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Lie Detector Glasses Coming Soon
Zelphyr writes "The EE Times is reporting on a product soon to be released by an Israeli company that allows the wearer of special glasses to tell whether the person they are talking to is telling a lie. Not only that, they can tell you whether someone loves you! Apparently a PC version of the 'love detector' is in the works as well. Think my Windows box will be upset when it knows how much I hate it?"
Just what I've always wanted, the unscientific* and unreliable results of traditional polygraphy, only in portable form!!
Where do I sign up?
(Oh, sorry.. there is research that has PROVEN the polygraph to have 50% accuracy rate.. ranking it right up there with the 'other' lie detector: A coin with the word 'truth' on one side and 'lie' on the other!)
I suppose this means we'll all learn to become better liars
Sigh... if only.
The CB App. What's your 20?
From what my dad tells me, when he bought a pair as an impressionable young lad they were made of cardboard, and you were supposed to use them to fool people into thinking that you had x-ray vision. Not nearly as fun, IMHO.
-1, "1337" speak
Polygraphing is a given hot topic, there are zealots in both proponent and opponent camps. I find it diffucult to find an objective source of information on the topic and its accuracy.
Antipolygraph.org has a link here
and the American Polygraph Association has a link here
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
The company said that a state police agency in the Midwest found the lie detector 89 percent accurate, compared with 83 percent for a traditional polygraph.
Anyone that accepts that the traditional polygraph has an 83% "accuracy" is obviously starting from a different viewpoint than the rest of us. Still with law-enforcement agencies being willing to hire psychics and dowsers we shouldn't be too surprised at seeing contra-rational thinking being employed by people that don't understand science.
Indeed. There's a reason that polygraph tests aren't admissible as evidence - they are woefully inaccurate for the most part, and there are a lot of ways to fool the test as well. Personally, I wish they'd outlaw polygraph tests for the most part - the police use it as a way of squeezing confessions from people - even innocent ones.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Nemesys-co? What, are they a division of the E-Ville Group or something?
I think you have the E-Ville group confused with these guys
Amir Lieberman, the developer of the system, is also responsible for the previous rash of questionable truth detector software, which happens to be still available. It did recommend training, and it was widely sold for its ability to work over the phone. It even has a sequal. (warning, Not compatible with Opera. Probably not Mozilla.)
Namesysco doesn't claim very high accuracy for the Truster software. "The voice analyst achieved an overall accuracy rate of 78% for truthful subjects and 61% for deceptive subjects." In other words, only 10% more liars were caught than flipping a coin, while 22% of innocent subjects were considered lying.
The American Polygraph Society does not have a much rosier view of the situation. They have concluded that Computerized Voice Stress Analysis, and specifically the Truster software, has only a "chance-level detection of deception,"
And actually, the dead giveaway to the scam should be from the lion's mouth himself. "Our products were originally for law enforcement use ? we get all our technology from Nemesys-co ? but we need more development time [for that application]" In other words, "our products don't work and can't be sold unless you slap a 'for entertainment purposes only' label upon them. Our products are to 'entertain' airport security."
Good catch.
The ______ Agenda
The only thing this device can measure is physiological arousal level, and it can't tell one kind of arousal from another. This is precisely the same problem with polygraph.
Both require interpretation. That requires training. Both can be bamboozled by anyone who can control their physio responses. That requires training too; yoga is good, but biofeedback is very simple and nearly subconscious.
Anyone can learn to fool them. And I am not about to place my personal safety in the hands of some previously underemployed and undereducated, and presently overworked and undertrained glorified rent-a-cop. I mean, my respect and sympathy to the hardworking TSA people at the airports, but they are not EVER going to receive adequate training to be able to correctly interperate physiological response measures in context. I would rather trust a Scientologist with their "clearing" device (a simple electrodermal activity meter) because at least they have experience in interperating their results in the context of a structured interview. A polygraph is not a structured interview, and some security guard spouting random accusations in the form of questions definitely is not.
I sincerely hope this is just another bogus device that is being publicized as part of the general anti-terrorism psyops, to keep the bad guys guessing as to what can really be done. Let them spend a few million on more high tech Dunsels. But if they deploy these for regular use, everyone who had too much coffee that morning and just rushed in late from a traffic jam to the airport is going to be targeted.
BTW, the sign on my office (room 9-151, VA Hospital, West Haven CT) says "Electrophysiology Lab". I know whereof I rant.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Let's make some assumptions that should help make the case for this kind of screening:
.0002
.9
.01
... a 2 in one hundred chance he really is one.
.0002, and that the test is not nearly as reliable as these figures assume (IMHO), the result will be even worse.
Frequency of terrorists in the sample population:
Sensitivity of test:
(That's the chance the test says x is a terrorist given that x really is one)
Specificity of test:
(that's the chance the test says x is a terrorist given that x is not one - false positive rate)
These assumptions and good old Bayes' Theorem allow us to say that if x tests positive for being a terrorist then there is
Given that the frequency of terrorists (even just at airports) is **way** less than
General screening is basically worthless.