Detecting Scared Terrorists
From the “What can we do to stop terrorism, without actually addressing terrorism” department, comes the news that scientists are researching how to sniff out scared people at checkpoints.
In the research, scientists discovered that they could literally detect the pheromones produced when someone is afraid. That’s not so surprising, but what is mind-boggling is that one of the proposed implications of the research is to be able to identify “scared” terrorists.
I’m not even sure where to begin with this one, but let’s give it a try. Here are just some of the potential vulnerabilities in this stupid idea:
- Many terrorists seem to be so brainwashed into believing that they are about to get 72 virgins that they’re probably more likely to be a bit “happy,” rather than scared if you know what I mean.
- Sociopaths won’t be scared.
- When we recently took my three year old daughter through an airport checkpoint she probably would have been tagged. It would have been because they took her Cabbage Patch doll to scan for hidden bombs.
- We better hope there are no nearby spiders and arachnaphobes.
Do I really need to continue?
Fighting terrorism with stupid ideas like this only serves to take the focus off those areas where we need to pay attention. With limited resources, we can’t afford to divert our attention from those techniques law enforcement has been using for years and which are proven to detect and stop criminals.
This idea smells stupid because it is.
I understand why you would think this but the facts contradict your theories. From the interviews I have seen with the Airport personal on 9/11(the ones that had interaction with the terrorists), the terrorists were very scared, not happy. This would only be another tool to screen people. The metal detectors and all of the security before 9/11 didn’t pick anything up on the terrorists going through them. Most people who are flying on air planes, have flown on them before, so most aren’t scared. If you are caught being scared at an airport with one of these devices, they are going to ask you why you are scared and you may get some extra screening. A terrorist will have a hard time explaining why, while the little girl who had her teddy bear taken away, will say so. There is no full proof system. Also, why do you think you have to be brainwashed to believe in 72 virgins after death? Every religion has a different take on what you receive after death. Anyways, the 72 virgin thing is only 1 interpretation. Not all Muslims believe this. I am not a Muslim or Christian.
Other than that, I enjoy your blog and have read every post.
Hello Matt,
First, thanks for stopping by and commenting. I do appreciate all constructive comments, whether they agree with me or not. I think we can all learn from each other.
The problem I have with this method is that I think it will be too prone to false-positives and false-negatives, while doing little to actually improve the security of airplane travel.
If there are too many false-positives (scared people who aren’t really terrorists), the TSA will not trust the system and will start to disregard its importance. They’re human beings and there is a natural tendency to filter out the noise so one can make better decisions.
If there are too many false-negatives, or, heck, even one false-negative, where the system fails to detect a terrorist, either because he is not scared or for some other reason, then it will be immediately disregarded.
In the mean time, we could be using all of those resources which are being used to detect scared people to do something more useful–such as maybe improving our method to detect weapons getting on the plane.
I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love to see a scared terrorist detector actual prevent attacks, but what I fear most (pun intended) is spending valuable security resources pursuing something that probably is too prone to subversion to be useful.