IBM filed patents for airport security profiling technology
no one will reverse-engineer it.
IBM, though, has used a perfectly legal subterfuge to make the patent applications difficult to track down. It did not put its company name on any of the applications, listing only the inventor names and that of its law firm. Wolfe has now tracked down all the applications, and he offers insights into the technology details (see below).
Angell also said that he was no longer with IBM. “I was laid off last year along with thousands of other people,” he said. Angell is currently teaching a computer science course at a community college in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he lives. Wolfe writes that he was flabbergasted, wondering how Big Blue could let go a guy like this, who obviously has heavy duty data-analysis chops and is behind such seemingly important technology.
Angell told Wolfe he called him because he was concerned that the technology be applied effectively. “If it’s done right, we could do passive profiling [and] passive detection and do it without a whole lot of fanfare,” he said. This profiling of potentially dangerous passengers, as outlined in the applications, appears in many ways to be more neutral than the profiling currently the subject of widespread public debate, because it is software-based and runs off of pre-programmed rules which, in general, are intended to identify suspicious behavior (on the other hand, this would not necessarily always apply, since markers such as a person’s apparent age are listed in the patent applications as potential data points).
Inside the patents
The profiling, off of sensor input, is described in patent application number 20090204695, filed last September. It is entitled “Unique Cohort Discovery From Multimodal Sensory Devices.”
This patent application describes the use of a large number of sensors of all types — chemical, biometric, etc. — around the airport perimeter, so data can be fed into a computer for analysis to detect threats. Here is the relevant wording from the patent application:
[Data processing parses the data to form attributes.] Attributes may include an individual’s age, make and/or model of a vehicle, color of a hat, breed of a dog, sound of an engine, a medical diagnosis, a date of birth, a color, item of clothing, walking, talking, running, a type of food eaten, an identification of an item purchased.
An attribute that is an event may include eating, smoking, walking, jogging, walking a dog, carrying bags, carrying a baby, riding
