Gait could be used to identify security threats: Singapore

Skin texture and the way a person walks could help pinpoint security threats if a Singapore government project is implemented, a top cabinet minister said Tuesday.

Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng, who is also the interior minister, said the city-state would increasingly use science and technology for checks on incoming travellers.

"A major project in the pipeline is the setting up of a Human Factors laboratory at the land checkpoints to apply biometrics, behaviour profiling and bio-signal analysis," he told an international conference on homeland security.

Singapore will explore whether biological data, including gait and skin texture, "can be used to verify and identify the travellers of security interest with a higher order of certainty," Wong said.

The alleged ringleader of a terror cell in Singapore, Mas Selamat bin Kastari, escaped from a tightly guarded facility here in February 2007 and is still at large. Police say he sometimes walks with a limp.

More than 150 exhibitors from over 20 countries are attending this year's Global Security Asia (GSA) conference and exhibition, organisers said.

Andrew Marriott, managing director of event organisers GSA Exhibitions Pte Ltd, cited one estimate showing that homeland security expenditure in the Asia-Pacific region will rise from the current 20 billion dollars a year to more than 36 billion dollars by 2014.

(c) 2009 AFP