European Union to Monitor Deviant Behavior in Fight against Terrorism

October 24, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

Airport security has changed. Here, images showing whole body scans from a millimeter wave machine now in use in the US.

www.spiegel.de

The European Union is funding ambitious programs aimed at monitoring human behavior in an effort to identify deviance and pick out potential terrorists. The implications for privacy are myriad.

Imagine that you are a frequent flier: Long years of experience have taught you all the tips and tricks for a rapid check in. A good thing, right? Actually, in the future it may become cause for suspicion.

A European Union-funded project called ADABTS (Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behavior and Threats in Crowded Spaces) is working on ways to detect suspicious behavior. One system involves a network of cameras in airports that can measure your speed and alert the control room should it seem excessive. The system knows terrorists tend to be nervous and almost never stop for coffee. This makes a speedy traveller a suspicious traveller.

You may also want to think twice about using the airport bathroom more than once. There is a good chance you will be picked out for an extensive security check.

Crucial to the Fight against Terrorism

“We monitor all deviant behavior,” says Maarten Hogervorst of TNO Defence and Security, an independent Dutch research institute. The ADABTS project, in which TNO is a partner, is only one among hundreds of security projects under the umbrella of the EU research program Security. The program has a budget of €1.4 billion until 2013.

Following the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001 and in Europe in 2004 and 2005, Brussels saw the development of new technologies as crucial to the fight against terrorism. It also worried American companies might corner the market for security technology.

Hogervorst is funded by the EU to investigate how the ever growing number of security cameras in inner cities, airports and football stadiums can be put to a better use.

For now security personnel still manually switches between cameras to determine who deserves extra attention. The more cameras to choose from, the less effective this is. It would be much easier if the cameras themselves could determine what is suspicious and automatically show only those images to the people in the control room.

“We define what constitutes suspicious behavior through interviews with security staff and we develop software accordingly,” says Hogervorst. “If security staff thinks someone moving rapidly through a crowd is suspicious, then that’s the kind of images they’re going to get.”

There are a lot more criteria to determine what is suspicious and what is not, but TNO doesn’t want them publicized for obvious security reasons. Read full article…