REPORTS THAT the US Department of Homeland Security, with Draper Laboratory and others, are working on systems that “monitor eye blinks, heart rate, and even fidgeting’’ as a way to detect would-be terrorists should raise serious concerns (“Spotting a terrorist,’’ Page A1, Sept. 18). We question whether systems such as these can ever be useful, and believe it is incumbent on those promoting them to address concerns about both their high costs and their frightening implications for civil liberties.
Systems such as these could provide a pretext for law enforcement officials to engage in ethnic or racial profiling by targeting people who they believe look like terrorists or, equally frightening, could further open the door for a total surveillance state in which Homeland Security collects and stores intimate biometric information on everyone. Unquestioned use of technology such as this could make us less safe and less free - and nothing could be more un-American than that.
Carol Rose
Executive director ACLU of Massachusetts
Boston 
