Pentagon Developing System To ID People By Their Walk

[02XSport]

I found these article very interesting, considering the research is being done where I work...

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/2215440/detail.html

Pentagon Developing System To ID People By Their Walk

POSTED: 9:03 a.m. EDT May 20, 2003

The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk.

It would be used in a new anti-terrorist surveillance system.

It's based on a theory that an individual's walk is as unique as a signature.


The Georgia Institute of Technology has received $1 million to conduct the research project for the Pentagon and has been successful in identifying people 80 to 95 percent of the time.

The head of the project at Georgia Tech said "one of the nice things about radar" is that it can see through bad weather, darkness, even a heavy robe shrouding the legs -- something video cameras cannot.

He said the radar works even 600 feet away from the subject.

But it's not foolproof. The research head said if a woman decides to wear combat boots instead of her usual shoes, there may be a difference in the way she walks.



And here is the detailed and longer version... the head of this project, Gene Greneker, actually has the office next door to mine and I have helped with the set up and configuration of the computers that are being used to do this research.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/2215123/detail.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,87278,00.html

Pentagon-Backed Project at Tech May ID Terrorists

POSTED: 6:15 a.m. EDT May 20, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Watch your step! The Pentagon is developing a radar-based device that can identify people by the way they walk, for use in a new antiterrorist surveillance system.

Operating on the theory that an individual's walk is as unique as a signature, the Pentagon has financed a research project at the Georgia Institute of Technology that has been 80 to 95 percent successful in identifying people.

If the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, orders a prototype, the individual "gait signatures" of people could become part of the data to be linked together in a vast surveillance system the Pentagon agency calls Total Information Awareness.


That system already has raised privacy alarms on both ends of the political spectrum, and Congress in February barred its use against American citizens without further congressional review.

Nevertheless, government documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that scores of major defense contractors and prominent universities applied last year for the first research contracts to design and build the surveillance and analysis system.

DARPA is the federal agency that helped develop the Internet as a research tool for universities and government contractors. Its newest project is massive by any measure.

In its advice to contractors, DARPA declared, "The amounts of data that will need to be stored and accessed will be unprecedented, measured in petabytes."

One petabyte would dwarf most existing databases; it's roughly equal to 50 times the Library of Congress, which holds more than 18 million books.

Conceived and managed by retired Adm. John Poindexter, the TIA surveillance system is based on his theory that "terrorists must engage in certain transactions to coordinate and conduct attacks against Americans, and these transactions form patterns that may be detectable."

DARPA said the goal is to draw conclusions and predictions about terrorists from databases that record such transactions as passport applications, visas, work permits, driver's licenses, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, arrests or reports of suspicious activities.

Other databases DARPA wants to access include financial, education, medical and housing records and biometric identification databases based on fingerprints, irises, facial shapes and gait.

TIA is an effort to design breakthrough software "for treating these databases as a virtual, centralized grand database" capable of being quickly mined by counterintelligence officers even though the data will be held in many places, many languages and many formats, DARPA documents say.

One goal is to provide "focused warnings within an hour after a triggering event occurs," the documents say. Poindexter's plan would integrate some projects DARPA has been working on for several years, including research headed by Gene Greneker at Georgia Tech.

At a cost of less than $1 million over the past three years, he has been aiming a 1-foot-square radar dish at 100 test volunteers to record how they walk. Elsewhere at Georgia Tech, DARPA is funding other researchers to use video cameras and computers to try to develop distinctive gait signatures.

"One of the nice things about radar is we see through bad weather, darkness, even a heavy robe shrouding the legs, and video cameras can't," Greneker said in an interview. "At 600 feet we can do quite well."

And the target doesn't have to be doing a Michael Jackson moonwalk to be distinctive because the radar detects small frequency shifts in the reflected signal off legs, arms and the torso as they move in a combination of different speeds and directions.

"There's a signature that's somewhat unique to the individual," Greneker said. "We've demonstrated proof of this concept."

The researchers are anticipating ways the system might be fooled.

"A woman switching from flats to high heels probably wouldn't change her signature significantly," Greneker said. "But if she switched to combat boots, that might have a difference."

The system could be used by embassy security officers to conclude that a shadowy figure observed a few hundred feet away at night or in heavy clothing on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday was the same person and should be investigated further to see if he was casing the building for an attack, Greneker said.

At a restricted facility, the technology could warn security officers that an approaching person was probably not an employee by comparing his gait with those on file. "And we now know how to detect people who are carrying heavy packages, which could include a 25-pound bomb in a backpack," Greneker said.

Greneker hasn't gotten caught up in the privacy debate. "We are research and development people. We think about what's possible, not what the government will do with it. That's somebody else's job. And this isn't a weapons system."

DARPA contracting records made available through a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy group, show Poindexter agreed to fund 26 research projects and rejected 154 others through last Dec. 4. Other DARPA contract award data were released under FOIA to the Center for Public Integrity, an ethics advocacy group.

One of the largest was a contract for up to $27 million to Veridian Systems Division of Arlington, Va., to design software to allow "intelligence analysts and decision makers to jointly participate in the development of a full range of contingencies."

[PghBill]

With the advances in technology, we are well on our way to fulfilling George Orwell's vision of 1984! Remember, we already have face recognition technology, whereby a computer can match a face from a cam pic with the desired "match" in a database. And the number of cams in public areas is spreading. When you get stopped by the police and if they have a PC in the car, they can check a number of databases, including, here in Pennsylvania, whether you have a carry permit. I gotta side with the civil libertarians on this stuff. Where will it all end???

[AlaskanJack]

Hah, somedays I walk with a limp, some days I walk like a pimp, but most of the time I walk like a wimp!!!! hahahahaha try to find me, my name is 'Pistachio!'


I may have to just start wearing my pants around my a$$ that should make me walk differently, anything to throw them off!! Hehehehehe Big Brother sucks!!!