DHS wants to use human body odor as biometric identifier, clue to deception

If you're not paranoid yet, reading this will make you that way. More taxpayers hard earned money frittered away.

FROM UPI.COM:


DHS wants to use human body odor as biometric identifier, clue to deception

By SHAUN WATERMAN,

UPI Homeland and National Security Editor Published: March 9, 2009 at 3:35 PM courtesy: www.dhs.gov

WASHINGTON, March 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to study the possibility that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying or to identify individuals in the same way that fingerprints can.

In a federal procurement document posted Friday on the Web, the department's Science and Technology Directorate said it would conduct an "outsourced, proof-of-principle study to determine if human odor signatures can serve as an indicator of deception. … As a secondary goal, this study will examine … human odor samples for evidence to support the theory that an individual can be identified by that individual's odor signature."
Officials said that the work was at a very early stage, but the announcement brought criticism from civil liberties advocates who said it showed the department's priorities were misplaced.

The procurement notice said the department is already "conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples" and that the research it hopes to fund "will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found."
"This research has the potential for enhancing our ability to detect individuals with harmful intent," the notice said. "A positive result from this proof-of-principle study would provide evidence that human odor is a useful indicator for certain human behaviors and, in addition, that it may be used as a biometric identifier."