1984 at the airport?
And I don’t mean TWA and hot pants.
Since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed terror attempt, airport screening methods have been criticised and scrutinized. This article outlines some innovations that could be added to current procedures. There are a number of moral issues lurking beneath the surface.
The first innovation, a “mind reader,” was developed by WeCU (“we see you”) technologies and involves projecting images onto airport screens that a would-be terrorist would likely recognize. The technology relies mostly upon hidden cameras and sensors that detect signs that a person recognizes the image.
The second involves highly sensitive lie-detection or “ill-will” detection system that recognizes some of the physical movements that supposedly reveal a person to be lying or intending harm, for instance, pupil dilation.
The third is the “Israeli model” whereby passengers are subject to intense personal interviews featuring the interviewers looking at them closely for signs of deception.
These are morally complicated because of privacy and slippery slope worries. I’m not especially well-informed on privacy issues, but central concerns relate to notions of self-ownership and autonomy, specifically the ability to form one’s own thoughts and control who has access to them. The idea of autonomy-of free thought and personal control over one’s life-depends upon one having the exclusive ability to see, change, and direct one’s thoughts. If the state tries to read people’s thoughts through certain physiological cues, it aims to enter forbidden territory. To look inside someone’s mind is qualitatively different from looking inside someone’s bag.
The response is that the state cannot “read” all thoughts here, just evil ones, and even there, it cannot access anyone’s consciousness in any real sense. Secondly, it’s not like they are punishing people for having specific thoughts. They are merely searching for clues to determine that someone deserves extra scrutiny from security personnel, given that it is too costly, for a number of reasons, to give each passenger such detailed examination. The WeCU system’s results, on their own, will not hold up in court as evidence that someone intended to commit a crime. Finally, the prevention of terrorism is such an important goal that some very minor, indeed theoretical infringements on privacy may be justified.
This response is strong, but there are important slippery slope concerns. If we allow such procedures, have we created a moral and legal precedent that will lead on down to actual mind-reading by the state, were such technology available? There is good reason to be very careful to protect private ownership over one’s thoughts, such that we draw the line far away from any potentially illegitimate state action, out of an abundance of caution for one of the central beliefs of the modern, liberal state. But is this a relevant case? Is looking someone in the eye, very closely, with machines, so deeply invasive? Probably not, at least according to my intuitions. But does that lead to the demand and the development of more sophisticated, more invasive technology? Maybe. Where to draw the line?
It is important to know how effectively these innovations really are; for if they do involve trading off on some mental privacy, no matter how small an amount, they better offer a lot of the other side of the balance sheet.
-Jake
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