Thoughtcrime

“The Department of Homeland Security last February awarded a contract to a Massachusetts technology firm to determine malintent. The project, named FAST (or Fast Attribute Screening Technologies), uses noninvasive advanced technologies to determine the facial temperature, eye movement, respiration rate, voice pitch, heart rate, and a variety of other indicators to determine the likelihood of an individual being dangerous. Proponents of this sort of screening urge that only information which is available to the public is used in the analysis of potential criminal intent. Law enforcement officers already use nervous behavior, suspicious appearance, and other subjective factors in determining reasonable cause to question suspects. The Fourth Amendment prohibits illegal search and seizure, but does this sort of electronic scanning of an individual count as a search?”