You smell like a terrorist: US seeks human-scent-collector device

Noah Shachtman of the Wired blog "Danger Room" has a post up today about an odd project from the US government's Technical Support Working Group, or TSWG:

The research arm of the government's anti-terror fight is looking to for someone to build "a rugged, reliable, and compact system for canine handlers to collect human scent for future use to track a specified target."

There are similar systems around today, the group notes.  But they're "too large and fragile to be used in an operational environment."  TSWG wants a handheld, rugged device to do the job, instead.  And the group has laid an exhaustive set of criteria for any contractor looking to build the thing...

Link.

Reader comment: dalvenjah says,

The East German Stasi secret police did something similar. (This link was the first to pop up in a google search) They would collect cloths with the scents of their targets for their dogs, sometimes during torture, other times by breaking into a house and stealing the dirty underwear.

Of course, the TSWG is not doing this for totalitarian or creepy old man purposes at all...

[#1 posted by Anonymous , September 21, 2007 12:28 PM:]

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