"We Had To Come in Shooting. His Heart Rate Demanded It."

Brian Doherty | September 18, 2007

Given Radley Balko's many writings on the, er, excessive enthusiasm (OK, criminal recklessness) common among SWAT teams doing home invasions, I'm alarmed by this tidbit at the end of a BBC account of surveillance technologies:

So far there is no gadget that can actually see inside our houses, but even that's about to change.

Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology.

"Each individual has a characteristic profile," explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV remote control.

Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates.

"First, you can tell whether someone is dead or alive on the battlefield," said Ian.

"But it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

Figuring out whether detected heart rates give a reasonable cop excuse for coming in shooting is one of those legal and strategic conundrums we'll be sweating over in the magically transparent world of tomorrow.

See Julian Sanchez's January cover story on many other such issues raised by surveillance and search technologies.

Comments

|9.18.07 @ 12:03PM|#

"...due to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year..."

This part made me laugh, then cry.

|9.18.07 @ 12:09PM|#

You can't "read someone's thoughts" by seeing what part of their brain is working, or how hard.

That's like trying to read someone's text by counting the number of letters and capital letters.

Ooh, that guy used 4% more Vs than average! That must mean he wants to sleep with my wife!

|9.18.07 @ 12:09PM|#

"But it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised."

Or, it could mean "OMG! There are armed men outside my house!"

|9.18.07 @ 12:10PM|#

Reinmoose---Damn, wish I'd thought of that line for the post! Great.

Angus Young|9.18.07 @ 12:11PM|#

I'm gonna take you down--down, down, down.
So don't you fool around.
I'm gonna pull it, pull it, pull the trigger.

Shoot to thrill, play to kill,
Too many women with too many pills.
Shoot to thrill, play to kill,
I got my gun at the ready, gonna fire at will.

Yeah!

I'm like evil, I get under your skin.
Just like a bomb that's ready to blow.
'Cause I'm illegal, I got everything
That all you women might need to know .

|9.18.07 @ 12:14PM|#

There will be no need for such primitive devices once my universal brain implant program goes into effect; the explosive device incorporated in the monitoring chip will detonate itself when it detects a predetermined set of criteria.
Equalization will be effected.

|9.18.07 @ 12:14PM|#

I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

|9.18.07 @ 12:17PM|#

Let's hear it for the free market! If the government had to develop this technology themselves it would have never happened.

The Artist Formerly Known as T|9.18.07 @ 12:18PM|#

""We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.""

Very scary shit. WTF

|9.18.07 @ 12:26PM|#

Dan T.
Brilliant! :)

|9.18.07 @ 12:28PM|#

""We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.""

Very scary shit. WTF

Yeah, just don't accidentally point it at a middle school or you'll probably have to be committed afterward :)

carrick|9.18.07 @ 12:42PM|#

Let's hear it for the free market! If the government had to develop this technology themselves it would have never happened.

That's one of those 5 percenters ;-)

|9.18.07 @ 12:44PM|#

"We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

My mother? Let me tell you about my mother...

|9.18.07 @ 12:47PM|#

"We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

And in my case it would, "Who are those idiots skulking around the outside of my home while I am jogging on the treadmill"?

oncogenesis|9.18.07 @ 12:49PM|#

"And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

I don't understand the mindset of a person that actually wants to develop such a monstrous device. And I hope I never do.

JBinMO|9.18.07 @ 12:54PM|#

"I don't understand the mindset of a person that actually wants to develop such a monstrous device. And I hope I never do."

9/11 9/11 9/11!!!!

Greg|9.18.07 @ 12:57PM|#

Damn, I hope my college's campus security doesn't ever get ahold of one of these things.

Just one more tool to find out who had been blazing in the dorm showers...

|9.18.07 @ 12:57PM|#

I don't understand the mindset of a person that actually wants to develop such a monstrous device. And I hope I never do.

Why do you hate America?

|9.18.07 @ 1:07PM|#

We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.

"Who is that? Aaaah I bet it's those guys from the government come to scan my thoughts. Fucking bastards! You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!

|9.18.07 @ 1:10PM|#

Just watched Enemy of the State again last night... a libertarian classic. When two goons are first questioning Will Smith one of the guys in the surveillance vans notes "unusual stress in his voice." Not that these guys were looking for probable cause, but I hope that no court ever accepts such BS. Having never been stopped by a cop, or even talked to one (on duty), I'd find it inherently stressful.

|9.18.07 @ 1:34PM|#

There are hundreds of reason's a person's heartbeat can be elevated. Tachycardia can be caused by nicotine use, some anti-depressants, any number of prescription stimulants, OTC weight-loss drugs, anxiety about whatever is going on in a person's life, getting laid or the anticipation thereof, watching a close football game,or tachycardia could just be normal for a given person. Right now, I'm fighting the flu. My heart rate is borderline tachycardic as I sit here at my desk.
If a person knows SWAT is outside their house, their heart rate will be elevated no matter what.

Do these people ever think about what they say?

|9.18.07 @ 1:43PM|#

The problem is that civil libertarians are fighing the last war. The whole idea of the separation between intelligence assets and law enforcement that came out of the 1970s is obsolete. Restricting the use of intelligence assets for law enforcement is meaningless now because open source technology is so good. Back in the day, this kind of gee wiz technology just wasn't available outside of intelligence circles so the wall actually did some good. Now, any police department in the country can go out and hire a team of CIA or military trained intelligence analyists and turn them loose with open source information and this kind of gee wiz gadgetry and effectively run an intelligence operation on the Ameircan people and do so perfectly within the law. Civil libetarians spend their time getting wrapped up on programs like the NSA phone monitoriing and provisions of the Patriot act that affect maybe 100 people a year and meanwhile the local police department is doing things never dreamed of 20 years ago. It is a real problem.

fyodor|9.18.07 @ 2:02PM|#

Ah, so it's the civil libertarians' fault. At least it's not the Jews'!!

|9.18.07 @ 2:10PM|#

What do you want to bet that the first time they try to use this, they're going to end up busting the door down to find some guy wanking off to internet porn?

The number of false positives will be in the millions....

|9.18.07 @ 2:14PM|#

Fyador,

I stand corrected it is not "the" problem but "a" problem. I don't think many civil libertarians are that smart on this issue to be honest.

Evil Doktor|9.18.07 @ 2:17PM|#

Vee vill measure your respirashun venn you are gangbanged by twenty horny cub scouts.

zat vould raize her heart rate. und zee government vould be able to burst in.

ooh. I zaid "burst". sounds like "borst", vhich is dutch for "snuggle pillowz".

[dashes off]

|9.18.07 @ 3:24PM|#

John,

Are you seriously saying the ACLU and other civil liberties groups aren't involved in cases involving searches, entries, and arrests by local police?

robc|9.18.07 @ 3:32PM|#

joe,

That's like trying to read someone's text by counting the number of letters and capital letters.

Ooh, that guy used 4% more Vs than average! That must mean he wants to sleep with my wife!

Considering some of the things cryptographers can do with just letter distribution, dont be so sure about that.

edna|9.18.07 @ 3:56PM|#

show of hands, please. how many think this device is for real? how many think this is one more version of the innumerable rip-off gadgets that waste taxpayer money and don't work (e.g., quadro tracker)?

my hand is up for the latter. hawaiian national guard. sheesh.

|9.18.07 @ 4:26PM|#

They can have this if I can have automated gun turrets that shoot down armed men trying to bust down my door.

Or maybe land mines.

|9.18.07 @ 4:33PM|#

It horrifies me that the British are giving up their rights to privacy with such gleeful abandon.

|9.18.07 @ 6:01PM|#

SeeingI, this thread has nothing to do with the British giving up their rights to privacy.

Neither Hawaii nor Washington are in Britain.

I think edna's on to something. This smells badly of a grant-fishing scheme.

|9.18.07 @ 6:46PM|#

The human body gives off radio waves?

|9.18.07 @ 6:52PM|#

I would think Scalia's (yes, Scalia's) Opinion for the majority in Kyollo would preclude this sort of thing sans warrant.

Jooish conspiratorialist|9.18.07 @ 6:58PM|#

The human body gives off radio waves?

Give, what give? Ya name a price, mebbe we talk.

|9.18.07 @ 8:55PM|#

I don't understand the mindset of a person that actually wants to develop such a monstrous device. And I hope I never do.

He's trying to solve a puzzle. It's not evil, it's a physics/biology/technological problem that would be really fun (and profitable) to solve. It seems to me that scientists rarely question the consequences of what they develop and when they do, it's after the fact.

This is just an observation, Six AAA solutions not included.

|9.18.07 @ 10:03PM|#

The human body gives off radio waves?

My sentiments exactly. I'd be really curious to know how that works, if only so I could figure out what frequency I'm broadcasting on.

Obviously, human bodies radiate in the infrared, but I doubt that would be useful for the stuff he's talking about. The only explanation that I could come up with is that he's talking about active scan rather than passive scan, ie, it's not that humans emit radio waves, but that electrical activity in our nervous systems reflect/refract/interfere with radio waves in a specific way that can be detected by someone who bombards us with them.

|9.18.07 @ 11:09PM|#

These government douches apparently don't engage in normal activities that elevate heart rate- exercise, sex,etc.

Vermont Gun Owner|9.18.07 @ 11:39PM|#

Let's hear it for the free market! If the government had to develop this technology themselves it would have never happened.

Coming early next year, sense-through-the-wall-proof walls!

edna|9.19.07 @ 8:13AM|#

The only explanation that I could come up with is that he's talking about active scan rather than passive scan

you ignore the most likely explanation: it's bullshit.

|9.19.07 @ 8:49AM|#

Looks like when I get around to building a house, the perimeter walls will have to be poured concrete, with lead cladding. Wonder what that will do to my construction costs...

-jcr

|9.20.07 @ 11:05AM|#

"The human body gives off radio waves?"

This brings us to the inevitable question, "What's the frequency Kenneth?" Ha! Couldn't resist.