Army Wants an Honest-to-God B.S. Detector

By Katie Drummond, Wired.com

It’s the latest edition of the military’s eternal quest for “A Thingamajig that Solves All Terrorism.” This time, the Army wants a portable gadget that can detect American foes, liars and other delinquent characters with near-perfect accuracy, and do it without ever making physical contact. Yeah, good luck with that, boys.

In the Pentagon’s latest round of research proposal requests, which offer small businesses cash money in exchange for lofty innovation, the Army is after ideas for a gizmo they’ve dubbed “The Standoff Counter Human Deception Detection Device.” Right now, military interrogators depend largely on the same tools used by law enforcement agencies or Jerry Springer “Is Your Brother Her Lover?” infidelity episodes. They use good old lie-detection machines (even though they’re notoriously imperfect), or they turn to well-honed, albeit fallible, human BS radar.

That dearth of options has long been a dilemma the military’s looked to solve. In the past five years alone, they’ve considered the merits of myriad options, including biometric-based deception detection, that’d evaluate metrics like a person’s gait or body temperature to assess honesty, the improvement of cultural expertise to improve overseas interrogation and even — yikes! — the use of pharmaceuticals as veritable truth elixirs.

They’ve yet to optimize any of the above strategies, but that hasn’t stopped the Army from setting their sights even higher. They’re asking businesses to offer up a device that can be used at least two meters from a human subject, and can “assess psychophysiological characteristics” — which could include everything from heart rate to eye movement to brain waves — to determine the credibility of subjects undergoing questioning.

To read more, visit:  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/army-lie-detectors/

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