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May 12, 2006

Airport Security

I ran across a couple of articles today on smart cameras and airport security. The first was at silicon.com and discussed the role of smart cameras at San Francisco airport. The article notes that:

Vidient claims its algorithms can monitor what those cameras are seeing and can flag up any suspicious events. Most commonly they are looking for individuals "tailgating" - following another person through an opened door - or static objects, either in secure areas or at kerbside. Foster said a "one swipe per person" system for passing through all doors is rigorously enforced. The cameras can detect if two people pass through an open door, and can even differentiate between one very large person and two smaller people. Even staff who are entitled to pass through that door must swipe, in order to prevent an alert being triggered. And those who do trigger an alert, Foster said, are "admonished" for failing to follow security best practice. "People now know we have a system in place," he said Foster, adding that alerts have fallen considerably after some re-education and admonishment.

Another article from the Wall Street Journal discusses various technologies for securing airports. The articles notes the privacy issues with backscatter xray technologies. This is an issue I posted about several times, 1, 2, and 3. In response to the privacy concerns:

Rapiscan Systems, a division of OSI Systems Inc., of Hawthorne, Calif., and American Science & Engineering Inc., Billerica, Mass, have worked to develop proxy images that mask private parts. The image created would show the outline of foreign objects on the body, but not the body itself. Pilot testing on these machines, which cost $70,000 to $100,000, should begin in early spring.

Posted by rshah at May 12, 2006 10:42 PM

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