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Privacy Science

Singapore Using Thermal Imaging to Check for SARS 38

Posted by timothy from the implications-galore dept.
Quixotic1 writes "Channel NewsAsia reports that Changi International Airport in Singapore, Asia's fourth-largest airport, is using walk-through thermal imaging devices to screen for people with SARS. 'If a person is feverish, reddish spots will apear all over his face [on the screen] and that person will then be set aside for further examination by the nurses.' A Reuters article says that the 'Infrared Fever Screening System' was originally developed for military purposes. They are being built by Singapore Technologies."
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Singapore Using Thermal Imaging to Check for SARS More

Singapore Using Thermal Imaging to Check for SARS

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  • Infrared Fever Screening System? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @01:40PM (#5745390) Homepage
    If this keeps up pretty soon we will just walk right to the plane and security will be automatic. It will detect if we have guns, knives, razor blades, bombs, burnable shoes, and not to mention if we have a cold, flu, bubonic plague, HIV. What's next? Automatically looking up our families' histories to find any "unpatriotic" tendencies? Are they going to analyze our DNA and see if we are "genetically inclined" to do something?

    I don't think I'm paranoid, but this is starting to go overboard! On the other hand though we have SARS, which is pretty scare in itself. I understand why they are doing this, but what happens after SARS is nothing but history, if that happens at all? What reason will they give next time to check us for anything and everything?

  • Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Drakin ( 415182 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @01:51PM (#5745480)
    A good, senseable use for airport security.

    While a lot of folks will be up in arms over this, SARS is a large threat worldwide. Sure, this method will generate a lot of false positives, but it's probably less of an incovience than having to close down the airport and put a halt on all air travel, expecually in regions where SARS has a large presence.

  • And if I just had a cup of hot tea (Score:4, Informative)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @01:51PM (#5745483) Homepage Journal
    And if I just had a cup of hot tea, or coffee, or am nervous, or if my traveling companion just said something horribly embarrassing, or....

  • What about non-SARS fevers? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SolemnDragon ( 593956 ) <solemndragon AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @01:55PM (#5745516) Homepage Journal
    would i need a doctor's note saying, for example, that i take a medication that causes similar conditions? Because there are some. ANd that, right there, would have to be verified, which runs RIGHT up against the whole healthcare privacy rights issue.

    And i'm curious to know what happens to people after they get led away, and at what point this starts to make since, since after all they may have just infected an airport full of people who are still getting on their flights.

    I agree that this is an issue; I don't want to die, and this is killing people. But I'm not sure that I feel good about the lack of limitations here; halfway down the slippery slope already seems like a good time to stop and ask which is more important, our right to privacy or our physical safety, and how much of each we really HAVE to give up in order for this to work...

  • latest info on sars (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Naomi Heller ( 666472 ) <naomiheller@dajoba.com> on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @02:09PM (#5745624) Journal
    To view the latest info on sars check out the world health organization's specific site:

    http://www.who.int/csr/alertresponse/en/ [who.int] [ www.who.int ]

    That is all! -Naomi

  • Spreading Disease (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @02:38PM (#5745941)
    I wish they would start doing this where I work. America is one of the countries in the world where going to work sick is considered a moral obligation. Many countries think spreading disease to your coworkers is bad for productivity.
    • Hmm. If that's the case the next time you're sick, give the boss a real good handshake.

      If other coworkers are sick but you can't convince them to do the same thing, give them an encouraging handshake, then immediately shake the boss' hand. Or place the germs on inanimate objects at strategic locations (door knob, pen etc).

      If your boss doesn't get sick then you're doomed -might want to check if your boss is human ;). Otherwise boss either deserves feeling ill all the time, or will practically order sick pe

  • abuse potential seems fairly low... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @04:39PM (#5747047) Homepage
    Assuming it's not just used as an excuse to stop anyone and harass them, this seems like it's fairly harmless. It's fairly simple to screen anyone stopped by the system for symptoms of SARS, which obviously is not really true when screening for terrorists.

    I just wonder how effective it would be. It only takes a few people entering the country to start spreading the disease. If you've got one person with SARS coming into the country ever, and your system has a 90% chance of stopping that one person, then it's pretty effective. If however, you've got one person a day coming through with SARS, well after a week there's a 50% chance you've let an infected person through.

    In other words the detection rate of your system has to be in line with the incoming rate of infected people, otherwise it's fairly useless.

    At this point I'm sure there's nowhere near one person a day coming through any airport with SARS. But I also doubt the airport will only have one person ever come through.

  • No Pre-Flight Alcohol! (Score:3, Informative)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @05:11PM (#5747308) Homepage Journal

    A friend of mine (Chinese ethnicity, as a matter of fact) had a condition where his face would break out into a red flush after he consumed alcohol.

    A system like this could introduce some annoying false positives for SARS infected passengers.

    OTOH, at least the extra inconvenience would not be as noticeable if one was sufficiently soused.

    • Actually thats a common trait in Far Eastern races. But I'm not sure thats actually a fever, which is what this system detects. It just might be blood vessels dilating and allowing a lot of blood in (which could give heat also, I am no doctor)
      • This chinamen-trait is a defect in enzyme that takes care of alcohol metabolism. Goes like this: Alcohol->acetaldehyde->acetic acid.

        Acetaldehyde is toxic. If too much acetaldehyde accumulates, you get headache and red face. Then nausea.

        There are drugs that are given to alcoholics to discourage them from drinking - they make them pretty sick when drinking. These drugs block the enzyme (acetaldehyde dehydrogenaze). There are some mushroom that have the same effect, so having mushroom with a lot of alc
    • A friend of mine (Chinese ethnicity, as a matter of fact) had a condition where his face would break out into a red flush after he consumed alcohol.

      A system like this could introduce some annoying false positives for SARS infected passengers.

      What that is is called the Asian Blush. Basically, people with asian heritages don't have a certain enzyme to process alcohol correctly. The end result is a reddening of the face, but not increased temperatures that would set off the thermal scanners.
  • Yes, this system could be abused, however considering the seriousness of SARS, this is one of the few genuinely fast methods of screening people that is also effective. Taking temperatures, screening by appearance, etc etc are all either slower or not reliable enough to detect SARS. And yes, someone who merely has a fever could 'trip' this, but that is a small price to pay. It is important to note however, this is not a fix, since someone who is incubating the virus will pass through any scanner just fine.

  • Smoking can fool the test (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Muhammar ( 659468 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @07:01PM (#5747807)
    If the only basis is face surface temperature, taking substance causing periferal vasoconstriction will fool the test - the surface temperature will be lower.

    The most common potent drug causing peripheral blood vessel constriction is nicotine. I have even seen thermal imaging pictures of extremities (hands, feet) before and after smoking a single cigarette. The "cooling effect" of nicotine is quite dramatic.
  • The virus is rampant in the same country where equipment used to track it is being developed and sold?
    • Design virus
    • Design equipment to track virus
    • Release virus
    • Sell equipement to track virus
    • Profit
    Nice business model.

  • I'm tired of this... (Score:3)

    by hitzroth ( 60178 ) on Wednesday April 16, 2003 @10:30PM (#5748753)
    So SARS is this year's "wonder disease". It's killed about 150 people world wide and has a 4% fatality rate. Those people are no less dead for having been killed by SARS, but SARS is getting press far out of proporiton with its true nastyness.

    Would anyone care to guess how many people died of heart disease, cancer, influenza, HIV, etc in the past couple months? Hint: each carries *slightly* more than a 4% fatality rate.

    Bring back the Plague! A particularly virulent and contagious version! I'm tired of these candy-assed diseases that can't even manage to end the lives of more people than die in car accidents in and around some major cities in a similar time frame.
    • Uh, there's no vaccination or cure for SARS yet, and it is highly contagious. Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious at all, and HIV is very difficult to give to someone. Influenza has vaccines. I'd say that sets SARS out ahead of the rest.

      Sure, only 150 people have been killed so far, but the worry is that it will spread out-of-control worldwide, infecting tens or hundreds of millions of people.

    • HIV isn't very contagious, you can easily control your risk of exposure. As for flu, some deadlier forms are a problem, and this scanning could help quarantine flu too.

      If it turns out not to be that nasty think of it as a fire drill for plagues to come. But so far it doesn't look that innocuous.

      I'm thinking it'll be more like Y2K. Where after lots of work was done to help prevent major disasters, people complained about the lack of major disasters. Sure there was plenty of overreaction, but the impact of

    • Re:I'm tired of this... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Elazro ( 532810 )
      Look, I understand how this may look like hype - we've had a lot of disease scares recently (not to mention asteroid-scares, bio-terror scares, and so on.) But I think you have to give the epidemiologists some leeway, for many reasons:
      1. The death rate may be much higher than 4%
      2. The infection rate may be higher than any of the diseases you mentioned
      3. The time period from onset to death seems quite short, and
      4. This is the very beginning of a possible pandemic.

      I'll get to the 4th point in a bit. First...
  • I'm searching for the cheapest thermal camera I can find, also I wonder how they actually work.

  • What about the incubation period? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kj0n ( 245572 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @01:46AM (#5749383)
    It is possible that people are being infected with the SARS virus without having a fever yet. How will they get screened?

  • Fun fun fun! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Thursday April 17, 2003 @05:33AM (#5749905) Homepage
    I can't wait to see the look on people's faces when I walk through the scanner with interesting patterns on my face in infrared paint!

    Yes, there is in fact such a thing as infrared paint. Most Military vehicles are pained in a version of infrared paint that is "black" in infrared. It conseals them from infrared scanners and night vision goggles.

    There is also a version of infrared paint that is "white" in the infrared. The Iraqi military had virtually no night vision or infrared capability so the "black" paint wasn't really any benefit. They therefore put an inverted V in "white" infrared paint on coalition vehicles to help avoid friendly fire.

    -
  • This really won't seem like much at all on top of the regular security at the Singapore airport, some of the toughest in the world. When I went through there last year it went something like this:

    1. Show passport, all bags sent through X-ray machine.
    2. All bags hand searched (including my dirty clothes bag holding stinky jungle hiking gear).
    3. Show passport, get ticket, go towards gate.
    4. Show passport, go through metal detector, all carry-on bags X-rayed.
    5. All carry-ons sniffed with "Vap-o-Trace,"

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