We were discussing power sockets just around the corner, and I mentioned how the EU institutions really ought to spend more time on relieving the causes of stress for most common Europeans. As stress factors go, few can beat going through airport security controls. And look! The EU is doing something about it.
There have already been calls to repeal the liquid carry-on ban (although it’s been two years and no practical results). Now there is something altogether more exciting (and sinister): the HUMABIO project. It’s a combination of several different technologies, but the most interesting one is brainwave authentication. An EEG machine records your particular brainwaves and uses them to identify you. If the record they can make is sufficiently unique - not affected by the subject’s mood - then it’s the ultimate biometric key. Can’t be faked: you can make a recording of someone’s brain activity, but not overlay it on your own. The biggest problem so far is making the sensors unobtrusive: identifying people as they simply walk past a sensor, instead of putting a set of electrodes on their head.
The other big technology that HUMABIO is touting is behavioural analysis: looking at the way a person walks, sits or breathes to check their stress levels. The primary use for this is detecting fatigue in pilots and truck drivers (Volvo Trucks is actually planning to put this system in all of their heavy commercial vehicles), but also increasing security by disabling a vehicle if the driver is not authorized. Pretty useful - but ever so slightly disturbing.
The brainwave scanning technology is still a few years away from true usefulness, but if we take this level of surveillance as acceptable, it would be trivial to reduce or eliminate aiport queues altogether. It would simply require a combined application of existing, proven, mass-produced technology. EU passports already contain a machine-readable biometric chip, and a fair number of intra-Schengen airports have unmanned passport control booths. Those chips are unpowered and readable from a very short distance, but less intrusive technology is available: keyless-go systems. They were originally introduced on high-end Audis and Mercedes, but you can now get a Toyota Corolla with this feature. Basically you have a card in your pocket, and when you approach the car, it recognizes the card’s signal, opening the doors. Get in, push a button to start the engine, and drive away - without ever fiddling with the keys. Yes, radio signals can be intercepted, but if it’s secure enough for the company that insures your hundred-thousand-Euro car, it’s secure enough for an EU identity card.
This is where a bunch of people, particularly the Brits, chime in with some version of “ID cards are evil”. Be that as it may, you’re going to be identified by your brainwave patterns, and in comparison to that ID cards are positively anarchist. Maybe it’s living in e-Stonia, with its universally integrated databases, that has made me carelessly unbothered by the prospect of electronic surveillance (or maybe it’s being a blogger that makes you realize just how little the world cares what you do with your life), but yeah, I’d far prefer spending less time in airport security.
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The problem is not that new technology can make security processes more efficient and convenient, but that it makes them more open to abuse by corrupt or incompetent state or commercial interests. The more power we allow such technologies give the authorities, the greater the quality of accountability and transparency procedures we need to adopt to prevent them being abused. Regrettably we usually get one without the other.
That’s a problem, but it isn’t this problem. Yes, there is a problem of surveillance (which some people find more invasive than others, and that’s fair enough). The problem of masses of people at an airport feeding into a single bottleneck is simply one of technology, or rather a lack of technology that can perform the same function as humans.
Greetings, great blog.
Good day, good blog post.