Now that fingerprinting has come under pressure for being unreliable and often the cause of false convictions, a new generation of technology is emerging to take its place. Take for example Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, which promises to find terrorists by reading their brain waves:

How do we determine if a person is a terrorist or spy? There is a new technology, that for the first time, allows us to measure scientifically if specific information is stored in a person’s brain. Brain Fingerprinting technology can determine the presence or absence of specific information, such as terrorist training and associations.

Here is the key to the new technology:

One fundamental difference between a terrorist and an innocent suspect is that the terrorist has detailed knowledge of terrorist activities and an innocent person does not. A terrorist has either committed a crime, received training in terrorism or worked with others in planning terrorist attacks. The innocent suspect does not have this type of information stored in his brain.

The fundamental problem with this is that the person being scanned has to have advance knowledge. When it comes to many terrorist cells, especially suicide bombers, the perpetrators could know little or nothing at all before the day of their mission. Also, this system seems to depend on the operators having the right pattern to match with terrorist information within a suspect’s brain.

That brings us back to the need for detailed intelligence of the terrorists and arrest of their inside planners, at which point the technology only provides a marginal gain, no? My guess is that someone will try to use this in the opposite scenario with mixed or even unjust results — trying to build a case for conviction on information that is unreliable by claiming infallibility in the technology.

What will a Brain Fingerprint look like when we watch news about terrorist plots, or read spy novels? Will it mark us as indistinguishable from someone planning or actively engaged in a terrorist plot? How would Tom Clancy’s Brain Fingerprint look?

I have been contemplating a Newsweek.com story for a few days. First, I arrived at the story with the impression that it would say how animals are dying more often now that people drive such giant vehicles. Not so. The opposite, in fact. The news is that more people are dying than in past years:

Fatalities from vehicle crashes with deer and other animals have more than doubled over the last 15 years, according to a new study by an auto insurance-funded highway safety group that cites urban sprawl overlapping into deer habitat.

The report by the Highway Loss Data Institute found that 223 people died in animal-vehicle crashes last year, up from 150 in 2000 and 101 in 1993.

The rate of accidents is increasing, so the fatalities rate is also increasing, but it does not highlight the ratio of fatalities to overall crashes. At the end of the story we are told that in 2008 there were 1.2 million claims for animal related crashes, and that number is up 15 percent over the past five years. Since the fatalities are up over 100%, the ratio of crashes to fatalities seems to have increased over time, no? To make things more confusing, the areas with the fatalities are known for giant SUVs and trucks:

Since 1993, Texas had the most deaths from such crashes, with 227, followed by Wisconsin with 123 and Pennsylvania with 112.

The reporter does point out that this is nothing compared with the 12,000 drunk driving deaths per year. However, the analysis goes into why breeding season and fences are important to consider when looking at the numbers.

I propose a couple additional issues be investigated. For example, large trucks and SUV, despite their bulk and appearance of safety, are difficult to handle and may cause erratic driving that lead to worse accidents. Thus, they could be the cause of more serious harm than earlier. I would look at the ratio of large to small vehicles in the number of fatalities. Another factor could be education and experience. I wonder if an insurance company tried giving evasive maneuvering lessons to people in a high-risk area (based on the numbers). Showing people how to drift on dirt roads, and brake/swerve at speed, could be an effective way to test this idea. My experience has been that the reaction of drivers to animals is a significant factor in the outcome of the accident.

Consider this You Witness News story for comparison:

A collision between two SUVs and a pickup truck sent nine people, including one pedestrian, to the hospital. […] None of the injuries was considered serious.

Incidentally (pun not intended) I see a minivan in that collision, not an SUV.

Clearly there is more security perspective that can be teased out of the insurance claim data. I do not think it comes down to such a simple equation of more animals on the road leads to more fatalities.