Lie Detectors to be Used for Airline Security 504
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."
What if they... (Score:2, Interesting)
Learn acting at home with your computer. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh goodie (Score:5, Interesting)
Riiiiight.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Lie detectors generally depend on the person being scanned to be more or less honest with themself. If they aren't, then no dice.
This won't work.
* - Info from a poli sci professor I have this semester who worked on the Senate Intelligence Committee for 10 years... sorry, too lazy to find a link
Re:There is no such thing as a Lie Detector. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh goodie (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh goodie (Score:5, Interesting)
I've actually looked in to this, and the only sort of sea transportation available is aboard freighters, which often take on a dozen or so passengers at a time. It's a bit pricey--higher than air travel but lower than cruise ships (which take too damn long to get where they're going anyway, and cost tons of money; they're not transportion, really). Also, their schedules can be hard to work with.
They're probably the cheapest way to do a round-the-world tour, though, and some shipping companies offer just that. Surprisingly little info online, but apparently there is an underground of "low-luxury" travellers who like take a less tourist-y route, and there are newsletters and magazines for this sort of thing.
I fully intend to take at least one voyage like this at some point in my life.
Re:Oh goodie (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as security goes, even if the system really works, I can already see lots of problems. For example, false positives from people who have OTHER things to hide that have nothing to do with airplanes. Or even more seriously, false negatives from people who are using drugs or some trick to reduce their voice stress under the detection threshold. Even more serious than that, we have true negatives that are really false negatives, because the passenger is an innocent patsy that doesn't know about the bomb that was stuffed into the luggage.
True positives? Gosh, if only the terrorists were so conveniently stupid.
Right now I regard it as yet another example of BushCo projection--accusing others of your own flaws. Taking the most extreme example available, Dubya is a sincere moron, so he expects the terrorists to be the same way. Another flavor of stuff like accusing other people of trying to rewrite history while you try to rewrite history.
Next, let's start considering the problems if the system doesn't really work. That's probably more likely, actually.
afraid of the hunters, not the truth (Score:5, Interesting)
--The following was written by someone else--.
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
"If the're not guilty, why are they running?"
I wrote about this a while ago. Here's the text:
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Ever heard that one? I work in information security, so I have heard it more than my fair share. I've always hated that reasoning, because I am a little bit paranoid by nature, something which serves me very well in my profession. So my standard response to people who have asked that question near me has been "because I'm paranoid." But that doesn't usually help, since most people who would ask that question see paranoia as a bad thing to begin with. So for a long time I've been trying to come up with a valid, reasoned, and intelligent answer which shoots the holes in the flawed logic that need to be there.
And someone unknowingly provided me with just that answer today. In a conversation about hunting, somebody posted this about prey animals and hunters:
"Yeah! Hunters don't kill the *innocent* animals - they look for the shifty-eyed ones that are probably the criminal element of their species!"
but in a brilliant (and very funny) retort, someone else said:
"If the're not guilty, why are they running?"
Suddenly it made sense, that nagging thing in the back of my head. The logical reason why a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy. Because it's one thing to be afraid of the TRUTH. People who commit murder or otherwise deprive others of their Natural Rights are afraid of the TRUTH, because it is the light of TRUTH that will help bring them to justice.
But it's another thing entirely to be afraid of hunters. And all too often, the hunters are the ones proclaiming to be looking for TRUTH. But they are more concerned with removing any obstactles to finding the TRUTH, even when that means bulldozing over people's rights (the right to privacy, the right to anonymity) in their quest for it. And sadly, these people often cannot tell the difference between the appearance of TRUTH and TRUTH itself. And these, the ones who are so convinced they have found the TRUTH that they stop looking for it, are some of the worst oppressors of Natural Rights the world has ever known.
They are the hunters, and it is right and good for the prey to be afraid of the hunters, and to run away from them. Do not be fooled when a hunter says "why are you running from me if you have nothing to hide?" Because having something to hide is not the only reason to be hiding something.
This fits Israel's airline security model (Score:5, Interesting)
I travelled to and from Israel prior to 9/11 and, being the security geek that I am, I found their approach to airport security very interesting. Not only is it utterly different from what we do in the US, but it is obviously devastatingly effective. Israel has been under open attack from terrorists for *decades* and yet they've never, ever had an incident.
What do they do that's different? The whole focus is different. In the US, we focus on the (arguably futile) task of assuring that there are no weapons on the aircraft. In Israel, they focus on assuring that there are no terrorists on the aircraft. Their approach is about screening people more than bags, on the theory that weapons aren't dangerous, people are dangerous.
The screening is intensive, detailed and time-consuming. They do search the bags while they're at it, but the main purpose of searching bags isn't to look for weapons, it's to look for clues and to provoke reactions. I'll describe my experience of going through security in Tel Aviv on the way out of Israel by way of example.
I was travelling with my boss, on business. The first thing they did was to separate us, sending each of us to a different table. At each table were three agents. One of them searched my bag -- *very* thoroughly, picking through it piece by piece. Another asked me questions at a rapid-fire pace, jumping around between who I was, what I was doing, where I had gone, who I had spoken with, who I knew in Israel and what was the purpose and origin of various pieces from my luggage. The questioner was detailed, but not necessarily thorough. He asked about seemingly random things, but inquired in great detail, testing to see how my story would hold together under scrutiny. After asking the names and phone numbers of some people I had met with, he pulled out a phone and actually called one of them and grilled him for a minute! Then he and the agent who had been speaking with my boss stepped away and conferred with one another, obviously cross-checking our stories to see if they matched up.
The third agent at each table just watched. The guy at my table had his eyes glued to me the whole time, watching for any hint of abnormal reaction... it's unbelievable how nervous that made me! But I suppose my reaction was normal.
I can see *exactly* how a lie detector would fit into this model. Even if it didn't actually work, it would make the subject that much more worried and frightened, making it harder for a terrorist to stay calm enough to have all the right reactions. It wouldn't even matter if it gave bad readings from time to time, because in a situation like that, with trained, experienced agents, the lie detector would be just another tool to help both trigger and analyze reactions; it would be the agents themselves that made the decisions about who to investigate further and who to pass on.
Although I would really hate to see what would happen if the US tried to institute a *real* airport security system like the Israelis have, rather than the "security theatre" that we have, I found it very impressive. It sucked royally to be the subject of that scrutiny, even as an honest guy just trying to fly home... it's easy to see why they have such an amazing track record.
Re:"Something to hide" (Score:2, Interesting)
I was returning home from NZ and a vibe my girlfriend had picked up on the trip started buzzing inside my luggage while it was being inspected by security. The guard recoiled and asked what the noise was and I quickly said "a massager". He seemed relieved, zipped up the bag and said "hope you enjoyed your stay in New Zealand" with an implied wink-and-a-nudge. Could've been a bit embarassing with a lie detector involved, though I don't believe I'd have ended up in jail for it...
Hijackers make practice runs till they pass (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This fits Israel's airline security model (Score:1, Interesting)
Not quite. An El Al plane was hijacked by the PFLP in 1968. Security was subsequently tightened, and every attempt since has been foiled.
Psychopaths Can Lie Without Being Detected (Score:2, Interesting)
Lie detector tests are premised on the probability that people will experience anxiety when lying. Of course, some people are more susceptible to anxiety than others. Generally nervous people might experience the anxiety that causes these voice microtremors without actually lying.
On the other hand, people can fairly easily be trained to pass lie detector tests while still lying. Psychopaths in particular, many of whom are constitutionally underreactive to certain stressors (search Google for "deficient affective experience"), tend to be able to lie without the slightest trace of anxiety. This is mainly because psychopaths have an entirely self-centered attitude and thus no moral qualms about lying, stealing, or doing anything to people to get what they want or to serve their own twisted brand of justice. Note that one type of psychopath (the so-called secondary psychopath) is hypersensitive to stress; these are the common-criminal/reckless type.
My guess is that psychopathic individuals would be attracted to international terrorism. Osama bin Laden, for example, is almost certainly a psychopath. Therefore, these lie detector tests will be less effective against the people most likely to do harm!
You better believe it! B.S. abounds! (Score:3, Interesting)
(The theory being "You're responsible for the security of your delivery from the moment you accept it until you drop it off for shipment.")
IMHO, this is just more assinine posturing -- because let's face it. The courier himself might be the one sabotaging the delivery, right? He'd have the most access to the package of anyone. And furthermore, an unlocked vehicle door on the airport lot is no guarantee the person kept the doors locked during the rest of the package's transit.
Lie Detectors are Crap (Score:1, Interesting)
I doubt very seriously that this will have any positive effect on airport security. But it will increase the annoyance factor for law-abiding passengers.
flying to/from israel (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:afraid of the hunters, not the truth (Score:3, Interesting)
Though I've hardly refined it, anytime I've received this response I ask the person if they've ever used a dressing room in a clothing store.
Just about everyone has used a dressing room...so the question is...what do they have to hide? Why doesn't the person undress and try the clothes on in front of everyone? They have nothing to hide. Everyone's got body parts like everyone else.
People use dressing rooms because they are shy about their bodies. They decline to reveal their bodies to people even though, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter to society as a whole--but it matters deeply to the person whose body it is. Clearly that implies that other things could be irrelevant to society, but very important and closely held to the individual.
Re:buy your own (Score:2, Interesting)
At least the Europeans of today are not using lie detectors to protect air traffic, objects important for national security, check police officers, or innocent people like you and me.
this would go well with Savant-ray Scanners (Score:2, Interesting)
Temple Grandin, "an autistic woman who was recommended for institutionalization as a child, [...] went on to become an influential expert on animal behavior and inventor of humane systems for handling livestock. [...] Grandin, in her book, notes that autistics have ably performed quality-control jobs that draw upon their detail orientation, and score exceptionally well on tests that involve finding a hidden shape inside a picture. She suggests that autistics be tried as airport screeners, to spot guns, bombs and the like amid the cluttered images of x-rayed luggage. Is anyone in the Department of Homeland Security working on this idea?"
Source: http://www.techcentralstation.com/091305C.html [techcentralstation.com]
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Feynman (Score:1, Interesting)
Eventually Feynman took pity on the guys and returned the door and (I believe) confessed. When he did, there was an uproar, as people claimed he had lied.
I've had that effect in the opposite direction. Someone cracked an account, I was asked if I did it. Said no, got my ass kicked for lying. The people at the time said they wouldn't have come down on me if I'd been honest, but they had to punish me for lying.
A few months later, the guy who did it bragged about it, got turned in, and *I* got my ass kicked again! This time for "lying to cover for the guy."
Re:Not happening (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not ever going to happen again in any of our lifetimes.
Well, not all hijackers are sending planes into buildings. Have you heard of any others? One, I think, previously. In fact, there are enough (an understatement) highly suspicious unanswered questions about those hijackings that the conspiracy theorists have topped the JFK body of ravings.
I'm in doubt myself about the official story, and there are only two degrees of separation between myself and one of the deceased flight stewards (a fellow parishoner of my brother-in-law). Also, not all hijackers board planes in the USA, and security varies hugely in the world's airports--something hijackers know.
Which brings me to your point "the terrorists know the things we're missing." Well yes, and I often wonder about where all the terrorists are. Most murders go unsolved, for instance, as do most robberies, etc. etc. A skilled criminal network (think Hell's Angels) gets caught rarely, and they're doing some pretty sophisticated law breaking, over long periods. I look around me, and see how easy it would be to really muck things up, scare people (hey, I'm a righteous square, two kids and a station wagon--really--but I dabbled in some vandalism while a young teenager, and did a stint caring for street youth, so I know about havoc). There are so many vulnerable points in an open society! And that's the way we want it. I can only surmise that they either aren't very numerous, or aren't really there, or are really stupid.
Condi Rice will be on TV going, "Who could have guessed they would use..." whatever it was.
Yeah, who could guess? Only those who saw the near-exact scenario played out on The [plaguepuppy.net] Lone [cloakanddagger.de] Gunmen [stylicious.com] only six months before the actual event. So, um what, maybe five million people could guess? Or did they forget to wear their tinfoil hats, and got that episode erased?
Re:"Something to hide" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the US's right to demand visa, and I would gladly comply (or not go there, whatever!) - but it's MY government's duty to act in my interest, not constantly threatening me. And besides, what's a mere 130 EUR ($150?) for a passport that's going to be microwaved in my kitchen anyway?
Re:"Something to hide" (Score:3, Interesting)
You will after the first 10 times when you get stopped for further questionong every fucking time and it's always you and not the other guys.
it improves security
No it doesn't. Proof? Let's see yours first.
reduces the cost effectiveness of security
I think it's supposed to increase it. Not sure it would, though.
and makes it quicker for the average person to get where they're going.
[...] I'd be more worried if they were planning on putting all their faith in this system,
They'd have to put a lot of faith in it if the efficiency reward you postulate is to be realised. Otherwise it will just slow things down.
The whole focus on airplanes is misguided anyway. Just because that's what was used in the last major attacked on the US doesn't mean it's a more important target than anything else. There are plenty of other ways of doing great damage with modest means. Too many to control well. It's like the missile shield thing: If I were a terrorist and got myself a nuke for the purpouse of hurting the US, why would I go through all the trouble of also getting a long range missile, learning to operate it properly, and risk it being detected and shot down? It would be so much easier to just ship it to any coastal city in plain sight. In a normal cargo container or in a perfectly normal-looking rereational boat. In the same way, public transport provides nice good concentrations of people, but there are many types of them, not all well suited to rigorous security, and if they all become "difficult", there's no shortage of other crowded venues, including open outside spaces where admittance control is unthinkable without creating a society so bad that just succumbing to muslim fundamentalism seems like a nicer way out.
driving the death toll up (Score:2, Interesting)
And studies [cornell.edu] argue [lewrockwell.com]
<rant>
Apart from the loss of civil liberties and the loss of billions of dollars, this is just another pointer to the fact that the so-called war on terror is costing many, many more lives than its ostensible targets. Up next, after two thousand dead American troops and literally [iraqbodycount.org] countless [bbc.co.uk] dead Iraqi civilians:
</rant>
Re:What if they... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been on quite a few flights where someone in a wheelchair or on crutches gets waved through because searching them is made too difficult by their handicap. Especially metal detectors with the person having metal crutches or metal pins in their bodies. From personal experience, I've had a splint which has a metal brace and pins drilled directly into the bone to support the leg while it heals. This has caused metal detectors to go crazy and a hand detector which goes anywhere near it to go haywire. There are many ways that may have worked if people are afraid of dying, deoderant cans that could be pierced to cause an explosion, a knife or blade hidden in a set of crutches to name a couple off the top of my head. The point, as people have said before is that if you know they are hijacking the plane for terrorist activites what have you got to lose? Taking hostages only works if you can exert authority over them. A sealed pilot cabin which can release some form of sleeping gas to everywhere else in the plane would be far more effective.
Face it, terrorists are perfectly capable of causing terror by means other than ones they have already done. Making ridiculous measures only wastes money and creates a culture of unnessesary fear.
Familial Tremor (Score:1, Interesting)
Nervous flyers .... (Score:1, Interesting)
Having these people put on headphones and go through an invasive interrogation designed to see if they are nervous is going to create an absurd amount of false-positives.
Re:This fits Israel's airline security model (Score:2, Interesting)
First off, I'd like to preface with a confession that my direct (i.e. personal interaction) with the Islamic world is based mainly on Palestinians, but from what I have read and heard (always suspect) it seems fairly similar in other Islamic societies as well.
I would like to rebut regarding my case for "Top Billing" of sex as a motivation for terrorism.
If my post somehow came across as critical of religion (in general or Islam in particular) then it wasn't meant as such. Religion is, to my mind, a set of guidelines for social interaction which is supposed to support civilization, not destroy it. In almost all cases where religious behavior has been corrupted to evil ends, somewhere the basic point of "love thy neighbor" has been forgotten, regardless of which religion it came from (I believe that most religions advocate doing well by one's fellow citizen, although some don't afford "person" status to non-members of that religion).
Still, in any society, there will be a constant percentage breakdown of miscreants, ranging from shoplifters to rapists/murderers. Religion generally frowns upon anything that's prima facie "bad", such as theft or murder. Social frameworks in general require a carrot at one end to appeal to the better sides of its citizens, and a stick at the other to enforce consequences where the better side isn't strong enough. Note here that the ultimate reward for being a martyr is not just a ticket to Eden, but a waiting estate containing (insert multiple of 7) beautiful virgins to fulfill your every dream. The Eden part is foregone, it's the virgins which tell you what bombers expect to be doing for the rest of eternity in Eden.
Although I have no idea who you are, I can make some big generalizations about why your case is different:
You had access to western media, which is a social juggernaut. There's no stopping MTV from trickling into brains via TV, radio, print, the toy industry, cellphones, billboards, etc. To the generation of suicide bombers growing up in the territories, this simply wasn't there. Difficult to get nudie magazines. No internet. Not even the Sears Lingerie catalog to, ahem, aid in self-satisfaction. You, as a member of western society had this available all around you and you rejected it, although statistics say you probably tried some before rejecting it. Either way it was always sitting there in the background. It is very different when you consciously refuse the object put in front of you (perhaps having tried it and then decided), versus wanting something you know exists but can't access. It is a "force multiplier" for desire/curiosity. Sex is a powerful motivator, and as strict as any social group in the USA is, the hydra of modern media finds its way into the most conservative of homes, thereby giving *some* kind of input for sex-starved teens everywhere.
Case in point: what are the world's angry Islamic states complaining about when it comes to the US? Infiltration by "McDonalds and MTV", into their unspoiled homogenous culture. They fear heterogenous, lowest-common-denominator culture taking root and growing in their youth's minds (a wise thing to fear). They fear losing the chokehold they have on sexual behavior and acceptable outlets, because it is such a fundamental cornerstone of Islamic (and many religious) societies. They understand it, and I understand their fear, because it's a not easily reversible process. Sexual energy/frustration is a powerful force, steamrollering over more things in society than any other force in history, and it has been (arguably) harnessed to do many of man's great works, good and bad. The fact that you had the education to recognize this, and the "inoculation" from western culture to taste enough without being overcome by it, makes you fortunate, not "especially strong".
The point of this is not to belittle religious culture in general; it's to argue that