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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which operates airport security checkpoints in the United States, is spending upward of US$ 7 million a year trying to develop technology that can detect the evil intent of the terrorists among us. Yes, you read that correctly: They plan to find the bad guys by reading their minds.

Dozens of researchers across the country are in the middle of a five year program contracted primarily to the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, in Cambridge, Mass. They’ve developed a psycho-physiological theory of ‘malintent’ – basically, a hodgepodge of behaviorism and biometrics according to which physiological chances can give away a terrorist’s intention to do immediate harm. So far, they’ve spent US$ 20 million on biometric research, sensors, and a series of tests and demonstrations. This technology is called the Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST).

The underlying theory is that your body reacts, in measurable and largely involuntary ways, to reveal the nature of your intentions. So as you wait in line at the airport checkpoint, thermal and other types of cameras and laser- and radar-based sensors will try to get a fix on the baseline parameters of your autonomic nervous system – your body temperature, your heart rate and respiration, your skin’s moistness, and the very look in your eyes. Then, as a security officer asks you a few questions, the sensors will remeasure those parameters so that the FAST algorithms can figure out whether you’re naughty or nice, all on the spot, without knowing anything else about you.