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Reading Terrorists' Minds About Imminent Attack
An anonymous reader writes "Imagine technology that allows you to get inside the mind of a terrorist to know how, when, and where the next attack will occur. In the Northwestern study, when researchers knew in advance specifics of the planned attacks by the make-believe 'terrorists,' they were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab, said J. Peter Rosenfeld, professor of psychology in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences."
They already know whats happening on the internet with Narus (formerly carnivore)... But thats good at least for the non techy terrorists.
"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
so PRE crime starts now and how do they hope to use this in a jury trial?
"they were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab"
Bet the accuracy wouldn't be so good in a non-controlled, non-laboratory environment. Of course, that wouldn't necessarily stop such a technology from being used, now would it?
Relax, citizen!
You only need a jury if you have something to hide.
THL phish sticks
Why is everything legitimized by putting the word terrorist in it? What does this have to do with terrorism?
As someone said here on /., terrorism is one of the magic keys, the other being child porn.
Even if this machine can distinguish guilt at 100% accuracy, that's useless. A fake terrorist may feel guilty about what they're doing. A cartoon antagonist is aware of his evilness, because he's from the same mind as the protagonist. In good fiction, the villain shouldn't know they're the villain. In real life, the jihadist doesn't see their tasks as being bad, they feel no guilt about breaking our ethos, because it's not his ethos. He feels adamant that his actions are the true path to righteousness. Why feel guilty about helping God/Allah/Poohbear in the Ultimate Struggle? Do you think the Floridians who want to burn the Quran feel guilt or remorse about what they're doing? Hell no, they feel that the Almighty wants to act through them to purify their little part of the world.
[
If only we had a way to get the terrorists to admit to the upcoming crime so we could use the machine to figure out if they're involved.... Wait a second..
1) Train terrorists.
2) Put them in sleeper cells.
3) Set up weapons/equipment/etc. without their knowledge.
4) Run "activation" drills often so they don't know if it's the real thing or not. This will condition them. It can also test detection methods.
5) Activate them for the "real thing", but do not give details until right before they are to execute the attack. Emails, text messages, phone calls, coded written instructions left with equipment or plans can be used.
6) Those caught before receiving last minute instructions provide useless intelligence and can be used as decoys or sacrificial losses to tie up law enforcement and misdirect them. Consider using decoys (unknown to themselves) with false information to delay and confuse law enforcement.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Or you are Walter Mitty.
(Emphasis mine)
In fairness to Timothy, the linked story does have the "100 percent accuracy" soundbyte in it. I'm guessing the journalist took something the researcher said out of context.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
...terrorists don't have telepathic links with each other, so catching a terrorist and constantly monitoring his mind won't work.
And I don't think that there're terrorists who don't change their plans, run away, or go into hiding after realizing that one of their teammates was caught. If they're really that dumb and don't flee, they're not going to bomb anything successfully anyway.
You know, feeling of guilt, the remorse, knowing and regretting what you've done or are planning on doing. I don't think a terrorist would feel guilt.
And, given how Grant from Mythbusters was able to slip by a fMRI [mythbustersresults.com] by keeping his brain busy, I wonder if a similar tactic could be used. Since it sounds like they're recording specific brain waves and/or from a specific area, wouldn't the only thing you have to do to send the bomb squad to the wrong place is to think of something you regret when the wrong city comes up?
Or do that for several cities. Or just bomb some backwoods shithole. Man, that'd really drive the media in a frenzy.
Just like what people say about not really being able to trust open source unless you inspect the code and compile it using your own compiler on a system you built from scratch, you can't really trust a person or their reactions without the full knowledge, experience, and feelings they've picked up. That's what guilt is. It's not tangible. It's subjective.
P300 has been around quite a while in psychophysiology, turning it to terrorists sounds like a possible beat up to meet priority funding by NIH or similar? though they just might be onto something if the implementaton issues could be sorted. Implementation wise OK lets see its usually a 20min setup to get the electrodes on the 'perps' head, then sit them into a shielded room, get them relaxed and get them to not move around too much as muscle movement artifact washes out EEG signals. Now put them through a few hundred trials of questions and answers so you get statistical validity, process a few GB of data and hey presto an answer. FWIW I hope it doesn't become a part of airport security routine checks ;)
Brisbane Aikido Republic
Where you just racial profiled and tortured... oh wait this wouldn't replace that just be added on top of it.
Why would there be a trial if the machine has proven your guilt?
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Well, that should be a good way to screen for politicians, then.
Keep Doing Good.
... they don't haul me in and question me about my plans for total world domination using this.
Have gnu, will travel.
There is no terrorism(DOT!)
but they saying you will do something that they stop you form doing and this sounds like a easy to wait to lock some one away that they don't like with stuff that some may say is junk science.
It's simple. In a jury trial, the jurors would have to pass that test themselves before they get selected as jurors.
It's just like they use the polygraph test in the CIA and in the FBI. The employees that say the test is idiotic publicly end up automatically failing the next polygraph test they take, and lose their security clearance and all credibility. The process is very circular and self-selective that way. It ensures that only the people that believe in the lie detector, or the people that claim to believe in the lie detector throughout their career, end up accepted and re-accepted within the inner sanctum. Such a device is used to create unquestioning yes-men in those agencies.
It's a lot like the Church of Scientology, in fact the Church of Scientology has been using devices that work very similarly to lie detector tests. Their device is also used for both intimidation and punishment for not toeing the official line.
I agree we, have a do not fly list with thousands of american's that are supposed to be terrorist a few of them for political reasons. Please stop with the assumption that this works, all you have to do is modify some mri images which is quite easy to do and then state that the individual is about to do something, very easy to frame with just an image hack. This is insane, if your not in the camp that belives 9/11 was allowed to ocur in order to remove liberties from true patriots, now they will have the power to state that you are planing something and use this as supposed evidence. Which okay fine nothing to hide, same as when a cop searches your car, but by allowing a single cop by him self to search you car they can plant evidence and thus can put people away for political, or racial reasons. Akay fine if we want to remove the fifth amemdment, forget the fact that the patriot act removed has removed "Habeas corpus", where do we stop if you want to get an mri image of some one fine, but to charge some one with a supposed crime that there is no evidence except a few images is quite insane sounds similar to the salem which trails, if they are whitches they will float if not they will die and thus goto heaven.
Image Reconstruction from Brain Activity.
video, article
It's not a problem. A jury trial is only required to prosecute you of a crime you actually have committed.
Holding you imprisoned based on a crime you thought about committing, doesn't require you to be guilty.
Also, your inability to gain access to a lawyer, see visitors, or have anyone be informed of where you are (or that you are held), due to restrictions imposed on people thinking about terrorism, will prevent you from challenging the authorities' decision to hold you.
The Good Dr. J. Peter Rosenfeld is a Bo Vie Bo in NSF funding. Yet, our Bo Vie Bo, err ... uh ... mmm ... "borrows heavely" from other written works.
Ping Pong!
Plagerism!
Interestingly, Dr. J. Peter Rosenfeld has "contributed", meaning $$$, to NSF personnel and reviewer! Ah Ha! The "money", i.e. bank transaction numbers and ip+dns maps knows!
What a Loon this Dr. J. Peter Rosenfeld and the NSF Director (former) and personnel, and reviews who were on the take.
Never mind those silly details like due process and unreasonable search & seizure . We're talking terrorism here, so it's straight off to room 101 with you.
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
Given that even the government of Fiji knows that Barak Hussain Obama, Joe Biden and Robert Gates are terriorists, and the U.S. Governmnet is the biggest terrorist organization in existance, we just might be able to nullify the devilish plans of the perps Obama, Biden and Gates, not to forget the rasists in the US Congress.
"... were able to identify 10 out of 12 terrorists and, among them, 20 out of 30 crime- related details..." ...The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge..."
"
Last time I checked, 10 out of 12, 20 out of 30, and 83% accurate prediction never adds up to 100% accuracy.
Also, those things never seem to work in the real world (as opposed to lab testing), especially since the terrorists and suspects you haven't arrested aren't usually hooked up to an electroencephalograph so you can conveniently check their brainwaves for suspicious activity.
Ding ding ding, now that we've decided you are dangerous, we can detain you forever just like those pedophiles the government declared too dangerous to release.
Are these federally funded programs?
Wasting tax payer money reinventing technology already deployed in low earth orbit using ELF/SLF radio waves, is a gross waste in a recession.
Wait until the public learn about this!!!!!!
We should not go through the formality of a trial (2:16 into the video). Hey, it was 1987. Back when we were still the good guys.
Depressing thing is I'm not worried about the people who really are guilty of the sorts of things for which the government dispenses with the formality of a trial. I'm worried about the people against whom the evidence so flimsy that the government does hold a trial, because being accused is good enough to ruin a life, just to be on the safe side.
Disappear a hundred people, nobody notices. Disappear a million people, everybody notices. Disappearing people is expensive.
But try a million people for whatever the crime du jour happens to be, and nobody bats an eye. Doesn't matter if they're guilty or not, as long as the public feels protected.
i've been thinking about killing the president, hijacking a plane, killing American soldiers, and blowing up a bus full of people.
but then i thought that these attempts at killing the president, hijacking a plane, killing American soldiers, and blowing up a bus full of people have already been done so i need a new idea for my movie.
would this mind reading technology be able to decide between an actual act or a movie idea.
This technique has already been used in jury trials, both to convict one gentleman and to clear another man who was charged with a crime he did not commit. The technique is not related to Minority-Report-type pre-crime and from what I've read it actually seems more scientific than the polygraph.
The basic idea behind the technique is there is a certain detectable pattern in the brain when exposed to information that triggers when the information is novel verses if the information is familiar. The basic experimental setup involved being exposed to pictures and other information that the individual is certain not to have been previously exposed to in the case and which he or she could only be aware of if he or she was the one who committed the crime. For example, known details of the crime scene which the accused was not made aware of in the trial could be shown. The technique would then register whether this information was already in the brain or whether it was novel information.
As I said, it does seem much more scientific a process than the polygraph, however, it is still susceptible to faulty experimental setup. For example, if the accused was unknowingly exposed to details of the crime through gossip or rumour that the experimenter was aware the accused already knew, it could result in a false positive. Additionally, the classical danger in many forensic "science" techniques is that they often are not double-blind or truly scientific in many senses and that prosecutors are and frequently do interact with forensic "scientists" to try to influence results. There is also the constant problem of juries rarely being fully qualified to understand these techniques. For example, a forensic scientist may say a fingerprint was a "partial match" and juries will find the fact the technician used the word "match" significant enough to convict, even though such a measure is more of an art than a science.
The P300 technique is definitely a step beyond such crude tools as the polygraph, but until we fix the many, many significant problems of our criminal justice system it may still only be a more accurate tool in a biased and broken toolbox.
P.S. The article stub did not even mention the common name of the technique, which is called Brain Fingerprinting.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
From TFA:
In the Northwestern study, when researchers knew in advance specifics of the planned attacks by the make-believe "terrorists," they were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab
"Without any prior knowledge of the planned crime in our mock terrorism scenarios, we were able to identify 10 out of 12 terrorists and, among them, 20 out of 30 crime- related details," Rosenfeld said. "The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge, suggesting that our complex protocol could identify future terrorist activity.
Two different tests.
"that the experimenter was aware the accused already knew" should be "that the experimenter was unaware the accused already knew"
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
use Trauma Based Mind Control to split off multiple personalities. Interrogate the terrorist all you want; you'll never get the information because the memories are hidden in another alter.
Stop this make-believe bullshit. The terrorists aren't out to get you every frakking second.
If you don't want terrorists to attack you, force your government to stop doing whatever you're doing that's provocating their minds everywhere around the world.
Perhaps start by stopping your video-game and rap music generation kids from wielding deadly weapons against people they don't understand in lands they don't belong to?
shoddy police work and inaccurate results in the real world are overlooked by juries too eager to put their trust in "experts".
Oh wait, we already live in that world.
The funny thing is that most terrorists, once caught, seem to quickly admit guilt and cooperate to some extent. It's the ones you don't suspect, with a backpack of explosives, that we should be worried about, not the one already in the interrogation room.
Is this the last dying gasp of The Men Who Stare @ Goat Dept?
If so, does that make it about time, the networks gave David Lynch another crack at a TV series or let him at the Next Book in the Dune series?
Greekgeek. :-)
I just wonder, how they classify guilty knowledge?
Is it really guilty knowledge of a criminally relevant nature?
Picture this:
Interrogator A: Do you know about an upcoming terrorist attack?
Suspect: No!
Machine indicates guilty knowledge!
What the machine doesn't get, the guilty knowledge is actually the suspect having an illicit affair with the interrogator's wife...
You think the machine can handle the difference?
Even if the suspect shows a guilty knowledge during the whole test, even on completely irrelevant questions - will the investigator really think it could be guilty knowledge about anything that isn't criminally relevant? ...or maybe, it is about a crime, but not about terrorism? Would the suspect now need to confess to everything (maybe a break-in somewhere), just to prove he/she has a 'good' reason for 'guilty knowledge' that doesn't have anything to do with an impending terrorist attack?
And - if that were to cover it - what in the case of two crimes - a break-in I committed, and knowledge of an impending terrorist attack. If I can 'show' I was the perpetrator behind a break-in (or even show that I know who was behind the break-in); will the machine still be able to say that there is guilty knowledge about two completely separate things?
How long have you been a racist...sexist...bigoted...music stealing(ding)...tax dodging...jay walking(ding)...affair having...nose picking...terrorist.
See? He's guilty. Must be a terrorist.
This is really interesting as Rosenfeld himself has previously railed against other neuroscientists for commercializing P300 based lie detectors with claims of 100% accuracy:
Simple, effective countermeasures to P300-based tests of detection of concealed information - J. PETER ROSENFELD,a MATTHEW SOSKINS,a GREGORY BOSH,a and ANDREW RYAN
The above is the original peer-reviewed paper, this review (also by Rosenfeld) below is more recent and concise:
http://www.srmhp.org/0401/brain-fingerprinting.html
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
All we have to do is convince the terrorists to wear electrodes on their heads at all times, and we're golden.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Our complex, chaotic modern society is already a great environment for psychopaths. Now we're giving them another advantage, with these scanners, which psychopaths will always, under all circumstances, pass with flying colors.
(An interesting note from Wikipedia: Findings indicate psychopathic convicts have a 2.5 time higher probability of being released from jail than undiagnosed convicts, even though they are more likely to recidivate.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
As long as public indecency is illegal we all have something to hide.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Oh you wanted 'interrogation'? It is in 101a now, we switched recently. 101 is torture now.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I would like to point out that 100% accuracy in identifying guilty knowledge doesn't meant that there are no false positives. If I have 20 people, 10 of whom have guilty knowledge, and declare them all 'terrorists' I, too, have a 100% accuracy rate for identifying guilty knowledge.
When I was 16 yrs. old, worked in a Rite Aid drugstore (east coast US chain), you had to sign a paper agreeing to take a lie detector test. One day, when we all had to report to work to do stock work, mgr. announced stuff was being stolen & we all had to take lie detector tests. There was this "old" guy who was probably 30, the head "stockboy" who had bragged about stuff he stole. My theft consisted of: I had shorted a cash draw a nickle & ate some candy from a broken bag. Also, I & many others were aware of this head stockboy bragging about his thefts. Yes, we were wrong for not reporting him to the mgr., but this was not going to be our career, working at rite aid, so a number of us decided not to report this guy as he was a bit threatening. We were all fired due to our lie detector test results, but guess who was not fired? Yeah, head stockboy, who also bragged that he knew how to beat the lie detector. As a result, I have no faith nor will ever be subjected to a lie detector test again. If I were a juror & lie detector tests were allowed in US courts, I would ignore the results.
A common pPre-crime activity is known as sedition. Go look it up.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
We'll also accept child pornography, political views in opposition to the party in power, or the belief that corporations do not deserve more human rights than actual humans.
Why are they working on a technology that we already have the means to beat? This is what people call a one sided, correlation based conclusion system. Like for example take a read-only look at my Google searches and make a correlation to info about me. Chances are, you're wrong but you'll think you're right. You're gonna be wrong because it's not a 100% guaranteed matchup. It's merely a likelihood via the most probable cause of the search that someone can come up with. Like if I searched for "New York Monkey Ownership" then I must want to own a monkey and I live in New York. It seems like an obvious correlation based on what seems the most likely but is my brain directly hooked into Google? Not yet lol. So at best, they're guessing. Maybe my friend wants to own a monkey or I saw someone on TV and wanted to know if it was even legal for them to own one in New York.
So back to the brain, oh look, my memory center just lit up. That means the memory I'm describing is true because the making crap up part of my brain isn't lit up. WRONG! I memorized and am recalling a movie I watched a dozen times where that exact thing happened but it didn't happen in real life, thus faking legitimate activity in that area of my brain. Or they think I robbed a bank and tell me they found solid evidence linking me to it and my threat centers of the brain aren't reacting at all. I guess I'm innocent, right? Not if I brainwashed myself to think that I have an important mission in jail so getting caught is what I wanted all along so it's good that they're catching me. If you or someone else tells you something enough times, you'll believe it.
Pretending that reading someone's brain activity based on activity by location is going to tell you exactly what they're thinking is idiotic. It's circumstantial evidence at best and still just a one way, correlation based system. Worry area lighting up = he's worried is NOT solid proof that he's thinking about what someone is saying and is actually worried. Maybe he just purposely remembered at that time that he forgot to pay his cable bill and is worried and doesn't care about what you said. The people using this technology still have NO IDEA what the person is really thinking and a little training makes it soooooo fakeable. This is even worse than the utter nonsense that a polygraph machine is because people will respect it more. It sounds fancier and harder to beat but that is in fact not remotely the case.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Any system that claims 100% accuracy is probably fudging the numbers.
Some people in my research team are working on P300 detection - here's how it works.
Basically, a P300 is a peak of cortical activity recorded approximately 300ms after perceiving something you expect to perceive - it has nothing to do with emotion, as the paper says. It's about attention and expectation. A simple example is the P300 speller: letters are blinking on a screen, and you focus on the letter you want. when your letter blinks, your brain generates a P300.
When detecting P300 with external electrode, there are several problems:
- some people are not able to generate P300 peaks (approx 5-10% if I remember correctly)
- the 300ms delay can vary from one person to another, even for the same person depending on the situation
- the P300 is drowned in noise, so you have to reproduce the experiment several times to cancel out the noise
- if you blink your eyes or contract your jaws muscles, you generate artifacts in the signal that are several orders of magnitude stronger than a P300
- to make it work properly you have to be relaxed, in a quiet environment - that's why we generally use visual stimuli. i'm not sure where the state of the art is with auditive stimuli
- if you drug the guy so he is calm and doesn't move, you are very likely to also affect his brainwaves, thus defeating the purpose.
Long story short: from what I know of the subject, P300 detection on a non-willing subject sounds unrealistic to me. It's all about researchers getting fundings by putting the word "terrorist" in their research proposal, which is very sad.
... the wise and learned will take up arms and overthrow the corrupt powers that be.
The U.S. was founded by what would be called terrorists, and seems to be bereft of them of late.
You can find out good Taliban.
That's the point the GP was making.
The machine's red light comes on so you go before the firing squad. It doesn't matter if your feeling of guilt was because you farted and were trying to hide it, you displayed guilt during interrogation so you get executed.
inJustice is served!
Too bad the wikipedia article doesn't contain the silver bullet to cure it. I say a 2x4 applied to enough guilty heads should do it. Also note what current moral panics the article doesn't list in the examples.
As with everything, there's also a lot of callous bandwagoneering going on. Like how "for law enforcement" is now "for LE and homeland security", and there's an entire duplicate economy making things for homeland security that I can't readily distinguish from the alternative kit except by its pricetag. And maybe the decals.
It may be instructive to observe just how much of advertising, opinion pieces, even policy documents, are full of phrases specifically designed to push as many buttons as possible. It isn't about your freedom or well-being; it's about you doing their bidding. This "research" fits right up that alley.
* Make sure they feel no guilt as they fulfill the purpose of theirn one true god (Allah, Jehovah, Christ whatever). Brainwash them that they do the RIGHT things.
* there is no step 2. Detection method defeated
* and this is ALSO what happens today
I see a bright future for such detector whenever you want to kick somebody out, pass them under the detector. Everybody above the age of 10 will feel guilty for "something".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Room 101 was always torture.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
How about they spend some $$$ on coming to an understanding on why terrorist are making these attacks? You can say they are "evil", but in their minds their attacks are justified.
Done. Now imagine spending that money on something that will save more lives more effectively, for example on making the roads safer, rather than on trying to get into people's minds without their consent (or did you really expect terrorists to cooperate)?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Torture? Look, I came here for an argument!
Would such a tech has been useful in a single real-world terrorism case ? Fanatics are usually not shy about their guilt, and the hardest part in preventing a terrorist act does not seem to be to make a person admit it will happen but to transmit the information through the chain of commands (Condi Rice had warnings against the 9/11 attacks but decided to let go)
Of course not. "Terrorism", like always, is just an excuse. You know that this tech will not be used there.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
A device claimed to "smell" human fear is being marketed as identifying terrorists by detecting "snake oil pheromones" in sweat.
"The challenge lies in the characterisation and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of human fear," said project leader Professor Tong Sun of City University, "especially the fear of losing funding for security theatre. If we can reliably detect this fear, we should be able to land some eyewateringly lucrative contracts in the very near future."
The research is funded by the Home Office. "The project relies on a government with a firm commitment to policy-based science, but the Tories look as craven over David Nutt's firing as Labour, so we should be coining it in for a good while yet."
The technology will assist airport security officers in picking out suitable subjects. Sensors can reliably detect if someone is a bit brown, or a bit foreign-looking, or has a non-Anglo-Saxon name, or if they might be thinking of giving cheek to security officers. It will work in conjunction with the millimetre-wave "naked" radar, currently used to identify terrorist subjects with large breasts.
The false positive rate will be only 5% on a terrorist detection rate of 1 in 100,000, meaning only 99.95% of subjects flagged will be a complete waste of time to finger up the arse with a latex glove. "But we're sure the government will agree that mere statistical evidence is meaningless in the face of the vital necessity to send the right message," said Prof Sun, "that if you make trouble the government will quite literally forcibly fuck you in the arse until you bleed. So just shut the fuck up and keep giving us money."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The Men Who Stare At The Men Who Sleep With Goats.
No. It's based on the fact one sees some piece of data as exceptional and thus feels the tiniest little mental "jolt" when confronted with it. To defeat these machines you have to train your brain to not do any unusual kind of processing on the input and instead answer by rote. It's not that hard for a dedicated person of rank mind and inclined personality structure, i.e. it can be done if you're willing to turn yourself into a detached automaton.
From what I am aware, PRE crime is already illegal. Since the P300 test is looking for a response to already encoded information, it means that it is looking for details of a planned crime -which is called "conspiracy" and already carries legal repercussions.
However, what does concern me is the CSI effect. You know, the one where juries acquit obviously guilty people because of a lack of DNA or other high-tech evidence. If this becomes a standard and legally admissible practice, juries might start requiring P300 tests that they saw on a show like 24 or otherwise they will assume there is insufficient evidence. Conversely, they may convict a false positive merely on the fact that the P300 test says they are guilty.
it's possible that in a lab setting terrorists behave & think differently than out in the wild. the process of being observed may make them nervous.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Can't see how this will be of ANY use in court.
I mean, you could prove that almost anyone is Jack the fucking Ripper.
And anyone with History Channel is probably Hitler Himself by now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Look, I've told you once, those things are not exclusive.
If this thing works, you'ld never see a politician within 100 feet of a working one . Can you imagine these in Congress, the Senate, town hall meetings ?
...they don't really need all these fancy brain scanning devices. They can just do this and get just as reliable results. It's what our society has basically become anyway. The whole reason for crap like this is to give a veneer of credibility by showing the public a machine that goes "bing!"
Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?
You don't even need weapons any more. If the point of terrorism is to create fear and panic, this makes it easy. Train a bunch of people. Don't tell them there are no explosives - even better, train them badly. Send them out to look suspicious. 'Leak' information about an impending attack. Watch your operatives get caught and spill the beans, and sit back and enjoy the chaos. Which city shall we close this week?
Hello, As both a) someone who works in this lab and b) someone who reads this site pretty religiously, I think I can address some of your guys concerns. 1) Specificity of questions - unlike a standard polygraph test, in a P300 CIT (concealed information test) subjects aren't asked questions as muscle movements or auditory stimuli may disrupt the electrodes ability to record P300. Instead, stimuli are presented silently on the screen and thus, if the subject 'recognizes' the stimulus he will generate a P300 whenever that stimulus is presented. However, in doing so, the list must initially be vetted with the subject who says if any of the items have specific relevance to him. (This would be like in an investigation if a police detective showed someone a list of people and asked if a POI knew any of them). 2. This isn't a 1 recognition stimulus identifies everything sort of thing. The same stimuli are shown to people literally hundreds of times and it takes a pattern of recognition to correctly identify someone as guilty. Also, there are levels of recognition. All of the responses are compared to one another to get a standard base, per each participant, of brain activity. Then each recognition pattern is compared to the pattern as a whole to determine guilty knowledge. 3. For critical information a more strict test can be performed which compares the strongest P300 to the second strongest P300. If that patters is statistically bigger then you can be certain that they have guilty knowledge of that item. 4. Several of the studies we have conducted have actually incentivized (given money) to people for trying any strategy possible to BEAT the test. 5. There ARE countermeasures for this test that you can do to try to hide your P300 responses - however this specific protocol is a COUNTERMEASURE RESISTANT TEST. Believe me, if you've thought of it - we've thought of it. 6. Yes, when using just a pure P300 analysis we don't get people with 100% accuracy. But after we adjust for countermeasure use, and analyze other behavioral and EEG data that is collected concurrently with the P300 we can get 100% accurate identification. 7. We do so without getting false positives. Like any tool in law enforcement (the polygraph, fingerprinting, etc...) it's not necessarily as important that any individual thing works as it is that of the array of tools used ONE of them catches the person. And you don't want to wrongly accuse anyone. Why our P300 research is special is because we get an extremely high detection rate with no false positives. 8. If you have more questions please respond to this comment and I will try to respond. --Alex Soko
No, this method is based on the fact that the human brain is a remarkable information processing device.
In information theory there's one fundamental parameter called entropy, which can be loosely described as the "degree of surprise" in the information.
This P300 brain wave seems to indicate the result of some calculation performed in the brain to measure the entropy in the information presented to the brain. To eliminate this response, by training, drugs, or any other method, would probably eliminate a fundamental step in the information processing the brain does.
People often seem to think of information theory like some sort of "human science", it's not. Information theory is very different from "information technology". Information theory is a mathematical science which has been very well tested in its basic principles. It was only by applying principles derived from information theory that our modern communication devices could be developed.
The human brain may use data processing mechanisms that we aren't aware of, but it would be very surprising if it could still work while violating basic mathematical principles like information theory. That would be like a machine that needs "2 + 2 = 5" to be true to function.
except we need terrorists to wear one of these: http://agencyspy.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/eeg_cap_small.jpg
It is simply incredible the number of people here who assume that things are going to be radically different now that we are successfully researching into this kind of technology. You know, like suddenly we'll start juryless prosecutions, based on nothing more than guilty knowledge. That we'll suddenly start equating guilty feelings with guilt. Oh noes! It's the end of freedom!
I swear, it's worse than when the RIAA found out about the internet!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Its the operator who is the lie detector, the machine is just a prop. A good lie detector is a shrewd psychologist.
My understanding of the theory of defeating polygraph tests is to do exactly the opposite. Without showing external signs, one tries to constantly think about extremely stressful life experiences, except when one is lying. This technique supposedly manages to "move up the baseline", so that the extra stress from lying isn't noticeable. (BTW, this could very well just be random bullshit I read about a long, long, time ago --- I claim no real experience here.)
In this case, it would seem to be even more trivial. Just make 10 different terrorist plans for 10 different cities, and choose the target randomly just before the attack. In that case, the test will never be able to attain a better than 10% accuracy, no matter how real the 100% result this research has uncovered actually is (the fact that it's 100% seems really, really suspicious to me --- is this perhaps, er, covered by a patent owned by some startup?).
As I said, it does seem much more scientific a process than the polygraph, however, it is still susceptible to faulty experimental setup.
Since a polygraph has no scientific basis for detecting lies, this is a useless comparison.
As for "brain fingerprinting," this sounds like a catchy phrase to imply accuracy. What about someone who thinks "hey this is just like that John Grisham novel!" and boom her brain shows a positive hit? Conclusion: don't ready crime books. What about someone quick witted, who when presented with crime scene facts thinks "oh yeah that sure fits the rest of the scenario I read in the paper, I'd kind of wondered about that?" Yup, positive hit. Conclusion: don't be intelligent. And these are just examples some goof thought up on the Internet in 2 minutes. And you nailed one particularly dangerous aspect, the polygraph interpreter often knows what answer the buyer wants. And every single /. reader thought "false" when reading the "100% accuracy" claim. Bad science? Yes. Science? No. Guilt by accusation? Likely.
The P300 technique may be an interesting project for scientific research but it is definitely not a tool. A hired technician might call it one but no scientist would. And it is particularly not a tool ready for criminal justice. Unless, of course, there's money in it, or one wants a "100% accurate tool" to convict some person of interest where real evidence is lacking.
no no no, it's relax COMRADE
It's better because it works at a lower level of consciousness. The p300 seems to be the result of some part of the brain saying "hey, check this!", it detects anything that seems unusual in some way. Then other parts of the brain check why it's unusual.
If it's found to be dangerous in some form the body prepares to flee or fight, by injecting hormones in the blood stream that prepare the muscles for action. It's only at this later point that traditional polygraphs operate, they detect the increased sweating and pressure level caused by this fight-or-flight response.
The p300 test could be misused, it should be used only for finding data for further investigation, not as a confession of guilt. But at least it's better than traditional polygraph truth detection in that it seems to be intrinsically more difficult to defeat.
"Mac, a new day is coming. Watchbird is the Answer."
The human being administering the lie detector test is a major variable. The system sets up a parent-child relationship between the person administering the test and the person being tested, whether the person administering the test is any good or not. And like I've said before, the profession (like most professions) is very self-serving and self-perpetuating, only here unlike most other professions, it's actually been given the complete power to perpetuate itself.
Sadly, even one of my favorite Hollywood show 'Lie to Me' is a total work of wishful fantasy. The hero, Dr. Liteman, is an awesome character, but imagine for every Dr. Liteman and each of his smart staff, how many total idiots are being given the similar power to administer lie detector tests?
Part of the problem is that getting certified as a lie detector test expert requires no screening of the students, no existing psychology degree, no review of the process, just cash, and for the one school that has supposedly the longest training program for creating those experts -- that program is only 14 weeks long. Can you really teach someone to be a "shrewd psychologist" in just 14 weeks?
The second problem is also that many people actually believe that they're actually shrewd psychologists themselves, or want to become a "shrewd psychologist" (just like on TV), so these schools are flooded with these kinds of guys, guys that think that they're super smart, or guys that get an erection every time they're given the chance to interrogate someone and have complete power over that person.
When the teaser for "Lie to Me" first came on I thought, Cool, they turned "Deceiver" into a series. Unfortunately it's just yet another cop-hero show, nothing like that movie. Check out the movie if you'd like to see a realistic portrayal of lie detectors.
"7. We do so without getting false positives."
You have got to be kidding me. All tests have false positives. Based on this statement alone, we can conclude that your research is crap.
If this technology put into practice will revolutionize the world. http://procleansegoldwarning.com/
You filthy, curdling, minge-ridden vat of turpitude!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You must mean this Deceiver (1997). Thanks for the recommendation. May be it was good at the time, but Netflix doesn't think this is a movie I would enjoy (it's only giving it 2.7 stars out of 5). Plus, it's not on Netflix streaming, nor is it on Hulu, so I think I'll pass.
For those of you living in the United States who have access to Hulu, and who've never watched 'Lie to Me'. You can watch it here for free -- with just a few ads (much less ads than one would normally see on network TV).
So we can detect "planned attacks by the make-believe 'terrorists' ".
We have a technology to 'read' non-terrorists, who do their best to behave like terrorists.
So how does this help us to read terrorists who do their best to behave like non-terrorists?
Relax, citizen!
You only need a jury if you have something to hide.
The Citizenry need this to use on its elected politicians. More work for the masses building prisons.