SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the Is-that-a-pistol-in-your-pocket,-or... dept.
Passengers on the Los Angeles subway system can, at their option, be checked for weapons and explosives by walking through a millimeter-wave scanner. The system, which began operation Wednesday, was installed by a partnership of Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Transportation Security Administration and the manufacturer of the scanner, Evolv Technology.
Travelers boarding the Metro Red Line at Union Station were met Wednesday with a new security screening system designed to detect possible "mass-casualty" threats, as part of a pilot project to explore the latest in transit-security technology.
The Evolv Edge screening system is billed as a high-speed, high-volume screening system that can scan 600 people per hour, without the need for passengers to stop or even slow down.
According to the manufacturer, Evolv Technology, uses a series of sensors that quickly collect data on people who pass through the machine and feed it into an "algorithmic model that automatically determines if there is a potential threat," rendering a decision in a matter of seconds.
[...] "You don't have to take all the things that you normally carry out of your pockets," he said. "You can leave your phone in your pocket, your keys in your pocket, and we're looking specifically for weapons and explosives. So this system's called a millimeter-wave scanner. It uses harmless radio waves and we're able to process well over 600 visitors per hour."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Friday August 18 2017, @02:37PM (1 child)
For this post, assuming artificial validity to their model of no-fourth-amendment-land...
While I've never ridden any of LA's subways, I certainly have in Atlanta, where I have gone from turnstile to "on the train" in the abovementioned timeframe ("a matter of seconds").
In a moving mass of humanity, knowing "right now" that "this specific traveler" might be* carrying a tactical nuke** is information with possible (debatable) safety value.
Knowing that "some matter of seconds ago" that "a traveler who passed this way" might be* carrying a tactical nuke** is not actionable intelligence, but rather history that explains any ensuing destruction, due to something that wasn't prevented at the gate.
Do the passengers pass rapidly and easily through the invasive scan while the sensors "quickly collect" their data, as described, then stand under arrest for "some seconds" until the machine determines their intentions, body composition, and political affiliations and gives them either an "all clear" or an "enemy of the state" designation?
* - might be - the machines don't detect items, but rather data with probabilities of possibilities.
** - tactical nuke - or whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @05:10PM
This system has facial recognition (which was turned off for the test), so I suppose they have some hope of identifying specific passengers.