Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder, here’s something I ran across today that adds to the mountain of gadgets and gizmos intended to smoke out insurgents hiding in plain sight.
FORT JACKSON, S.C. — The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.
The Defense Department says the portable device isn’t perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. We’re not promising perfection we’ve been very careful in that, said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. What we are promising is that, if it’s properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.
The new device, known by the acronym PCASS, for Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System, uses a commercial TDS Ranger hand-held personal digital assistant with three wires connected to sensors attached to the hand. An interpreter will ask a series of 20 or so questions in Persian, Arabic or Pashto: “Do you intend to answer my questions truthfully?” “Are the lights on in this room” “Are you a member of the Taliban?” The operator will punch in each answer and, after a delay of a minute or so for processing, the screen will display the results: “Green,” if it thinks the person has told the truth, “Red” for deception, and “Yellow” if it can’t decide.
The PCASS cannot be used on U.S. personnel, according to a memo authorizing its use, signed in October by the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.
Now, I’ve been polygraphed before and I gotta tell you, it sucks. I don’t like the whole idea of this hand-held lie detector, but I guess I’ll hold off final judgment until I see how it works. The Army’s bought 94 of the systems and intends to deploy them to Iraq and Afghanistan.
My problem is the device seems to use the same rationale for detecting deception as the full-sized box — sensing stress reactions in the hands, etc. But if you’re an Afghan villager being questioned by American soldiers wearing body armor and carrying rifles — and oh by the way, speaking to you in a language you don’t comprehend — how are you NOT going to sweat?
It seems like one of those good ideas on paper, but it uses flawed logic to get to the answer.
But still, it’s an interesting report…
– Christian
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Yea, I agree…. too much stress can throw off a lie detector test. I imagine if a bad guy has a gun to your loved ones head you aren’t going to baseline very well.
This is such a bad idea.
You can manipulate a situation to your favor with it to expose bad guys. They’ll make it work.
You guys seem to not understand that all lie detectors work off a baseline. If you’re nervous and sweaty at rest, it will only flag you if your body reacts above and beyond that.
You’re also forgetting that the primary use of lie detectors is to convince people that the chance of getting caught lying is very high, and thus not worth doing. Insurgents who are detained might look at the machine and decide to rat out their comrades in order to save themselves based on nothing more than the fear of being caught by the thing, regardless of whether it works or not.
Additionally, the thing has been tested in Iraq, so it is likely that all the potential shortcomings are outweighed by its benefits.
And finally, you are totally overlooking the reality of how the troops must operate in the absence of these machines. For instance, an IED goes off and the US soldiers round up a group of men behaving suspiciously in a nearby village. This happens very frequently in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The troops then have to interview each individual, through an interpreter, and determine whether this individual is lying or not. The soldier has to evaluate the story, and do the time-tested look them in the eyes technique. Inevitably, the soldiers have to let go most, if not all of the individuals he might suspect as insurgents or otherwise detain those he believes might be responsible, with very little proof.
This traditional technique isn’t exactly foolproof either, is it? The lie detectors will be a valuable tool to help improve the situation.
I like the idea. A handheld device that will tell if someone is fibbing (Nessuno is right, the first questions establish a baseline, the pointed questions establish honesty)?
Hell, it doesn’t even have to work to be effective. It just has to scare the hell out of enough folks to keep them from doing bad things.
It’s like UAVs: constant intelligence does not catch every body, just makes life worse for them. A worse life means much more work to create the same amount of mischief.
According to the linked article, when tested against deceptive subjects the machine failed to detect falsehoods 14% of the time (2 false negatives and 12 inconclusive).
More worrisome was that out of 100 truthful subjects, it was unable to determine the veracity of their statements 50% of the time(8% false positive, 42% inconclusive).
Imagine this scenario. You’re on patrol. Something happens – it doesn’t matter what. You question 100 suspects with the gadget. The machine is going to tell you that 50 of them told you the truth, 8 of them lied to you and that it couldn’t get a read on the other 42. It doesn’t matter if the guy that actually did it was even in the 100 you questioned.
I have this feeling that these machines are going to lead to a lot of people getting accused of something that they didn’t necessarily do… and in the environment that this thing is going to be used, that could lead to a trip to Gitmo – or worse, as a justification to mete out a bit of frontier justice.
I like the whole idea of having a small device at hand to tell if someone tells the truth or not.
But I have some questions about the cultural differences. In muslim countries, or communities. lieying is soemthing else then in western societies. For example; muslim don’t feel guilt the same as western people. They only feel shame/guilt because they are caught doing something that shames their own commmnity, not because they did something bad. (that’s why their commnunity shave their heads if they done something bad.)So it’s okay if they don’t get caught.
Another example is that lieying to none-muslims is allowed and thus is not as easilly recognized by liedetectors because they don’t feel ashamed as we (western people) are when put on the lie detector
Charles said, “and in the environment that this thing is going to be used, that could lead to a trip to Gitmo – or worse, as a justification to mete out a bit of frontier justice.”
Ugh. How terribly ignorant.
First, no one gets sent to Gitmo for planting IEDs. There just wouldn’t be the room there if they did that, and no one wants to. In Iraq, they are tried by Iraqi courts and in Afghanistan it’s basically the same. Gitmo is reserved for people who are more serious threats. Whether or not you think the government should have to prove those suspicions or not, the fact remains that failing a lie detector would not raise suspicions of anything above what you are thought to be lying about.
Secondly, you are libeling the American military by implying that they would murder or maim insurgents in custody. Luckily, the people who make decisions in this country about when to deploy troops and with which equipment don’t share the same level of mistrust and contempt for their character and professionalism that you do.
While I can seriously appreciate the Army
Polygraph testing has not been proven through peer-reviewed research to reliably detect deception at better-than-chance levels under field conditions. The Pentagon’s new hand-held lie detector was tested only under laboratory conditions, and even then, as John Dedman of MSNBC points out, the lab results were overstated to senior Pentagon officials through the willful omission of inconclusive results.
It should also be noted, as AntiPolygraph.org has reported earlier (and as DefenseTech has commented on at http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002085.html), at least some Iraqi insurgents understand that the lie detector is pseudoscientific sham and have an understanding of how to fool it.
The new hand-held PCASS lie detector will be vulnerable to the same kinds of countermeasures that can be used to manipulate the outcome of a traditional polygraph test. For details, see my recent commentary at https://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1207756058 .
We were trained to lie to the lie detector….sheesh, it was hard and I wasn’t very good at it( the absolute truth!!) but other guys in my team could do it over and over again. it’s sort of like carbon dating, it’s all in the interpretation, the baseline and anomolies…except the lie detector works on emotions,diaphesis, nerves, stress or lack of them.
>>My problem is the device seems to use the same rationale for detecting deception as the full-sized box — sensing stress reactions in the hands, etc. But if you’re an Afghan villager being questioned by American soldiers wearing body armor and carrying rifles — and oh by the way, speaking to you in a language you don’t comprehend — how are you NOT going to sweat?<<
Yep, a lot of false positives. Heck just KNOWING the language and getting hooked to a polygraph is a little nerve racking
They’ll make it work? That’s rich! We’re not talking about a quiet, sealed room, with an operator, who’s being pleasant to you and discussing the blind and relevant questions he’s going to ask.
It’s taking place in a part of the world where kill or be killed has been the norm for a 1000 years. Tribal communities don’t play well together. That’s why they’re called Tribes and I guarantee it’s not going to work with people, who hate infidels in their homeland. The enemy will make it work in their favor, just like the VC were able to get around security at US bases in ‘Nam.
I’m not familiar with this new device and because the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute (DODPI) wasn’t mentioned as being involved with it’s developement, I’m a bit skeptical. However, that being said, a good examiner, who is almost always a highly experienced CID agent skilled in the techniques of interview and interrogation, can conduct a highly accurate examination. Also, if the tests are run using a ‘zone of comparison’ test vice a ‘searching peak of tension’ then the degree of accuracy goes up significantly. In my opinion it is more important to get the experienced examiners (interrogators) into the field then a new ‘pocket sized’ piece of equipment.
i think this could help point out a possible; but lets remember our own legalities in this country. if one is pointed out to be a possible hit; they should be treated with upmost respect and given the chance to relax in a friendly enviorment for futher questioning. i know i would be sweating for nothing in they’re situation.
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The effectiveness is likely to be lower than it was in testing. Studies have shown that, for people who have lived under dictatorships like Iraq was, lying becomes very natural and lie detectors far less effective. This was also shown to be the case in cultures where ‘saving face’ is valued over honesty.
Coming soon to an interrogaton room in Iraq:
Sgt. Holden: You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of the sudden-
Achmed: Is this the test now?
Sgt. Holden: Yes. You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down-
Achmed: What one?
Sgt. Holden: What?
Achmed: What desert?
Sgt. Holden: It doesn’t make any difference what desert, it’s completely hypothetical.
Achmed: But how come I’d be there?
Sgt. Holden: Maybe you’re fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? You look down and you see a tortoise, Achmed, it’s crawling towards you-
Nessuno said: “Ugh how terribly ignorant… blah blah blah”
In bad situations, even otherwise good people sometimes do bad things. A cursory look thorough recent history will confirm this.
Here it is in terms even the most rabid kool-aide drinking army fanboi can understand: This machine gives bad information. Decisions based on its information will be bad. There are guns and jails involved. Bad things will happen.
You are very welcome. It can be hard to get information. I’ve read a lot.. .I want to know all I can about how I need to take care of myself and what to expect.
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I think you’ll be interested in a piece (Is Tech ‘Turf War’ Putting U.S. Troops at Risk?) I published yesterday on the one-year anniversary of the Army’s decision to deploy PCASS to combat zones.
where can I buy this ?
In a two-part investigative series I published this week, I revealed the inside story about the