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Indian Woman Convicted of Murder By Brain Scan
Kaseijin writes "Neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan claims his Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test is so accurate, it can tell whether a person committed or only witnessed an act. In June, an Indian judge agreed, using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiancé. Scientific experts are calling the decision 'ridiculous' and 'unconscionable,' protesting that Mukundan's work has not even been peer reviewed. How reliable should a test have to be, when eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible? Does a person have a right to privacy over their own memories, or should society's interest in holding criminals accountable come first?"
It is possible to do a brain scan to detect that a statement is untrue or unsettling in some way, but that doesn't mean that the person is guilty of a specific crime.
It takes a long time of interrogation to be able to measure what's normal and what's not. And even if you get an abnormal reading it may not be caused by guilt - it may be because the subject is unsettling.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The key to passing a lie detector test is to bring yourself to believe the lies you are telling. If you could train yourself through meditation to believe anything, then how close are we to the situation in Minority Report where the third psychic's testimony is the only thing that sees through the re-enactment of a crime so that the second act looks just like the first one and thus makes the whole thing seem innocuous?
Psychics are fake, but brainwaves are real. If we can lend credence to psychics in the movies, then what is the reason we can't lend brainwave scans credence in the real world? This is a scary technology, not only for the clear violation of one's own mental state, but also for the ability of those who would to game the system and perpetrate all sorts of crime until Tom Cruise showed up with his Mila Jovovich-looking psychic.
My guess is they would argue that brain scans are of the same family of evidence as DNA; e.g. it doesn't "testify against you", but is rather physically relevant to the case.
I guess it is a grey area (no pun intended!), but really we shouldn't even need to have that conversation. The study hasn't been peer reviewed, it's a new and relatively untested technology, what the hell are they doing admitting it at all, as testimony or as evidence?
Hell, the last time I saw MRI-based lie detection it was on Mythbusters, and even there it failed outright on one of the three people they tested it on.
In Roger Zelazny's classic Hugo award winning novel Lord of Light, the Brainscan was a key part of the tech that cemented the power of the faux Hindu Gods on a distant colony planet modeled after India....
They would use it to review people up for reincarantion (dying, aged, etc) before transferring their consciousness to a new body and life, one assigned based on the results of said brain scan...
I know this is nowhere near that, just found it ironic such a thing would surface in India. ------- Hey, wonder if it can determine if you saw or committed an act in a past life...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
In Red Dwarf Arnold Rimmer has to undergo a mind scan after which he is found guilty of the 1st degree murder of the whole crew of the Red Dwarf. Kryton is able to get Rimmer aquitted by pointing out that the radiation leak was caused by Rimmer being an incompetent half wit anf the mid scan confused the guilt he felt with culpability, in his own mind he tried and convicted himself... How would this mind probe deal this?
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Actually, I would imagine it would be fairly easy to distinguish a lie from the truth by EEG or fMRI. The pathways for recollection as opposed to creativity (lying), cause activity in different parts of the brain.
'Where were you last Tuesday at 3:00pm?' - If the person tells the truth, they're recalling the events. If they're lying, they're constructing a scenario in their head. The two would be very distinguishable.
That said, it's not without issues: First of all, if I pre-construct a scenario and run it through my head enough, it becomes a recollection and not a creation, I believe. Also, I'm not entirely sure that there's been enough actual studies of using fMRIs and/or EEGs for detecting lies vs. truth, nor how beatable the system is. Until these things have been studied and documented, they certainly shouldn't be used by courts.
There are companies in the U.S. trying to get fMRIs used for precisely this purpose. One example is the company, No Lie MRI.
If such systems can be proven reliable, then I'm all for using them in courts. Not so much to convict people, so much as to keep the innocent from being convicted, which happens plenty in the U.S.
I'm not so sure that it is good to convict someone of a crime, but it is pretty accurate. It is simple to do with a brain scan too.
1) Hook person up to a brain scanner.
2) Show the person random images of places they never seen until their brain doesn't care anymore.
3) Show the person an image of a place they've seen, and it will trigger thoughts.
It is helpful for interrogation. It is a bit spooky to use for crimes.
God spoke to me.
Let's say you're psychic, or a witch, or some other controller of paranormal/supernatural powers. Let's say you're the real deal. What would you gain by stepping into the spotlight and announcing yourself?
Frankly, I would think the truly powerful would let the fakes draw the media attention, and let the discreditors have their day. At a certain level of power, such vainglorious attention-whoring is beneath you. It's easier to get on with one's life and work without all that attention.