Slashdot Mirror
Lie Detectors to be Used for Airline Security
swimgeek writes "A new walk-through airport lie detector being made in Israel may prove to be the toughest challenge yet for potential hijackers or drugs smugglers. The product has been tested in Russia and should be commercialized soon. The software in the detector picks up uncontrollable tremors in the voice that give away liars or those with something to hide, say its designers. Passengers that fail the test are then required to undergo further questioning or even search."
for innocent passengers as well, who, when faced with M-16 toting guys can't avoid an "uncontrollable tremor" in their voice.
No mention of the false positive rate on this. If just 1 in a million passenger is a terrorist, and given the number of passenger flights per year without bombings on US planes it has got to be way up there, the false positive rate it going to need to be way WAY down there.
A "Lie Detector" is a fantasy. Machines can detect physiological clues to nervousness, and that's it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames> Aldrich Ames passed his polygraph exams for years, while he was getting every US agent in Russia killed.
Depending on fantasies like "lie detectors" distracts law enforcement from practicing solid investigation.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Voice analyzers and polygraphs (the so-called "lie detector") are frauds. They have both been scientifically proven again and again to be unreliable, with lots of false positives and false negatives, which is why they aren't admissible in court.
The only value to either technology is to scare and threaten. If the person being questioned believes that they work, they are less likely to lie or more likely to admit a lie.
Aldrich Ames, a mole in the CIA, passed a polygraph many, many times, as did lots of others.
Since voice analyzers and polygraph examiners make a shitload of money, and they compete with each other, they are great for pointing out the flaws in each other's devices since the other technology threatens their gravy train.
It's fraud, plain and simple. Flip a coin instead. It's more likely to be accurate than a voice analyzer or polygraph.
"I'm aware of the risks of terrorism, and I don't give a fuck if 20 guys with box cutters hijack this flight and smash it into a building, killing thousands of people, just so long as I'm not inconvenienced"
You do know that it's basically impossible for that to every happen again, right?
No-one will ever again allow hijackers to take control of a plane. And, no-one will ever again allow hijackers to take control of a plane armed with tools no more dangerous than a ballpoint pen.
Or, they could simply secure the cockpit. You can't bring down buildings with boxcutters unless your enemy is willing to cooperate by giving you easy access to a guided missile.
Do you *really* think all the crap going on in airports is doing any good?!
Little if any of it is really making a plane flight any safer than it was before. There are still people getting on planes with things they aren't supposed to. And so what if someone gets on with a box cutter? Now that the pilots are required to stay locked in the cockpit, all that person could do is injure/kill some passengers. And I doubt he'd get far at that, once other passengers figured out what was up.
And then we have some really bullshit rules. Grandma can't take her knitting needles along, but I can carry all the pens and pencils I want. Yeah, this really makes sense...
I wouldn't complain if I was just "inconvenienced". But when I have to show up HOURS ahead of my scheduled flight just to get to the terminal, when - after I've made it to the terminal early to insure an early seat selection (yeah, I usually fly Southwest) - I stand a chance of being dragged out of line for some TSA goon to paw through my carryons, when it's actually just about as fast for me to drive 500 miles as it is to fly to the same destination?!?
That is FAR from "inconvenienced". I don't know how you manage to get through in only 10-15 minutes more. I've never had that sort of experience.
I'm tired of the way we - the citizens and paying customers - are both treated as helpless waifs that can't fend for ourselves and simultaneously presumed guilty of some heinous act. That's why last summer when I headed off to visit relatives halfway across the country and on into Canada I drove the whole way. I didn't have to speak to a single "person of authority" the whole way, except for 30 seconds at the border crossing. (Not to mention, I would have paid MORE - about double! - for the priviledge of being abused by the TSA goons!)
So how many people will get searched as terrorists because their voice is shaky because they're cheating on their wife, didn't tell their parents they were going to costa rica with their friends, or told their employer they were going to a family reunion? Not everyone with "something to hide" is a lawbreaker.
"yeah that was horrible... but that's the PAST!! It'll never happen again! It can't happen again! We're smarter now!!"
Um, yeah, pretty much. Sure, you can come up with some Clancy-esque plot where the terrorists sneak nerve gas aboard and kill or incapacitate everyone on board, but knives, boxcutters, and even handguns won't do it now that passengers and crew know they have to fight to the death.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
It's not ever going to happen again in any of our lifetimes. The terrorists burned that plan from ever working again because the pilots and people on the plane know that they're dead either way, so there's no reason not to resist. If they have a bomb, no difference. Dead when the bomb goes off or when the airliner hits whatever they're aiming at. No one on the plane has anything to lose. You can't control people with nothing to lose.
The 10-15 minutes multiplied by the millions of people who fly each day, the money for all the extra security...it's all meaningless. We're wasting millions of man-hours and millions of dollars to try and stop something that's not ever going to happen until a new generation comes along with "don't resist" drilled into their heads so a hundred of them just sit there like sheep and let five guys drive them into a wall.
But you can bet the terrorists know the things we're missing. That's where the next one will come from. Somewhere we're not expecting. And Condi Rice will be on TV going, "Who could have guessed they would use..." whatever it was. A little success for them goes a long way. We'll tie ourselves in knots and exhaust our treasury fighting phantoms. We'll over-react, like usual, and end up making more enemies than we started with while expending billions to little or no effect in the process.
All because of people like you.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The only worse thing I can imagine than the farse that is American airport security, is the possibility that some day they might actually successfully implement true security. I thought society was taking a step forward since you no longer need papers to travel inside Russia, or passports to go between France and Germany. I dread travelling now, because it offends me to have to take off my shoes and belt at the airport to maintain the illusion of security. But how much worse would it be when they confiscate my laptop because I could make an explosive from the battery in about three seconds? Or when I'm detained indefinitely because I'm a 20-something travelling alone, and I happen to be carrying a Quoran for some leisure reading.
In my life, terror doesn't come from desperate fundamentalists. Terror is the government trying to control every aspect of the way I live and the way I think. I can only hope that it's not too late to undo the damage. Vote while you still can! And pray, if you're into that sort of thing.
The net tightens ...
I hope people keep in mind that terrorism kills fewer people than traffic accidents, lifestyle diseases, or regular crime (one of these alone suffices).
The way I see it, many of the prevention measures that have been taken only increase the effect that terrorism has on American society.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.