3

The Pentagon is claiming that they have a device which can identify people by heart beat from 200m away.

A new device, developed for the Pentagon after US Special Forces requested it, can identify people without seeing their face: instead it detects their unique cardiac signature with an infrared laser. While it works at 200 meters (219 yards), longer distances could be possible with a better laser. “I don’t want to say you could do it from space,” says Steward Remaly, of the Pentagon’s Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office, “but longer ranges should be possible.”

A previous question determined that heart beat ID didn't work very well with sensors attached to the body, at least back in 2010.

Can this device reliably identify someone from a distance using their heart beat?

Oddthinking
  • 140,378
  • 46
  • 548
  • 638
dont_shog_me_bro
  • 3,131
  • 2
  • 20
  • 31
  • Even if we take the claim at face-value and assume that it is true, the Pentagon would to have the recorded cardiac signature for the target they intend to strike, making the device effectively useless against.. pretty much everyone. – T. Sar Jun 28 '19 at 15:44
  • 2
    @T.Sar: I think you are jumping ahead of the technology when you say "the target they intended to strike". The claims seems to be "Here is a biometric that can be read from a person sitting/standing still from a distance of 200 meters." Presumably this could be used to show that a known person is present in a distant location or to positively identify an unknown person recorded remotely later when they are captured/arrested. – Oddthinking Jun 28 '19 at 16:26
  • If the only thing they can measure is the heartbeat frequency, that's by far not enough information (even if it didn't change all the time), so what else is there to measure? – John Dvorak Jun 28 '19 at 16:30
  • @Oddthinking The linked article opens with a passage about how the pentagon supposedly used someone's gait to identify a target for a drone strike, and then follows with a new detection technology that is, supposedly, better. It isn't as much as me jumping ahead than the article leading the text this way. – T. Sar Jun 28 '19 at 16:52
  • @Oddthinking From the text: "Everyone’s heart is different. Like the iris or fingerprint, our unique cardiac signature can be used as a way to tell us apart. Crucially, it can be done from a distance. It’s that last point that has intrigued US Special Forces. Other long-range biometric techniques include gait analysis, which identifies someone by the way he or she walks. This method was supposedly used to identify an infamous ISIS terrorist before a drone strike. But gaits, like faces, - – T. Sar Jun 28 '19 at 16:54
  • - are not necessarily distinctive. An individual’s cardiac signature is unique, though, and unlike faces or gait, it remains constant and cannot be altered or disguised." It isn't _me_ jumping ahead. This thing being used in the context of drone strikes is, literally, what opens the article. – T. Sar Jun 28 '19 at 16:55
  • they measure with a laser, so they get the external movement of the skin, related to heartbeat and bloodflow. that might be enough to discern ' which of those four is this?' but not in any way ' is this tango someone from our 10000 people database, or unknown? even if they had direct access to resting- state ECG, i'd doubt it. this is snakeoil. – bukwyrm Jun 29 '19 at 19:59
  • @T.Sar: Yes, I think you are right. Sorry. I was thinking you were claiming that there would be a "heart-beat seeking missile" or similar, but it looks like I was (ironically) jumping ahead of your claim. – Oddthinking Jun 30 '19 at 13:08
  • Identify a person in how large a set? Identifying one person in a possible 10 is easier than identifying one person in a possible 100,000. Anyway, from experience with similar technologies, I can say that it is quite plausible and in theory, absolutely possible. Laser microphones can be quite effective. However it would probably require significant "training" on the possible subjects that it can identify, and eventually as the set grows, the false positive rate, even if it is low, would become unacceptable. – forest Jul 08 '19 at 03:39
  • It could be suitable to tell whether this is "the real Saddam Hussein" or a decoy, though. And also to tell whether a head of state habitually uses decoys. – Dewi Morgan Jul 08 '19 at 22:09

0 Answers0