“The U.S. military can see you breathing on the other side of that wall. It can even see your heartbeat racing while you crouch behind the door. But if you think running farther away or hiding in a crowd will make you invisible to the Defense Department’s sensors, you might be in for a surprise. The Pentagon’s geeks are looking to tweak their life-form finder so they can spot your tell-tale heart no matter what you do.
Darpa, the Pentagon’s mad-science shop, announced last week that it’s looking to improve on technologies that sniff out biometric signatures like heartbeats from behind walls. Dubbed “Biometrics-at-a-distance,†the program seeks to build sensors that can remotely identify humans from farther away and tell them apart in a crowd.”