U.S. Customs to install lie detector kiosk booths on borders.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using border crossing stations in Arizona to test new technology to detect liars as they attempt to enter the country; travelers are subjected to a 5-minute interview with the kiosk, while microphones monitor vocal pitch frequency and quality, an infrared camera monitors eye movement and pupil dilation, and a high definition camera monitors facial expression.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using border crossing stations in Arizona to test new technology to detect liars as they attempt to enter the country.
The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time (AVATAR) kiosk interviews travelers while searching for signs of deception.
Doug Derrick, a member of the University of Arizona team developing the AVATAR thinks the kiosk will be a success.
“What we’re looking for is changes in human physiology,” Derrick told CNN. “We’ve had great success in reliably detecting these anomalies — things that people can’t really detect.”
Emergency Management reports that currently, the AVATAR is being tested at the Dennis DeConcini port in Nogales, Arizona on low-risk travelers who have been preapproved by human screeners as part of the CPB’s voluntary Trusted Traveler program.
The travelers are subjected to a 5-minute interview with the kiosk, which displays an animated face that asks close-ended questions in English or Spanish and uses sensors to detect whether the person is lying. Microphones monitor vocal pitch frequency and quality, an infrared camera monitors eye movement and pupil dilation, and a high definition camera monitors facial expression.
“People have a hard time detecting small changes in the frequency of the human voice, that a computer is much better at. People are accurate about 54 percent of the time at detecting deception. … We have got our machine as high as 90 percent in the lab,” Derrick said.
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20120821-border-patrol-kiosk-detects-liars-trying-to-enter-u-s
More information about the AVATAR kiosks can be found below:http://mis.eller.arizona.edu/searchresults.asp?q=kiosk&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=Search&cx=005163135645670103986%3Abndywbnwbpu&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&siteurl=mis.eller.arizona.edu%2Fnews%2F2012%2FAvatar_testing_begins_at_AZ_Mexico_border.asp&ref=www.arizona.edu%2Fsearch%2Fgoogle%2FAVATAR%3Fquery%3DAVATAR%26cx%3D017488205189097806253%253Ah_j_lbd-nb0%26cof%3DFORID%253A11%26sitesearch%3D&ss=1070j300534j5
Debate on brain scans as lie detectors highlighted in Maryland murder trial.
Gary Smith says he didn’t kill his roommate. Montgomery County prosecutors say otherwise.
Can brain scans show whether he’s lying?
Smith is about to go on trial in the 2006 shooting death of fellow Army Ranger Michael McQueen. He has long said that McQueen committed suicide, but now he says he has cutting-edge science to back that up.
While technicians watched his brain during an MRI, Smith answered a series of questions, including: “Did you kill Michael McQueen?”
It may sound like science fiction. But some of the nation’s leading neuroscientists, who are using the same technology to study Alzheimer’s disease and memory, say it also can show — at least in the low-stakes environment of a laboratory — when someone is being deceptive.
Many experts doubt whether the technology is ready for the real world, and judges have kept it out of the courtroom.
Over three days, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Eric M. Johnson allowed pretrial testimony about what he called the “absolutely fascinating” issues involved, from the minutiae of brain analysis to the nature of truth and lies. But he decided jurors can’t see Smith’s MRI testing.
“There have been some discoveries that deception may be able to be detected,” Johnson said, but he added that there’s no consensus that the results can be trusted. “These are brilliant people, and they don’t agree.”
Still, researchers and legal experts say they can envision a time when such brain scans are used as lie detectors. Standard polygraphs are generally not admitted in trials because some consider them deeply flawed. During his police interrogation, Smith said he would submit himself to a polygraph, but Johnson said such results would not be allowed as evidence.
Smith’s attorney, Andrew V. Jezic, argued in court that the MRI test should be allowed, and neuroscientists sparred over the credibility and usefulness in a jury trial.
Frank Haist, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, analyzed Smith’s brain scans. He was hired as a consultant in Smith’s case for No Lie MRI, a firm commercializing the technology. In his own research, Haist has used brain MRIs to study how people of different ages and races and those with autism process faces.
If Smith chooses to testify at trial, Haist said, “he would be asked and the jury would like to know: ‘Did he shoot Michael McQueen?’ Obviously, his answer would be no.” Jurors would see whether Smith was sweating or not, Haist said. They would see whether he appeared nervous. And they would make judgments.
The scans, he said, would give them one more factor to consider.
“You’re making a decision based on the way he looks, the way he acts. This is just another way he acts. It’s just looking at the way his brain is acting,” Haist said.
“The MRI is not a truth machine,” he said. “I can’t say with certainty that he is telling the truth.”
Other experts said the scans don’t prove whether Smith is being either deceptive or truthful.
New York University neuroscientist Liz Phelps told the court that there is “no evidence” that the scans are useful in revealing a “real-world, self-serving lie.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/debate-on-brain-scans-as-lie-detectors-highlighted-in-maryland-murder-trial/2012/08/26/aba3d7d8-ed84-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_story.html?hpid=z4
Is eye scan technology the future of airport security?
The Future Passenger Experience, a recently issued white paper from AOptix Technologies. The 10-page document presents an idyllic future in which a traveler shows up at an airport, tosses his bag on a conveyor belt, breezes through security, and boards a plane without ever dealing with another human or handling any documents. This is all accomplished with new face and iris scanners that can quickly identify a person—even a fidgety one—and automatically approve his progression through the normally onerous process of getting on an airplane.
http://www.aoptix.com/images/downloads/Future-Passenger-Experience.pdf
AOptix, a 100-person outfit based in Silicon Valley, says it has the technology to pull off this vision of the future. The company has developed a scanner that can snap an iris from a few feet away in about a second. “It has to be easy enough for an 80-year-old Tibetan grandmother who has never flown before,” says Dean Senner, chief executive officer of AOptix. Senner is championing the idea that by 2020 the vast majority of people will be processed automatically at airports by matching iris scans against databases.
Will the airport of the future be able to verify the identity of passengers with a quick eye scan?
Aoptix Technologies Inc., a Campbell-based high-tech company, has developed iris scan technology the company hopes can be used by the Transportation Security Administration to verify passenger identification in a matter of seconds.
http://www.findbiometrics.com/companyprofiles/AOptix-Technologies
To market, sell and develop such technology, Aoptix announced last week it had acquired $42 million in additional funding from investors, bringing the total amount it has raised to $123 million since it launched in 2000.
Aoptix’s scanning technology is already used to identify passengers coming in and out of the international departure lounge at London’s Gatwick Airport and for border control in Qatar. It has not been used in the U.S., said Aoptix spokeswoman Amanda North.
The advantage of the Aoptix technology, she said, is that the scanning device can confirm the identification of a passenger from up to six feet away in about two seconds.
The company is in negotiations with the TSA to bring the technology in the U.S., according to North.
“A lot of airports have seen this as an advantage and I think the U.S. is looking at this as well,” she said.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said he could not confirm whether his agency has met with Aoptix officials but said the TSA is interested in using biometric technology at the nation’s airports.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-22/through-airport-security-in-the-blink-of-an-eye
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-eye-scan-technology-20120824,0,4993492.story
Click the link below for more whitepapers such as: "Revolution in Airport Security"
"Suitability of Face"
http://www.aoptix.com/download-center#Future