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Thermal Imaging Lie Detector In Development
beaverdownunder writes with this quote from the BBC:
"A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, experts say. The computerized system uses a simple video camera, a high-resolution thermal imaging sensor and a suite of algorithms. ... It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases, said lead researcher Professor Hassan Ugail from Bradford University. ... We give our emotions away in our eye movements, dilated pupils, biting or pressing together our lips, wrinkling our noses, breathing heavily, swallowing, blinking and facial asymmetry. And these are just the visible signs seen by the camera. Even swelling blood vessels around our eyes betray us, and the thermal sensor spots them too."
You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
no more cheating the lie detector with a tac in the foot or flexing your sphincter.......
Tyrell: Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris...
Deckard: We call it Voight-Kampff for short.
All this does is change the rules a bit. All of the things they've listed are things which one could train to do or not do on cue. And even without training if it's only good 2/3 of the time that's not good enough to justify deployment.
... all you have to do is memorize and rehearse lies in advance and imagine them and recall them as if they were memories. People get caught in lies because it's cognitively demanding to make it up on the spot unprepared.
If you don't believe this consider religious faith. Many people I'm sure believe those falsehoods genuinely because they are well ingrained in their imaginations.
2/3 of the time? That means 1/3 of the time its wrong.
Even my wife can do better.
Anyone know how that compares to a polygraph?
Slightly better than a coinflip. Just like normal lie detectors.
There is a character in that book who had his maid wake him up every morning by saying something like "time to get up you war criminal", so that when the authorities would question him about actually being a war criminal, he was so inured by the accusation that it caused no reaction in him at all - so he could happily deny being a war criminal.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Get this ready in time for the Presidential debates.
but I guess they do not make those anymore, lets spend billons on developing a machine that does the same job as a illiterate con artist can do with zero training.
It will be illegal to use this on politicians.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases
Does that mean you might be found 2/3 guilty of a crime, or will they roll a die and send you to prison on 1-4 ?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
because we'll know when they are lying.. Oh wait! I've mistakenly suggested they tell the truth now and then. Silly me :D
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I always wondered, how do lie detectors separate liars from awkward people? I know a lot of people with low confidence (including myself) that gets very nervous when talking to some people. I would assume even more nervous when being monitored or tested actively.
How do operators of such devices define the proper thresholds for every individual?
Control, true and false answers will all produce the same blushing response at random. Good luck with the rest of the population though!
It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases
So it's even less effective than other "lie detectors" that don't work well enough to use for anything important.
We give our emotions away in our [...] wrinkling our noses
Let me guess: someone's been hitting The Adventures of Pinocchio too hard.
A "lie detector" of any mechanism relies on the assumption that there must be some physiologic or behavioral difference in a person telling a lie compared with a person telling the truth. Aside from how there has never been any data to support that assumption (despite how badly people want it to be true), the term "lie" is a human construction. For example, look at Presidents Clinton and Bush. Both were accused of lying. In the case of the former, the statement may have been technically true in a hyper-literal linguistic sense, but designed to deceive. In the case of the latter, the statement turned out to be false, but was believed to be completely true when it was spoken. (Note, I say these things for the sake of argument. I do not claim to know the objective truth for either of these situations, and there's still quibbling about both.)
There is a grain of truth in every lie and a measure of inaccuracy in every truth. The delineation between the two is poorly demarcated and even humans can't agree about specific fringe cases. As any programmer knows, machines are extremely literal, so how can one possibly define a lie well enough for one to detect? Heck, how does a person's own body tell the difference and why would it bother? Short of a mind-reading device, you can't determine intent, and even that fails for some variants of lies (e.g. stating something you think, but do not know, as true). And what of the delusional psychopath whose thoughts aren't reliable in the first place? Or con men who specialize in fooling 3.8 billion years of evolution to detect their kind?
They don't and that is their dirty little secret. Nervous? Well, the machine says you are a liar. Have a nice life, now that it has been confirmed by technology.
Go read up on how they work, its a fucking joke. The fact they are used by groups like the FBI is a national embarrassment.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Did the good Doctor say all this facing his invention?
Wake me up when it gets to 99%.
Unless I'm mistaken, 66% accuracy is ridiculously shitty.
C:\TEXT\BIBLE.TXT
t faith.
5:13 And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to
house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking
things which they ought not.
5:14 I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children,
guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak
reproachfully.
5:15 For some are already turned aside after Satan.
5:16 If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve
them, and let not the church be charged; that it may
Unclear what 2/3 success rate means. Need to know false positive and false negative rates. Does 2/3 mean of those I said were lying? In which case how many liars did I miss? If there are 1000 liars in the sample, and I say 100 are lying, of which 66 are liars that is 2/3 correct. However, I missed 900 liars and called 34 truth tellers liars. Or does 2/3 mean of those actually lying? In which case how many truth tellers did I include to find the 2/3 of the liars? If there are 1000 liars and 1000 truth tellers in a total sample of 2000 and I say 1666 are liars of which only 666 are liars that is 2/3 666/1000 liars correct and 1000 truth tellers are called liars and 334 liars are missed. Or If I say 999 out of the 2000 are liars and only 666 are liars that is 2/3 666/999 correct with 334 liars missed and 333 truth tellers called liars..
Having been through US immigration recently, I can attest that "Fear can sometimes be the fear of not being believed rather than the fear of being caught." is putting it mildly. The TSA goon managed to misinterpret me so many times that I started to doubt my own story. He was either a genius, or a tard, but either way he didn't seem even remotely human, so if we can replace him with a very small shell script, go to it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
OMG, Flipping a coin will be 50% accurate. That tool only costs 25 cents (actually it is only a deposit, becsue you can spend the quarter after you use it to prove someone's guilt). This new system is only 16% better at determining a truth than my quarter. I wonder how much do you have to pay to get that 16% improvement?
Because if they do, I am reapplying. If by slim chance I get to be screened with this thing, I will tell the truth.... again.... and when I pass I will scream at those motherfuckers "I TOLD YOU I WASN'T LYING YOU GODDAMN ASSHOLES!"
Then I will go back to my job at NASA Goddard, feeling much better that I got that off my chest.
Even if we were able to create a 100% accurate lie detector, would using it be moral?
I'm not sure, but I have doubts.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I would imagine that individuals with anxiety, social or other disorders or insecurities would skew results so, where's the test to determine who is the best candidates? I know if I felt I was being accused, assessed or examined for truthfulness, I would more than likely have a subtle guilty responses all over, it's just the way I am and I'm sure others who are hyper sensitive and perceptive, may have a similar reaction.
That said though, 66% accuracy is a joke. Unless it's close to perfect, it's only maybe relevant enough to determine who may have taken that candy bar.
You should refuse to give statements to police and prosecutors. Your words will be twisted in order to convict you. They are much more interested in winning a case than finding the truth.
If George Costanza has taught us anything, it's not a lie if you honestly believe it, well at least to polygraph...
The TV series "Lie to me" is based on this technology, plus a whole lot more
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235099/
Two thirds? Most women can do that without any fancy equipment.
It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases
Yeah, it only detects when normal people are lying and it doesn't work at all when sociopaths, psychopaths and habitual liars are lying - because these people feel no shame when they lie or might even believe their lie to be true and thus don't have a vasomotor response. But sure, feel free to re-invent the polygraph. Only you are not addressing the basic flaw in designing the "lie detector machine": the people who are really good at lying are most likely the ones you want to catch, and by definition they are also the people you are not going to catch.
Academics can be so brilliant and so dumb at the same time. But hey I hear that if you measure people's skulls and classify their shapes into groups, you can also tell who the liars are. Give it a shot!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Thermal polygraph systems have already been shown to be substantially worse than trained interviewers (see paragraph below) and, as previous people have already noted, ~66% accuracy is essentially useless in a realistic context. Some of the text in the BBC article is rather misleading, too. For example, the statement "the thermal sensor even detects changes in blood vessels" implies that this type of detection can be performed easily and reliably across multiple individuals, which isn't the case unless the vessels in question are extremely close to the skin (for instance, on the top of the hand). In my experience (using a FLIR 600 series thermal camera), whether or not it's possible to obtain clear thermal images of blood vessels on the face is very much dependent on the person being imaged and usually isn't possible.
A good paper that addresses the use of thermal imaging as a lie detection tool in an airport setting more realistically is "Thermal Imaging as a Lie Detection Tool at Airports" by L. Warmelink, A. Vrij, S. Mann, et al (Law and Human Behaviour, 2011) (despite LHB not being a technical journal, the paper includes sufficient technical detail to be credible). That paper concludes by saying:
"Based on our analysis of the NRC report and the present (baseline) data, it is unlikely that thermal imaging can be used effectively at airports as a general screening device. Thermal imaging will classify too many non-deceptive passengers as liars because, as we outlined above, they may be anxious for non-deceptive reasons. In addition, our data showed that, prior to being interviewed, thermal imaging did not register differences between truth tellers and liars."
Overall, it's interesting research, but it's nowhere near the point of being sufficiently effective to be useful in an operational context and it's really rather irresponsible of the BBC (and the researchers whom they interviewed) to portray it as such.
0 = false 1 = false There now its a hundred percent accurate. Just in time for the elections.
Well, how come I'd be there?
As with all reporting on statistics, this story is missing the most important thing. So it successfully knows when someone is lying 2/3 of the time, but what about the number of times it falsely accuses someone? That's the most important issue in this case.
If you're still reading AC, how exactly did you deduce that he's ruining it for others?
I personally grew up in a house where I was guilty until proven innocent and proving myself innocent was considered to be mouthing off.
In my subconscious I believe that it doesn't matter what I say, I'll be considered guilty no matter what. As a result, I've taken on a superior attitude towards the interviewers in these circumstances. I have real skills, a real education and a real job. I don't have to work as a rent-a-cop in an airport to support my habits. Yes, it's being an asshole, but I refuse to let people who are working a power trip career that was a result of being a bully and a dick throughout their youth to bully and be a dick to me now that I've worked to get to where I am at. Oddly enough, this seems to keep them from being a dick to me since bullies only bully people when they believe they can win without real resistance. There are thousands of "whimps" waiting in line... why bother with a difficult one.
[q]It successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases[/q]
That's about 10% better than a coin flip. What do you have left when you run it through the Bayes theorem?
You get a guy who is more than a little conscious of the fact that he's being subjected to an unavoidably flawed lie-detection system whose results are going to make or break his interview, and his emotional state will more than likely trip alarms even when he's telling the truth.
Let us be honest, decerning truth from lie should be at worst, a 50/50 affair. If you train yourself you can probably go above that. A machine doing a 66% by looking at some phisiological sign , which may or may not be correlated to lie, is the same as the infamous polygraph : a piece of shit.
And thus ended remakes of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch.
Gently reply
'Classify as terrrorist / terrorist supporter.'
The world's most perfect lie detector will fail to detect the world's most perfect liars.
Worse, the machine will assure us that those who are not liars, are good and honest men and women.
And we're supposed to trust this machine?
-kgj
Had a Lie Detector, that measured your brain waves. It was used routinely in court. It is no longer under copyright, so it is free (or should be) on most of the e-readers or on the web.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
So they finally invented a device for detecting those tricky replicants.
Will the system be able to determine if someone acts guilty on purpose by following a laundry list of nervous behaviours. I'd love to subjected to a controlled test and take it for a ride.
Mild sedatives like Xanax? Beta blockers? Anti-depressants? Anything to make the emotional dynamic range lower?
I.R. lie detecting camera of death must answer me these questions three, or a full body cavity search ye shall receive!
so I guess psychopaths are safe to keep lying.