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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."
"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.
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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.
...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.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/EU_social_network_spy_system_brief,_INDECT_Work_Package_4,_2009 ... :)
Also gives them friends, friends of friends.
Use the wrong phrase, words, have a friend of a friend who did
If your a freedom fighter, the effort to compartmentalise may not save you.
Best to just have a bland online life of mainstream sport, music and safe news.
Face to face for the rest
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Where you just racial profiled and tortured... oh wait this wouldn't replace that just be added on top of it.
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.
The method doesn't look for guilt, it looks for knowledge. They use the phrase "guilty knowledge", but what they really mean is "knowledge that indicates that you're guilty". A better term would be "target knowledge".
Basically, as I understand it, it works like this: I suspect that you have been to a particular location, so I show you a bunch of pictures of various locations. One of the locations I show you is the location I suspect you have been to, and the rest are locations that I have reason to believe you have never been to. When you see the location that is familiar to you, the device supposedly picks up brainwave activity that indicates this. That is the "guilty knowledge". It's not that you feel guilty about it, it's just that it's the knowledge that indicates that you are "guilty" of whatever it is that I'm investigating. It's the knowledge that I'm looking for.
If there's any value to this, it could replace polygraphs (which are absolute garbage and should never, ever, ever, ever, EVER be used for anything, period). If I ask you "have you ever met Bob", where "Bob" is the ringleader of a terrorist cell, and you say "nope, never heard of him", then I show you pictures of people, including Bob, and if the device lights up to say that you recognize Bob, then I know you just lied to me.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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.
Hello citizen! We have a new, improved headset for your iPod! It comes with this tiny scalp electrode. Make sure you wear it for best audio quality! And keep the WiFi connection active. It's almost like the new, improved cell phone we just issued, Make sure you always use that too. Good citizens always listen!
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.
Room 101 was always torture.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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
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
No. You have an indication that he lied. Maybe his brother knows Bob, and he has seen him once with his brother but didn't know who he was. Then he was 100% right when he said that he didn't know Bob, but he nevertheless recognized the person on the picture, although he didn't recognize him as Bob, but as the person his brother was talking to. Or maybe he was earlier shown a photo of Bob by another policeman who forgot to tell you about that detail, and he recognized the photo as the same one the policeman had showed him a week ago. Or maybe Bob looks quite similar to John, and he momentarily mis-identified the man on the picture as John, maybe not even long enough for this recognition to get into his consciousness, but long enough for his brain to cause the characteristic pattern of recognizing.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?