Wii Fit: Future of Airport Security?

Wii Fit: Future of Airport Security?

Updated: Monday, 12 Oct 2009, 4:31 PM EDT
Published : Monday, 12 Oct 2009, 4:14 PM EDT

* By LILY FU

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Going through airport security involves removing your jackets, belts and shoes, emptying your pockets and walking through metal detectors. But it might involve something new in the near future.

Popular Science reports that some passengers may be required to stand on a Nintendo Wii Fit balance board so that those who are nervous and fidgety can be identified. The idea is being tested as part of a $20-million Homeland Security project called Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) that is studying how to monitor people's physical states, like heart rate, breathing and eye movement.

"There's been a large field of research that ties your physical reactions to your mental state, your emotional state. We're looking for those signals that your body gives off naturally," project manager Robert Burns told CNN .

Researchers have modified the Wii balance board to show how someone's weight shifts and are now determining what kind of results from the balance board would warrant secondary screening.

But many argue that screening people's physical states might not be accurate. "I haven't seen any research that shows that those measures from the autonomic nervous system ... measuring blood pressure, measuring breathing, measuring heat on the face, are at all related to intent," Stephen Fienberg, professor of statistics and social sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, told CNN.

Others add that it's an invasion of privacy. "Nobody has the right to look at my intimate bodily functions, my breathing, my perspiration rate, my heart rate, from afar," said Joe Stanley of the ACLU.

This year six airports around the country began using whole-body imaging scanners that can see through people's clothing and reveal non-metallic objects, like explosives, that don't get picked up by traditional metal detectors.