Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Nuovi metodi di interrogatorio vengono sviluppati

Brain scans may be used as lie detectors
"Posted on Sat, Jan. 28, 2006	
Brain scans may be used as lie detectors
MALCOLM RITTER
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Picture this: Your boss is threatening to fire you 
because he thinks you stole company property. He doesn't believe your 
denials. Your lawyer suggests you deny it one more time - in a brain 
scanner that will show you're telling the truth.
Wacky? Science fiction? It might happen this summer.
Just the other day I lay flat on my back as a scanner probed the tiniest 
crevices of my brain and a computer screen asked, "Did you take the watch?"
The lab I was visiting recently reported catching lies with 90 percent 
accuracy. And an entrepreneur in Massachusetts is hoping to 
commercialize the system in the coming months.
"I'd use it tomorrow in virtually every criminal and civil case on my 
desk" to check up on the truthfulness of clients, said attorney Robert 
Shapiro, best known for defending O.J. Simpson against murder charges.
Shapiro serves as an adviser to entrepreneur Steven Laken and has a 
financial interest in Cephos Corp., which Laken founded to commercialize 
the brain-scanning work being done at the Medical University of South 
Carolina.
That's where I had my brain-scan interrogation. But this lab isn't 
alone. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have also reported 
impressive accuracy through brain-scanning recently. California 
entrepreneur Joel T. Huizenga plans to use that work to start offering 
lie-detecting services in Philadelphia this July.
His outfit, No Lie MRI Inc., will serve government agencies and "anybody 
that wants to demonstrate that they're telling the truth," he said.
Both labs use brain-scanning technology called functional magnetic 
resonance imaging, or fMRI. It's a standard tool for studying the brain, 
but research into using it to detect lies is still in early stages. 
Nobody really knows yet whether it will prove more accurate than 
polygraphs, which measure things like blood pressure and breathing rate 
to look for emotional signals of lying.
But advocates for fMRI say it has the potential to be more accurate, 
because it zeros in on the source of lying, the brain, rather than using 
indirect measures. So it may someday provide lawyers with something 
polygraphs can't: legal evidence of truth-telling that's widely 
admissible in court. (Courts generally regard polygraph results as 
unreliable, and either prohibit such evidence or allow it only if both 
sides in a case agree to let it in.)
Laken said he's aiming to offer the fMRI service for use in situations 
like libel, slander and fraud where it's one person's word against 
another, and perhaps in employee screening by government agencies. 
Attorneys suggest it would be more useful in civil than most criminal 
cases, he said.
Of course, there's no telling where the general approach might lead. A 
law review article has discussed the legality of using fMRI to 
interrogate foreigners in U.S. custody. Maybe police will use it as an 
interrogation tool, too, or perhaps major companies will find it a 
cheaper than litigation or arbitration when an employee is accused of 
stealing something important, other observers say.
For his part, Shapiro says he'd switch to fMRI from polygraph for 
screening certain clients because he figures it would be more reliable 
and maybe more credible to law enforcement agencies.
In any case, the idea of using fMRI to detect lies has started a buzz 
among scientists, legal experts and ethicists. Many worry about rushing 
too quickly from the lab to real-world use. Some caution that it may not 
work as well in the real world as the early lab results suggest.
And others worry that it might.
Unlike perusing your mail or tapping your phone, this is "looking inside 
your brain," Hank Greely, a law professor who directs the Stanford 
Center for Law and the Biosciences, told me a few days before my scan.
It "does seem to me to be a significant change in our ability ... to 
invade what has been the last untouchable sanctuary, the contents of 
your own mind," Greely said. "It should make us stop and think to what 
extent we should allow this to be done."
But Dr. Mark George, the genial neurologist and psychiatrist who let me 
lie in his scanner and be grilled by his computer, said he doesn't see a 
privacy problem with the technology.
That's because it's impossible to test people without their consent, he 
said. Subjects have to cooperate so fully - holding the head still, and 
reading and responding to the questions, for example - that they have to 
agree to the scan.
"It really doesn't read your mind if you don't want your mind to be 
read," he said. "If I were wrongly accused and this were available, I'd 
want my defense lawyer to help me get this."
So maybe the technology is better termed a "truth confirmer" than lie 
detector, he said.
Whatever you call it, the technology has produced some eyebrow-raising 
results. George and his colleagues recently reported that using fMRI 
data, a computer was able to spot lies in 28 out of 31 volunteers.
I joined an extension of that study. That's why I found myself lying on 
a narrow table in George's lab while he and his assistants pulled a 
barrel-shaped framework over my head like a rigid hood. As it brushed 
the tip of my nose and blotted out the light from the room, I looked 
straight ahead to see a computer screen, which would be my interrogator.
Then the table eased into the tunnel of the fMRI scanner, a machine the 
size of a small storage shed. Only my legs stuck out.
As I focused on the questions popping up on the computer screen, the 
scanner roared like a tractor trying to uproot a tree stump.
It was bombarding me with radio waves and a powerful magnetic field to 
create detailed images of my brain and detect tiny changes in blood flow 
in certain areas. Those changes would indicate those areas were working 
a bit harder than usual, and according to research by George and others, 
that would in turn indicate I was lying.
Some questions that popped up on that screen were easy: Am I awake, is 
it 2004, do I like movies. Others were a little more challenging: Have I 
ever cheated on taxes, or gossiped, or deceived a loved one. As 
instructed, I answered them all truthfully, pushing the "Yes" button 
with my thumb or the "No" button with my index finger.
Then, there it was: "Did you remove a watch from the drawer?"
Just a half-hour or so before, in an adjacent room, I'd been told to 
remove either a watch or a ring from a drawer and slip it into a locker 
with my briefcase. This was the mock crime that volunteers lied about in 
George's study. So I took the watch. As I lay in the scanner I 
remembered seizing its gold metal band and nestling it into the locker.
So, the computer was asking, did I take the watch?
No, I replied with a jab of my finger. I didn't steal nuthin.'
I lied again and again. Other questions about the watch popped up 
seemingly at random during the interrogation. Is the watch in my locker? 
Is it in the drawer? Did I steal it from the drawer?
The same questions came up about the ring, and I told the truth about those.
It would be a different computer's job to figure out which I was lying 
about, the watch or the ring. It would compare the way my brain acted 
when I responded to those questions versus what my brain did when I 
responded truthfully to the other questions. Whichever looked more 
different from the "truthful" brain activity would be considered the 
signature of deceit.
Finally, after answering 160 questions over the course of 16 minutes - 
actually, it was 80 questions two times apiece - I was done. The machine 
returned me to the bright light of the scanning room.
The computer's verdict? That would take a few days to produce, since it 
required a lot of data analysis. I didn't mind waiting. It's not like 
the result would help get me fired, or lose a lawsuit, or send me to jail.
Nobody in George's studies faced consequences like that, which is one 
reason the lab results may not apply to real-world situations. George 
has already begun another study in which volunteers face "a little more 
jeopardy" from the mock crime. He declined to describe it because he 
didn't want prospective volunteers to hear about it ahead of time. That 
work is funded by the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute.
Other questions remain. How would this work on people with brain 
diseases? Or people taking medications? How would this work on people 
outside the 18-to-50 age range included in George's recent work?
How about experienced liars? George hopes eventually to study volunteers 
from prisons.
And then there's the matter of the three people who got away with lying 
in his recent study. For some reason, the computer failed to identify 
the object they'd stolen. George says he doesn't know what went wrong.
But in a real-world situation, he said, the person being questioned 
would go through an exercise like the ring-or-watch task as well as 
being quizzed about the topic at hand. That way, if the computer failed 
in the experimental task, it would be obvious that it couldn't judge the 
person's truthfulness.
Because of that, George said, he's comfortable with entrepreneur Laken's 
plans to introduce the scanning service to lawyers, though just on a 
limited basis, by the middle of this year. Lab studies are obviously 
necessary, he said, but "at a certain point you really have to start 
applying and see how it works. And I think we're getting close."
But Jennifer Vendemia, a University of South Carolina researcher who 
studies deception and the brain, said she finds Laken's timetable 
premature. So little research has been done on using fMRI for this 
purpose that it's too soon to make any judgment about how useful it 
could be, she said.
Without studies to see how well the technique works in other labs - a 
standard procedure in the scientific world - its reliability might be an 
issue, said Dr. Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield in England, 
who also studies fMRI for detecting deception.
Speaking more generally, ethical and legal experts said they were wary 
of quickly using fMRI for spotting lies.
"What's really scary is if we start implementing this before we know how 
accurate it really is," Greely said. "People could be sent to jail, 
people could be sent to the death penalty, people could lose their jobs."
Greely recently called for pre-marketing approval of lie-detection 
devices in general, like the federal government carries out for medications.
Judy Illes, director of Stanford's program in neuroethics, also has 
concerns: Could people, including victims of crimes, be coerced into 
taking an fMRI test? Could it distinguish accurate memories from muddled 
ones? Could it detect a person who's being misleading without actually 
lying?
Her worries multiply if fMRI evidence starts showing up in the 
courtroom. For one thing, unlike the technical data from a polygraph, it 
can be used to make brain images that look simple and convincing, 
belying the complexity of the data behind them, she said.
"You show a jury a picture with a nice red spot, that can have a very 
strong impact in a very rapid way.... We need to understand how juries 
are going to respond to that information. Will they be open to complex 
explanations of what the images do and do not mean?"
There's also a philosophical argument in case fMRI works all too well. 
Greely notes that four Supreme Court justices wrote in 1998 that if 
polygraphs were reliable enough to use as evidence, they shouldn't be 
admitted because they would usurp the jury's role of determining the 
truth. With only four votes, that position doesn't stand as legal 
precedent, but it's "an interesting straw in the wind" for how fMRI 
might be received someday, he said.
It didn't take any jury to find the truth in my case.
"We nabbed ya," George said after sending me the results of my scan. "It 
wasn't a close call."
I was ratted out by the three parts of my brain the technique targets. 
They'd become more active when I lied about taking the watch than when I 
truthfully denied taking the ring.
Those areas are involved in juggling the demands of doing several things 
at once, in thinking about oneself, and in stopping oneself from making 
a natural response - all things the brain apparently does when it pulls 
back from blurting the truth and works up a whopper instead, George said.
Of course, nobody is going to make me or anybody else climb into an fMRI 
scanner every time they want a statement verified. The procedure is too 
cumbersome to be used so casually, George says.
But he figures that if a perfect lie detector were developed, that 
practical consideration might not matter. The mere knowledge that one is 
available, he said, might provoke people to clean up their acts.
"My hope," George said, "would be that it might make the world operate a 
little bit more openly and honestly.""
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/13737006.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

 
la macchine della verità esiste da decenni ma non è mai stata adottata 
al di fuori degli usa per interrogatori, in compenso è diffusa oggi come 
giocattolo per bambini e genitori scriteriati.



Sciocchino, non si parla dello stupido ed inaffidabile poligrafo, ma di 
un sistema completamente nuovo e molto più affidabile (almeno al 90%) e 
che permette di capire quando il responso non ne affidabile.
E si tratta solo dei primi modelli, non del massimo ottenibile.
In futuro sicuramente miglioreranno di molto.
Mirco

Mirco Romanato ha scritto:

così non lo useranno solo per i terroristi magari anche nelle assunzioni 
o nei rapporti lavorativi, sarebbe uno strumento molto utile per un 
totalitarismo.

Mirco Romanato ha scritto:

sarebbe interessante vedere se Bush dice la verità quando afferma che 
per lui le WMD esistevano.

 per lui le WMD esistevano.
Infatti, dovrebbe diventare un sistema affidabile, automatico e 
verificabile per i dibattiti televisivi tra politici di sponde avverse.
Con in sovrimpressione ad ogni politico un indicatore della probabilità 
che sia insincero o che non è comprensibile se dice la verità oppure no.
Potrebbe essere la volta buona che nei dibattiti televisivi iniziano a 
parlare poco e chiaramente.
Mirco

Mirco Romanato wrote:

Potrebbe essere utilizzato dalla polizia per controllare le idee politiche
delle persone, quelli con idee sgradite potrebbero essere rimossi
chirurgicamente, ideale per sgominare gli oppositori.

 chirurgicamente, ideale per sgominare gli oppositori.
Guarda che ti devono mettere un caschetto in testa, non possono farlo di 
nascosto.
Quindi dovresti catturare prima gli oppositori, interrogarli, e poi 
ammazzarli.
Ma se li catturi prima sai già chi sono, quindi a che pro interrogarli 
per capire se sono oppositori.
In ogni caso una mossa del genere aumenterebbe, di per se, l'opposizione.
Anche chi superasse il test la prima volta sarebbe spinto ad opporsi la 
seconda se ogni volta rischia di essere ammazzato.
Ogni persona che sottoponi ad un simile test, se lo supera, diventa tuo 
nemico.
Alla fine elimineresti tutti, perché nessuno è perfettamente affidabile.
O loro eliminerebbero te preventivamente.
Mirco

Mirco Romanato wrote:

Sembri il mago othelma nella sicurezza delle tue previsioni, ho sentito che
in Cina stanno progettando molecole in grado di limitare comportamenti
sgraditi aumentando la docilità delle masse, il tutto verrà somministrato
come vaccino, la Monsanto collabora con piacere il governo usa è altresì
interessato, insomma vissero tutti felici e contenti.

tutto verrà somministrato come vaccino,
...e le marmotte incartavano la cioccolata....
*LOL*
-Stefano