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And without you knowing it.
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.
The machine is ten million times faster - and one million times more sensitive - than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.
Analyzing everything in real time
But the machine can sniff out a lot more than just explosives, chemicals and bioweapons. The company that invented it, Genia Photonics, says that its laser scanner technology is able to "penetrate clothing and many other organic materials and offers spectroscopic information, especially for materials that impact safety such as explosives and pharmacological substances." [PDF]
Formed in Montreal in 2009 by PhDs with specialties in lasers and fiber optics, Genia Photonics has 30 patents on this technology, claiming incredible biomedical and industrial applications - from identifying individual cancer cells in a real-time scan of a patient, to detecting trace amounts of harmful chemicals in sensitive manufacturing processes.
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The Genia Photonics' Picosecond Programmable Laser scanner is capable of detecting every tiny trace of any substance on your body, from specks of gunpowder to your adrenaline levels to a sugar-sized grain of cannabis to what you had for breakfast.
The Genia Photonics' Picosecond Programmable Laser scanner is capable of detecting every tiny trace of any substance on your body, from specks of gunpowder to your adrenaline levels to a sugar-sized grain of cannabis to what you had for breakfast.
So not only can they scan everyone. They would be able to do it everywhere: the subway, a traffic light, sports events... everywhere.
How does it work?
The machine is a mobile, rack-mountable system. It fires a laser to provide molecular-level feedback at distances of up to 50 meters in just picoseconds. For all intents and purposes, that means instantly.
The small, inconspicuous machine is attached to a computer running a program that will show the information in real time, from trace amounts of cocaine on your dollar bills to gunpowder residue on your shoes. Forget trying to sneak a bottle of water past security - they will be able to tell what you had for breakfast in an instant while you're walking down the hallway.
The technology is not new, it's just millions times faster and more convenient than ever before. Back in 2008, a team at George Washington University developed a similar laser spectrometer using a different process. It could sense drug metabolites in urine in less than a second, trace amounts of explosive residue on a dollar bill, and even certain chemical changes happening in a plant leaf.
And the Russians also have a similar technology: announced last April, their "laser sensor can pick up on a single molecule in a million from up to 50 meters away."
So if Genia Photonics' claims pan out, this will be an incredible leap forward in terms of speed, portability, and convenience. One with staggering implications.
Observation without limits
There has so far been no discussion about the personal rights and privacy issues involved. Which "molecular tags" will they be scanning for? Who determines them? What are the threshold levels of this scanning? If you unknowingly stepped on the butt of someone's joint and are carrying a sugar-sized grain of cannabis like that unfortunate traveler currently in jail in Dubai, will you be arrested?
And, since it's extremely portable, will this technology extend beyond the airport or border crossings and into police cars, with officers looking for people on the street with increased levels of adrenaline in their system to detain in order to prevent potential violent outbursts? And will your car be scanned at stoplights for any trace amounts of suspicious substances? Would all this information be recorded anywhere?
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A page from a Genia Photonics paper describing its ability to even penetrate through clothing.
A page from a Genia Photonics paper describing its ability to even penetrate through clothing.
The end of privacy coming soon
According to the undersecretary for science and technology of the Department of Homeland Security, this scanning technology will be ready within one to two years, which means you might start seeing them in airports as soon as 2013.
In other words, these portable, incredibly precise molecular-level scanning devices will be cascading lasers across your body as you walk from the bathroom to the soda machine at the airport and instantly reporting and storing a detailed breakdown of your person, in search of certain "molecular tags".
Going well beyond eavesdropping, it seems quite possible that U.S. government plans on recording molecular data on travelers without their consent, or even knowledge that it's possible - a scary thought. While the medical uses could revolutionize the way doctors diagnose illness, and any technology that could replace an aggressive pat-down is tempting, there's a potential dark side to this implementation, and we need to shine some light on it before it's implemented.
. . . we can read:
"Say I go to my shooting range in the morning and head to the airport around noon. I'm psyched for my trip. Am I going to be detained and questioned for sure because of residue and my adrenaline for being excited? (if your answer involves 'if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to worry about', get bent) "
or, say you're the guy in Hawaii who did a deep intestinal cleanse where one typically expels a large piece of mucoid plaque from colon/small intestine, such as you can read about at this [Link] .
Quoting from about halfway down the page:
"In a lecture in San Jose California on 26 Sep 98, Dr. Richard Anderson told the story of one of his patients who underwent the cleanse in Hawaii a few years ago. The patient was passing long strands of the rubbery mucoid plaque, some over 20 feet in length! Fascinated, the patient hung the strands over his clothesline in the back yard. He then took a length of the plaque, and packaged it in a box to send to the mainland to prove what happened to him. He mailed the package at the local post office in Hawaii.
A few days later, two serious-looking officials in ATF windbreakers knocked on the patient’s door and asked him if he had sent such and such a package to such and such an address. The patient said yes, and asked what was the problem. They answered that the post office has dogs that sniff out all packages mailed off the island, and that one of them had become very excited about this package. The patient asked what were the dogs trained to detect. Only two things, came the answer: drugs and explosives. Which dog was it? The one for explosives. The patient was incredulous, especially when he recalled that he had worked with munitions some 25 years ago, and his job was to handle explosives! He explained the detox cleanse to the two agents and they were satisfied. This story illustrates the power of a such an intestinal cleanse: the body had retained these strong toxins in the mucoid plaque lining of the colon, stored in a concentration powerful enough to be detected by dogs through the layers of wrapping of a sealed package some 25 years later!"
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So if this scanner is as capable as they say it is one might not be far off wondering if maybe such innocent people as the patient above might wind up jail, without charge, for the rest of their lives. Remembering the many, many stories of TSA's stooges rough housing people around . . .