Wii Balance Board To Be Used In Airport Security?

12 Oct 2009 at 11:42:04 by Andy Alderson

Nintendo’s Wii balance board may soon be used in airport security to detect passengers with hostile intent.

Now we had trouble believing this one too but according to a CNN report a new Homeland Security-funded initiative known as Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, will analyse a number of physiological signs to discover whether you’re a potential terrorist or not.

As part of the project, researchers took a Wii balance board and modified it to measure how a person’s weight shifts. Whether there is a connection between weight shifts and intent is another matter altogether.

FAST has already attracted criticism from science and civil liberty groups who argue that not only is the relationship between physiological flags and intent unproven but that the project also constitutes a violation of civil liberties.

"I haven't seen any research that shows that those measures from the autonomic nervous system ... measuring blood pressure, measuring breathing, measuring heat on the face, are at all related to intent," said Stephen Fienberg, professor of statistics and social sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Nobody has the right to look at my intimate bodily functions, my breathing, my perspiration rate, my heart rate, from afar," said Joe Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Do you think governments should be able to use technology like this to root out potential terrorists? Let us know in the comments section below.

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