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If you walk like a terrorist--watch your step
May 30, 2003
BY DEBRA PICKETT SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Because it wasn't bad enough getting stuck at the airline ticket counter explaining that your name only sounds like the alias of a scary foreign terrorist, soon you might have to worry about having the same limp as some watch-list bomber.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--the same government agency that hopes to store all your personal details in a massive "Terrorist Information Awareness" database--is funding the development of a special radar system that can identify a person, from about 500 feet away, just by the way he or she walks. The tool, developed by researchers at Georgia Tech, is like the radar gun a trooper would use to catch speeders, only fine-tuned and a whole lot creepier.
"There's a signature that's somewhat unique to the individual," Gene Greneker, the scientist in charge of the project, told an Associated Press reporter. "We've demonstrated proof of this concept."
Bad guys--and the Department of Defense dutifully swears it wouldn't use the technology to spy on Americans--would have their "gait signature," along with any other information intelligence sources are able to scare up about them, attached to their names in a secret database. This signature would be created by combining body movements, as caught on surveillance videos, and certain measurements, such as leg length, which then might be checked before you get on a plane or drive across the border.
It would, presumably, be far easier to get than DNA or even fingerprint evidence.
It would also be far less reliable. The differences between people's walks--unless you happen to be comparing a rodeo cowboy with a ballerina--are not nearly as distinct as the differences between people's faces, researchers say. But faces can be covered, while the gait-recognition radar can see right through a thick robe. (Isn't that comforting?)
The Georgia Tech researchers say they've been 80 percent to 95 percent successful in identifying people by the way they walk.
Still, Greneker admits it's not hard to change your gait, say, by switching from Jimmy Choos to Doc Martens.
I'm thinking that the blisters from your new summer sandals, your nagging post-Stairmaster stiffness and those cocktails at dinner might also have some effect.
Not to mention the staggering weight of your carry-on bag. But good luck explaining any of that to the people who already consider your nail file a potential weapon.
Beyond all that is the simple fact that it's really hard to do anything "normally" when you know someone's watching you. Think it's tough to play it cool while walking past a line of wolf-whistling construction workers? Just imagine how much fun it would be to have one of the Transportation Security Administration's finest scrutinizing the sway of your hips and then comparing it with their database. If there happens to be some al-Qaida operative out there with the same self-conscious wiggle, you're in for the luggage screening of a lifetime.
The whole thing would be pretty funny--New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd compared it to Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks--if it didn't include X-ray vision and a possible 20 percent margin of error.
The researchers who developed gait-recognition technology envision it being used as a front-line screening device. Let's say there's a robed, hooded somebody pacing back and forth in front of an embassy. Analyze his gait, and, unless he's bought new boots or sprained his ankle, you'd be able to figure out it's the same guy who's been there the last few days. Which is helpful to know, I guess. Except that it's tough to decide whether you're better off having the same robed, hooded guy casing your embassy every day or having several different robed, hooded guys sharing the job.
Or, if you were concerned about someone getting access to an off-limits, high-security area, you could load a computer with the gait signatures of the people who are allowed to enter. Anyone whose walk was unfamiliar would set off an alarm when they tried to enter. That sounds helpful, too, I guess. Except you've still got to have a guard there to let in familiar people who are walking differently for some reason--like the boss when his gout is acting up.
The technology might also have some really promising medical applications, such as helping diagnose Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis in the earliest stages. But that's not what DARPA is interested in. And, because it's footing the bill for further development, it's a good bet the "walks like a terrorist, talks like a terrorist, must be a terrorist" angle will take priority.
If having somebody scrutinize my walking style would make America safer, I'd practice my posture, put on comfortable shoes and deal. I'd feel weird about it, and I'd probably stumble fairly frequently, but a little anxiety and a ruined pedicure would be a small price to pay for national security.
Unfortunately, tracking gait signatures and other random bits of information doesn't actually do much to make us safer.
It just gives us the creepy sense that someone, somewhere--some anti-terrorist wolf-whistler in the sky--is staring at our collective thighs.
And they don't even have the decency to tell us if these jeans make us look fat.