"Headspace" (a term borrowed from the beat generation, where it connoted psychological privacy) is the technical term for the area surrounding an object or person in which their odour can be analysed. But odour detection is not limited to the discovery of drugs and explosives. Scientists and electronic nose entrepreneurs claim headspace analysis can reveal everything from the substances people have been in contact with and their emotional state, to their personal identity and ethnic origin. Although the science behind this field is nascent and the scientific validity of such claims is hotly disputed, they are gaining in stature. Researchers believe the unique smell that we each emit is tied to the makeup of the major histocompatibility complex, a group of genes found on the surface of T-cells that are crucial to the immune system. Several police dog handlers attribute their dogs' knack for identifying criminals to an ability to detect the scent of fear emitted by the guilty, and a synthesised version of this scent is available as a training aid.
— From Smells suspicious, a fascinating report on modern methods of olfactory surveillance. By columnist Amber Marks in the UK Guardian, with thanks to Gary Fredrick for the link.
So…if they've already synthesized fear, could they do joy next? I've already got enough ennui…but I would love some ecstatic happiness. This is interesting, this sensory detection. Now, if our auras could be easily seen, and our emotional state scented … absolutely what psychological privacy would be left? We'd be forced into absolute honesty. Feels kind of naked and vulnerable to me. xoxo
“the scent of fear emitted by the guilty”?! Perhaps they are just afraid of dogs.
Perhaps ecstatic happiness would get you arrested even faster in an airport, no? Privacy is disappearing fast.
Or perhaps they're scared of modern methods of olfactory surveillance
This is something we all should be very worried about…
This is extremely invasive science and when used by the wrong governent, in the long run we all could end up living in a totalitary society.
Hope there will be firm rules to manage this kind of science and technology.
What a marvelous, spooky article. I remember reading a development study by the Economist or something that indicated you could partially measure the “development level” of a country by how much its citizens trusted the police. My husband and I were shocked. Based on our experiences as a couple, if they surveyed us, Canada would surely be a “Third World” country. Of course, if somebody burglarized our house, I would call the police (I don't think they're corrupt, exactly), but I wouldn't expect anything to come of their investigation. And I wouldn't call them if I had a missing piece of fruitcake, that's for sure!?!
The smelling of race or ethnic background is particularly offensive to me, as well as keeping banks of the smells of political activists. And I had no idea that the McCanns had become suspects based on sniffer dog information – I thought there was supposed to have blood in a car they had rented?
When those bees won't leave us alone it's not going to be just the bees bothering us. All of a sudden you wonder. Are these bees picking the wrong person because I smell like a person who just robbed a bank.
The worst part was the homeless guy who gets convicted for stealing cake because the dog gave a positive reaction. The dogs I knew, way back when, who I trained for obedience just wanted a reward. If you were in the way well… All in a dogs days business.
Damn the biggest wasp I've ever seen is stuck to the screen…
This is really very bad news… and I haven't seen or heard a dog in weeks in Prague… kind of makes me wonder… Those Czechs aren't so stupid after all..
Very disturbing.
Agreed.
Yep.
Interesting about the development level — because I think this article illustrates that perhaps you'd find the highest level of trust at some middle level of development, you know? But once you get too developed, it's all down hill.
Have not been following the McCann story at all, on purpose, so I don't know.
Gary Fred, the fruitcake story is truly shocking…and that it held up on appeal.
Bad in so many ways. Aside from the privacy issues, it's such an inexact thing.
Dogs are better at smelling than us, but they're not perfect. If courts are letting prosecutions suceed that hinge on smell, that's a whole set of miscarriages of justice waiting to happen.
What struck me in the article me was the laid back attitude about using dogs to justify stop and search. Evidently the British police haven't learnt from their own past (riot inspiring) failures.
I am thinking the fruitcake guy did not have a top notch lawyer
Wow, creepy article. Hard to believe they would research surveillance/criminal prosecution on something so ephemeral.
Having said that, I do think some dogs have an uncanny ability to pick up on when someone is up to no good. Whether it's scent or something else, I'm not sure. Certainly not grounds for prosecuting someone though!
probably assigned to him from the public defenders office who is doing 20 or 30 cases a day. Plus the homeless have been demonized like nothing I've ever seen in this country.
Weren't most Biblical Prophets homeless? Christ and his Apostles for instance?
Dogs are incredibly uncanny even to the point of picking up their handlers body language when instructed multiple times to do something because his owner doesn't want to spend his day looking for a piece of cake.
In fact “a piece of cake” may be the instuction this team operated with to indicate, 'c'mon, next case'.
I wonder what our forefathers would think upon finding out that refusing a search without a warrant brings out the “probable cause” flag and is practically one strike against you in court.
I knew something smelled fishy about him your honor so we searched him, his car, his family and all their belongings and found _______.
I think I'm reading to many books that defend the constitution, which was written by brilliant well educated men.
Cheezwiz, it is true…I can't imagine many police stations in the US would follow up on a stolen slice of fruitcake.
True.
I was wondering if they took into account factors like what a person had eaten when deciding that a particular ethnicity smelt a certain way. I have noticed that my personal odour changes if I eat curry or garlic or other spicy foods and perfumes react differently on my skin. Surely this would alter a person's odour. Would my “ethnicity” change with whatever country's cuisine I had eaten that day? I think that there are way too many factors that affect our odour for this to have any real value as a mode of detection.
I do not know enough about the technology to comment, but certainly agree that foods affect the smell of skin, and by extension, the smell of perfumes.
I know that it is all heresay but I've even heard or read somewhere that vegetarians and meat eaters smell different.
So what we eat probably affects our body odour as well.