[size=4]Real life 'Pre-Crime'[/size]

The Department of Homeland Security has announced the development of futuristic sounding technology with a bizarre “Minority Report” twist. The criminals they’re looking for haven’t committed a crime yet. The program called Project Hostile Intent is part of the Human Factors Division of the DHS.

DHS says that they need a way to detect possible “future” terrorists without a criminal past and with no known ties to terrorist organizations and therefore do not appear in any government databases. The technology will use advanced biometric technology in an attempt to “read minds” of people in public places, like airports.

If a computer determines that you are thinking about committing a terrorist act, either imminently, or at some point during your stay in the US, then you will be picked up by security officers for an interview. What is especially creepy about this upcoming program is that since it is specifically targeting people with no known terrorists ties—the only evidence is the “opinion” of a invariably flawed computer program.

The potential for abuse is staggering. Imagine that you get tagged by the computer, and the next thing you know you’re dragged off and treated like you were about to blow up an airplane. The only evidence against you would be that a computer deemed that you had some sort of undefined “hostile intent”. The fact that you did nothing wrong wouldn’t stop you from being detained, interrogated, and harassed. Missing your flight home will be the least of your worries! Some people are becoming more frightened by the governments secretive and vague “war on terror” than they are of terrorist attacks.

Project Hostile Intent is an ongoing project of the United States Department of Homeland Security, Human Factors Division. It has been renamed to Future Attribute Screening Technology. This project comes under the Social and Behavioral Research (SBR) Program,one of the three broad program areas within the Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that "sponsors research to inform, develop, and test tools and methodologies to assess terrorist threats, understand terrorism, and improve national security"

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more.

Commentators slated the idea that sensors could spot people up to no good from their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, or fleeting facial expressions. One likened it to the "pre-crime" units that predict criminal behaviour in the movie Minority Report.

However, last week, the DHS science unit gave an update on the project, now dubbed the less-hostile-sounding Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST) programme. And, if DHS claims are to be believed, the research appears to be getting somewhere.

At an equestrian centre in Maryland, 140 paid volunteers walked through a pair of trailers kitted out with a battery of FAST sensors, including cameras, infrared heat sensors and an eyesafe laser radar, called a Bio-Lidar, that measures pulse and breathing rate from a distance.

Some subjects were told to act shifty, be evasive, deceptive and hostile. And many were detected. "We're still very early on in this research, but it is looking very promising," says DHS science spokesman John Verrico. "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception."