% percent. At dawn and sunset, they often proved to be almost useless. He argued that the results of these tested system were no help at all, only messed up things and complicated the job for the security personnel.
If you imagine that under realistic conditions all these false alarms would have triggered serious pesonal consequencesfor the victims of which eventually hours-long delays and interrupted travels would have been the mildest, and if you imagine even further that one must take it as most likely an option that once emotion scanners would be installed, sooner or later their mere existence would be reflected by changes and amandements to existing laws, the immense risks of this HighTech fetishism should be obvious.
But it all seems to be a general trend: US: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120189 ; China: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120258 A trend definetley not for the better.
I don't like all this. "Minority Report" described no adorable future for me.
Where there is action, there is reaction. Where their is pressure, there is counter-pressure. Where you say "good", at the same time you define "evil". One should be more hesitent to define "totally positive intentions", then. The total opposite already is inherently included in that.
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article1100086/USA_machen_Jagd_auf_verraeterische_Emotionen.html
The DHS wants to set up robots that will automatically scan passengers at airports and other sensitive spots for physiological variables that correlate with certain emotional states. While this screening of facial expressions and behavior patterns currently is done by specially trained personnel, leaving this to machinery that also scans for blood pressure, temperature, perspiration etc. , is a new step towards technologically implemented total control - at least potentially - of people, and society, imo. It also is one more step to establish profiles and rules of how an ordinary citizen should be like in order to be seen as a valid or harmless memevber of the community. I talk of social uniformity here, as has been seen in several regimes in the past that also seeked for social conformity of the people they "possessed". I see the extremely high risk that definition files of machinery in the future will determine an individual's fate within society (add to this the problems of genetics a la "Gatecca", the movie). That the DHS said in answer to an according question that one would be willing to use such technology even if it produces an immense quota of errors and false alarms as long as it only helps to increase the security of the Us even minimally only, is reaveling. since some years I got the impresison now that there are powers at work that are willing to almost annihilate all private sphere and liberty of wetsern societies in the name of total control of security risks. But as we have learned from history, power and control always leads to corruption, and abuse, and if it is total power and total control, that it probably also causes total corruption and total abuse. In other words: there is the growing danger that the so far illegal abuseand violation of restrictions on laws protecting and guaranteeing the individuals' freedoms and private sphere will be declared the general case, and thus becomes the legalized rule.
Totalitarianism and police states never sneak into your home under their real names. And I am certainly not the first warning of the US in the future turning into a police state. I live since long by the impression that man has invented scientific and technologcal abilties that work wonders, but in no way he has developed the ethical sense of responsibility to make use of these options in a responsible way. I think there is zero reaosn to assume that this all of a sudden wil change in the future.
It seems to me that we, in the name of fighting terror and criminal threats, are willing to hollow out all of the acchievements of Western cultural civilization and laws and basic rights our ancestros have fouzght for in the past. We mindelssly give it away. either to those politicians who found out that fear of threats (Fish's thread!) is a formidable way to maintain themselves in power and make socieity follow there demands, or by submitting to hostile ideologies in advance that we do not have the greatness and courage anymore to reject and fight against. That way, it seems to me, we are living under siege - by internal structures and personnels of our own societies, and by threats that infiltrate our societies from the outside.
That way we do not talk about a fight to defend us and protect what is ours, but we talk about total destruction of ourselves. We get crushed between them and ourselves, so to speak.
The German BKA, (our pendant to the FBI here) this year has tested 3 or 6 (don'T exactly remember) different face recognition systems at railway stations during a testing period. The president of the BKA has recommended NOT to install these systems, since their reliability even under most optimal light conditions did not raise beyond a meager 30% percent. At dawn and sunset, they often proved to be almost useless. He argued that the results of these tested system were no help at all, only messed up things and complicated the job for the security personnel.
If you imagine that under realistic conditions all these false alarms would have triggered serious pesonal consequencesfor the victims of which eventually hours-long delays and interrupted travels would have been the mildest, and if you imagine even further that one must take it as most likely an option that once emotion scanners would be installed, sooner or later their mere existence would be reflected by changes and amandements to existing laws, the immense risks of this HighTech fetishism should be obvious.
But it all seems to be a general trend: US: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120189 ; China: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=120258 A trend definetley not for the better.
I don't like all this. "Minority Report" described no adorable future for me.
Where there is action, there is reaction. Where their is pressure, there is counter-pressure. Where you say "good", at the same time you define "evil". One should be more hesitent to define "totally positive intentions", then. The total opposite already is inherently included in that.