Sunday, September 01, 2002

Thanks to V of TYR for e-mailing me these urls. Holographic imaging scanner sees right through you There have been several news stories with privacy concerns about an airport scanner in which passengers are rendered like naked. http://go.hotwired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,54598,00.html/wn_ascii This technology, developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (http://www.pnl.gov/), has had some enhancements to try to solve the privacy concerns, while still addressing the security topic. The computer data can now be split so that the naked body is not shown on the screen, instead all the objects the person is carrying under the clothing is put on an image of a manikin.  Here is a [sample image: http://www.pnl.gov/nsd/commercial/scanner/ ] There are some other future applications of this technology, discussed in the article, such as the clothing industry getting a perfect fit. There are also implied applications not discussed, such as what pornography enthusiasts might use it for.  Think X-Ray glasses worn by dirty minds, that would just look at the bodies, forget the objects.  Think hackers into the Airport Security bit stream to look at the portion that is censored on the screen. 11:32:19 AM

© Copyright 2002 Al Macintyre.