Documents suggest that NASA is working to develop sensors that can be embedded in airport security stations to wirelessly monitor brainwave and heartbeat patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity.

Is NASA developing a mind-reading machine to identify terrorists at airports?

The agency insists it's not. But recently disclosed documents seem to indicate otherwise - fueling wild speculation among conspiracy theorists and pervasive computing buffs alike.

By Rick Mathieson

Are airport security guards about to go from eye balling your baggage to rummaging through your brain?

In recent weeks, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been forced to deny published reports that the agency is developing a top-secret "mind-reading" machine designed to identify terrorists at airport security terminals.

"We're not conducting any research in that area," insists Michael Barukus, a spokesperson for NASA's Office of Aerospace Technology and Security.

So far, such outright denials have failed to quash the story - and subsequent rumormongering - primarily because they stem from top-secret documents NASA never meant to disclose.

First reported by the Washington Times, the documents were obtained by a non-profit civil liberties organization under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

According to those papers, recently obtained by mpulse, officials from the NASA Ames Research Center informed Northwest Airlines that the agency is working with an undisclosed commercial partner to develop "noninvasive nuero-electric sensors."

These remote sensors would be embedded in airport security stations and would wirelessly monitor brainwave and heartbeat patterns "to detect passengers who potentially might pose a threat."

The technology would correlate physiologic patterns with computerized data on travel routines, criminal background, and credit information from potentially thousands of databases - giving new meaning to the term "pervasive computing."

"The final limit of privacy is what goes on in our own brains," says Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, and spokesperson for the American Physical Society. "This comes perilously close to invading that last bit of privacy."

In fact, the technology might one day be able to identify nuero-electric patterns associated with the way the brain functions when a person is planning to commit a crime.

"What is being described is difficult, but plausible," says Peter Schwartz, chairman of Emeryville, Calif.-based consultancy Global Business Network. "The scientific principles are solid."

But the prospect of having your thoughts analyzed, processed, and cross-referenced with data about your family, friends, and personal history represents a Pandora's box NASA never meant to open to the public.

truth or dare?

"Government agencies are thinking of developing far-reaching technology without any considerations of what implications that technology might have," says Mihir Kshirsagar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

His organization obtained the documents last July as part of a lawsuit filed against the Transportation Security Administration in an effort to obtain information on new enhancements being made to the national Computer-Aided Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS) system.

Presently, the CAPPS system collects and stores basic travel information - whether you bought your ticket with cash or credit card, whether you're a frequent flier, and when was the last time you flew.

But the system has serious flaws. The September 11 terrorists, for instance, outsmarted CAPPS by conducting test runs to identify whether a specific hijacker would be identified as a potential threat - and then replacing those who raised suspicions.

In response, the federal government has given NASA $45 million to design CAPPS 2.

The new system, which could be in place as early as 2004, will use extensive data mining and analysis tools to access information spanning a nationwide "Information Power Grid." The idea is to quickly render a complete picture of an individual traveler and then run algorithms to assess the threat risk.

The concept may be part of the Bush Administration's plans for a "Total Information Awareness" system, a global electronic dragnet designed to use data mining to look for threatening patterns in everyday transactions and information - your credit card purchases, student report cards, mental health records, and more - that is reported to begin roll out in 2007.

"Beyond the obvious privacy concerns, we know that a lot of these commercial databases are a mess," says Kshirsagar, who shared the FOIA documents with mpulse. "Mixed up addresses, passport names, incomplete data and, sometimes, very serious errors. We don't really know what the safeguards and limitations would be."

The neuro-electric sensors would be a potential future component of such a system - most likely complementing facial recognition and other biometric tools - to analyze brainwave signatures and place them in the context of other personal data.

But while CAPPS 2's access to a plethora of personal data is close to realization, it's this notion of a possible mind reading component that has sparked intense controversy among technology buffs and privacy advocates nationwide.

"This story just won't go away," marvels Jay Dombrowski, a manager of security for Northwest Airlines. "My understanding is NASA looked at the concept and discounted it."

According to NASA, the presentation was simply a way to share some rough ideas, and that brain scanning technologies have never been approved for formal research.

In a released statement designed to quell media fervor over the story, Robert Pearce, director of NASA's Strategy and Analysis Division, says: "NASA does not have the capability to read minds, nor are we suggesting it would be done. Published media reports suggesting the agency plans to read the minds of potential terrorists go too far and ignore the facts and science behind the research."

Indeed, adding mind reading to airport screening is purely theoretical and highly impractical - at least as far as wireless functionality is concerned.

As it turns out, the mind reading part is easy.

the liar's club

As outlined, NASA's idea to develop wireless monitoring of EEG and ECG signals is widely dismissed.

"The only thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work is one that does," says Park. "Polygraphs are highly unreliable, and result in identifying people who might be conscientious or nervous under questioning better than those who are lying."

Parks and others point to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technologies as a possible alternative. Among other things, fMRI easily identifies the differences in brain activity when people tell the truth versus when they fib.

"fMRI is a perfect deception detector," says GBN's Schwartz. "It's not a lie detector, but a 3D map of the brain that clearly identifies the markers that occur when someone is being deceptive."

There's just one problem: fMRI scanners are hulking contraptions that require a half hour to scan a broken knee, let alone your brain.

"Getting people into a large hollow tube is not realistic, much less making it all work wirelessly," says Schwartz. "It's possible to do this without connecting someone up to a machine, but I'd be surprised if we see it in the next 10 to 20 years."

Which means that as amusing as it would be to watch the celebrity ahead of you squirm under questioning - "How well do you know your husband, Ms. Minnelli?" - the practical reality is a long way off.

"With 610 million passengers a year walking by a little scanner, I don't know how they'd do it," says Northwest's Dombrowski.

Besides, asks Schwartz, ""How do you tell the difference between someone who's hiding an extramarital affair, and someone who's planning to blow up the airplane?"

Still, according to the NASA documents, the agency has already developed a "brain-machine interface" based on field research into space technologies that recognize when an astronaut loses focus during flight operations.

"Enormous progress has been made, not just in scanning devices, but in computers to scan lots of data and pull out patterns," says Park. "It's difficult for me to imagine it working in an airport scanner, but you can't rule it out."

Of course, technology is one thing. Public policy is another.

mind meld

To its credit, NASA's own documents assert that such a system "must address privacy and 'big brother' issues to the extent possible."

Indeed, the legalities are complex. The Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional for police to use heat-sensing surveillance technology that can see through walls, if they do so without a warrant.

But as the Times points out, airports and border crossings have typically been exempted from this requirement. And it's unclear how the high court will rule as new, advanced technologies are enlisted in the name of homeland security.

"With all these technology proposals, we just want to make sure there's an open policy debate," says Kshirsagar. "There should be discussions to answer questions like, does this technology work? How do we limit its uses? What are acceptable uses, and what's not?"

As far as anyone can tell, NASA is under no obligation to reveal whether it's secretly researching mind reading technology, and given it's highly-sensitive nature, it's possible the agency could be impelled to deny reports or even obfuscate efforts to reveal the truth.

"The only reason we found out is because it was part of an outside briefing NASA gave Northwest Airlines, so it fell under the FOIA," says Kshirsagar. "I suppose it could be developed in secret."

But NASA insists that won't be the case.

"Our scientists were asked to think outside the box with regards to ideas that could aid the nation in the war on terrorism, and that's what we're doing," says NASA's Pearce. "We have not approved any research in this area, and because of the sensitivity of such research, we will seek independent review before we do."

Nobody's quite clear on what "independent review" means in a post-Patriot Act world - civilian, congressional or military. And NASA did not respond to requests for clarification.

Whatever the case, most experts, including Kshirsagar, take NASA at its word.

"If NASA says it's not working on this, it's probably not," says GBN's Schwartz.

Maybe so. But with all these secret documents and subsequent denials flying around, it'd be fun to have a non-invasive, neuro-electric sensor when posing questions to NASA.