The Pentagon’s fringe science arm wants to keep track of potential enemies-of-the-state in every way imaginable: not just by sight, or by sound, or by their e-mail; but by their smell, as well.
Darpa’s “Unique Signature Detection Project (formerly known as the Odortype Detection program)” aims to sniff out genetic markers in “human emanations (urine, sweat, etc.)” that “can be used to identify and distinguish specific high-level-of-interest individuals within groups of enemy troops.“
“Recent experimental results” show that chemical compounds in a mouse’s “urinary” scent produces an “odortype” that’s unique to each individual rodent, Darpa observes in its original solicitation for the project. “Although experimental data for humans is far less quantitative,” the agency is hoping that a similarly “genetically determined,” “exploitable chemosignal” can be found in people, too.
Once that marker is found, Darpa’s proposed 2007 budget notes, the agency wants to know what “the impact of non-genetic factors (e.g., diet, stress, health, age) [have] on the signal.” That could help figure out how to “robustly extract” the signal “from a complex and varied chemical background.“
The sniffing-out process has already begun in the lab, one professor told Business Week last year. A person’s smell “is a cocktail of hundreds of molecules… The question is whether it’s a gin and tonic or a margarita.” Making those distinictions out in the odorifically-complex real world won’t be easy, he added.
Darpa’s smell detector is part of a larger, $15 million-per-year effort to develop “novel sensors” for U.S. troop operating in “urban settings.” The goal of the Urban Vision program is “to enable the warfighter to ‘see’ movers within a building using a variety of fused multi-spectral techniques.” The “Enemy Dismount Intrusion Detection program,” on the other hand, “will develop a chemical sensor that is capable of providing an advanced warning of the presence of enemy troops or combatants by detecting the chemical emissions… that are common to all humans.“
And this effort is, itself, only a small part of Darpa’s ongoing push to “observe our adversaries and their environment 24 hours a day, seven days a week, week-in and week-out and that implies a multiplicity of platforms, sensors and sensor types on the ground, in the sea, in the air, and also in space,” explained the agency’s Dr. Ted Bially in a recent speech. Other components include the development of a giant blimp that can watch over an entire city at once, a network of minature sensors which spot adversaries using radar, and software programs that comb for potential terrorists in the web traffic and e-mails of ordinary people.
UPDATE 04/18/06 8:01 AM: In the comments, Jutta posts a transcript of an old Voice of America broadcast, which notes that:
DURING THE COLD WAR, THE STASI [East German secret police] ALSO KEPT WHAT MR. LEGNER DESCRIBED AS “SMELL SAMPLES” OF PEOPLE — CLOTH SAMPLES CONTAINING THE SCENT OF INDIVIDUALS THAT COULD BE USED FOR DOG TRACKING AND IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES. WE FOUND THESE SAMPLES IN SEALED GLASS BOTTLES.
LOL, I believe your picture there is highly unecessary.…
Yeah I think you may have had way, WAY too much fun setting up that one. Not that I judge that sort of thing.
After the Berlin Wall fell, the people ransacked the headquarters of the infamous Stasi secret police. There they found thousands of jars, each containing a cloth. Apparently the secret police were collecting the “smell” of percieved enemies such as those folks critical of the government, foreigners, american agents and whatnot.
The American press showed this as an example of what happens when a government’s intelligence agencies get a tad TOO paranoid.
I guess now that America is collecting scents.…it’s a good thing?
from:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/07/990714-stasi.htm
DURING THE COLD WAR, THE STASI ALSO KEPT WHAT MR. LEGNER
DESCRIBED AS “SMELL SAMPLES” OF PEOPLE — CLOTH SAMPLES
CONTAINING THE SCENT OF INDIVIDUALS THAT COULD BE USED FOR DOG
TRACKING AND IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES. WE FOUND THESE SAMPLES IN
SEALED GLASS BOTTLES.
// 2ND LEGNER ACT//
DURING AN INTERROGATION, FOR EXAMPLE, YOU HAD THE
OPPORTUNITY TO FORCE A PERSON TO GIVE YOU A SMELL
SAMPLE, JUST AS IF YOU CONTACT TEXTILES (TOUCH CLOTH)
WITH CERTAIN PARTS OF YOUR BODY, YOUR SMELL IS PRESERVED
…WE HAD SEVERAL HUNDRED OF THESE SMELL SAMPLES OF MORE
OR LESS PROMINENT DISSIDENTS WHICH THEY PRESERVED.
//END 2ND LEGNER ACT//
SPOKESMAN LEGNER SAYS THE STASI ALSO COLLECTED INFORMATION ON
EAST GERMANS, BY INTERCEPTING MAIL AND EAVESDROPPING.
//3RD LEGNER ACT//
WE HAVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, I THINK, MILLIONS OF
LETTERS FOR EXAMPLE HERE. MANY OF THEM NEVER ARRIVED AT
THEIR DESTINATION WHICH THEY JUST COLLECTED BECAUSE IT
MAY BE USEFUL TO HAVE THESE LETTERS. ALSO, THEY JUST
LISTENED FOR HOURS AND YEARS ON TELEPHONES. CERTAIN
PEOPLE HAVE THOUSANDS OF PAGES OF THEIR OWN TELEPHONE
CONVERSATIONS STORED HERE.
hmmm.
the similarities between the US government and Stasi tactics are
getting uncomfortably similar.
Ray Bradbury hits another nail right on the head. Fahrenheit 451, anybody?
I for one think that if the technology is used for good i.e. against terorists, then fantastic.
i prefer this system of selectively routing out the bad guys than the system which is being imposed on the british people, which is everyone is being branded as potential terorists by having i.d. cards. The argument that if you have nothing to hide then put up,is bull**** and for lame brains. I have nothing to hide, but i absolutely disagree with anyone or anything dictating (as in dictatorship,as in using the tactics of a now defunct iiii raq eeee dictator) to me that i must be branded like a cattle all in the name of anti terorism.
If the technology is selective then this is in keeping with my rights and wish for anonnimity.
Its bad enough having goverments wanting to try and know and control everything about you. What are they so affraid of? why do they want to know everything (my bum hole is mine to control and mine to know how many time it has to open, not any governments buisness, although they like to think otherwise). id cards, genetic finger printing is not acceptable to me its bull**** with some sinister motive.
Smells like a terrorist to me
If you are a terrorist in Afghan or Iraq, chances are your body absorbs large trace doses due to the handling of amunition or expolsives. Additionally if you were in lethal combat, you would be exposed to more of these substances. Why not an electronic substance sniffing dog (so to speak) that can detect and quantify higher than normal levels of these substances on a person? What harm is there in a tool of this sort for our peacekeepers.
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