Israelis: Talk to the Dog

Forbes is right, that “after a half-​​century of hos­tile bor­ders and urban guer­rilla war­fare, Israel has emerged as the go-​​to coun­try for antiter­ror­ism tech­nolo­gies.“
But, oy gevalt, the tech­nolo­gies they pick! They sound cool. But I wouldn’t count on the Israeli Defense Forces (or any other mil­i­tary, for that mat­ter) using most of ‘em any time soon. Still, they’re fun to read about. Here are two of the eight Forbes picks.
Dog Translator (Price: $10,000 and up)
Worn on a col­lar or mounted on a wall, the Dog Bio Security System trans­lates bark­ing into alarms for police or mil­i­tary. Bio-​​Sense Technologies spent two years cap­tur­ing the sound waves of woofs and arfs, encod­ing them to be read by a dig­i­tal sig­nal proces­sor. All dogs emit the same type of bark when they sense trou­ble. The device can dis­tin­guish this bark from a dog’s “Hello.” A con­sumer ver­sion costs $100. A high-​​end ver­sion costs tens of thou­sands of dol­lars but is still 25% the cost of video sur­veil­lance.
Liar Detector (Price: $200,000)
An air­port secu­rity guard’s great­est fear is let­ting through ter­ror­ists smart enough to stay off the watch list. Suspect Detection Systems came up with a machine to smoke them out. A pas­sen­ger puts his pass­port on a scan­ner and one hand on a sen­sor. The machine starts ask­ing increas­ingly tough ques­tions in the offi­cial lan­guage of the passport-​​issuing coun­try. Artificial intel­li­gence soft­ware mon­i­tors phys­i­o­log­i­cal responses through the sen­sor. Agents pull aside those who fail the test. The com­pany claims a 96% accu­racy rate after two years of test­ing. Slated to go into use next year in Israeli and U.S. air­ports, as well as Gaza Strip check­points.
I wouldn’t bet my last shekel on it. Here’s some back­ground on why lie detec­tion sys­tems, both new school and old, are so spotty.

THERE’S MORE: “For funny Israeli anti-​​terrorist ideas, it’s still hard to beat the ter­ror­ist sniff­ing ger­bils,” Nick notes in the com­ments.
AND MORE: Gary Larson 1, Israelis 0. Check out this pre­scient Far Side cartoon.

November 25th, 2005 | Sabra Tech | 292640 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2005/11/25/israelis-talk-to-the-dog/Israelis%3A+Talk+to+the+Dog2005-11-25+14%3A35%3A08jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.