Europe's Latest Border Security Efforts Combines Junk Science With Lie Detectors
from the strangely-expensive-for-such-a-shit-solution dept
There's border garbage going on in Europe as well. A report by The Intercept shows border officials have cobbled together junk science, tech, and a spin on a notoriously-sketchy piece of equipment into its newest border security offering.
It's called Silent Talker. It subjects travelers to lie detector tests predicated on the fiction that people call tell other people are lying just by looking at them. It's the same pseudo-science that powers the TSA's useless "Behavioral Detection" program. Only this is possibly worse because it considers itself to be a lie detector and it's been known for years lie detectors can't reliably detect lies.
It works like this: travelers upload their passports to the border agency's website and are put face-to-"face" with a blue uniformed avatar. The software takes control of the device's camera to scan the traveler's face and eye movements for "signs of lying."
Here's the thing: it doesn't even work when it's humans doing the face-to-face work. A report on the TSA's Behavioral Detection program found it to be completely lacking in scientific background. The justification for the program was predicated on hearsay, conjecture, and anecdotal evidence. The TSA claimed it was hard science, but actual scientists have said there's no evidence backing the claim that anyone can suss out lies just by looking at people's faces.
These research findings do not imply that people move their faces randomly or that the configurations in Figure 4 have no psychological meaning. Instead, they reveal that the facial configurations in question are not “fingerprints” or diagnostic displays that reliably and specifically signal particular emotional states regardless of context, person, and culture. It is not possible to confidently infer happiness from a smile, anger from a scowl, or sadness from a frown, as much of current technology tries to do when applying what are mistakenly believed to be the scientific facts.
Instead, the available evidence from different populations and research domains—infants and children, adults living in industrialized countries and in remote cultures, and even individuals who are congenitally blind—overwhelmingly points to a different conclusion: When facial movements do express emotional states, they are considerably more variable and dependent on context than the common view allows.
[...]
Efforts to simply “read out” people’s internal states from an analysis of their facial movements alone, without considering various aspects of context, are at best incomplete and at worst entirely lack validity, no matter how sophisticated the computational algorithms.
Given this scientific background, it's no surprise Europe's "Silent Talker" lie detector/behavioral detection program can't actually detect lies or liars.
A person judged to have tried to deceive the system is categorized as “high risk” or “medium risk,” dependent on the number of questions they are found to have falsely answered. Our reporter — the first journalist to test the system before crossing the Serbian-Hungarian border earlier this year — provided honest responses to all questions but was deemed to be a liar by the machine, with four false answers out of 16 and a score of 48. The Hungarian policeman who assessed our reporter’s lie detector results said the system suggested that she should be subject to further checks, though these were not carried out.
The rush to allow tech to do the work of people -- as well as the firm belief that if something is expensive it must be good -- has led to the funneling of time and money into this highly-questionable border security effort.
IBorderCtrl’s lie detection system was developed in England by researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University, who say that the technology can pick up on “micro gestures” a person makes while answering questions on their computer, analyzing their facial expressions, gaze, and posture.
An EU research program has pumped some 4.5 million euros into the project, which is being managed by a consortium of 13 partners, including Greece’s Center for Security Studies, Germany’s Leibniz University Hannover, and technology and security companies like Hungary’s BioSec, Spain’s Everis, and Poland’s JAS.
There's more money on the way and companies will be pushing dubious "solutions" to governments with security money to burn. European nations have been hit with a series of terrorist attacks, which means the wind is now catching most of these governments' caution and junk science purveyors are converting fervent beliefs into long-term government contracts. The European Commission has budgeted nearly 35 billion euros over the next eight years for border control efforts. Being first is better than being correct, and governments all over the world have shown a willingness to allow unproven tech to use their citizens for on-the-job training.
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Filed Under: border security, eu, junk science, lie detector
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If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
This system may not be able to detect lying directly, but the signs of fear are well known and should be detectable. We all know that if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. So if this system detects the signs of fear, it proves the subject is hiding information from the questioner - i.e lying.
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Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
Is that irony or sarcasm? I'm not good detecting that. Maybe a system ...
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Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
Or they fear that a mistake will ruin their holiday.
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It seems like another variant of the good old stress-detector, sold as lie-detector to agencies in the United States.
Anyone who does not feel any stress when interacting with someone who has the power to cut your trip short for any reason (s)he may invent on the spot, please raise your hand!
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stress detection?
I'm about to get inside a metal tube with wings with a hundred strangers, any one of which could be a psychopath, narcissist or just a politician, for a trip through the air completely outside my control and comfort zone, of course I'm bloody stressed and twitchy!
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I sense several possible outcomes of further checks:
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I suspect that at the heart of this is that some people believe a form of superstition which they call 'science' (not to be confused with the idea that logic is useful and allows one to learn about reality). It appears to a large number of such people (possibly a growning number) are in charge of/involved in policy making.
The other side is when they say 'science' they mean 'reasonless fairy magic', but many of the rest of us think "something that involved rational thought & analysis".
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Re: Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fea
Or if they fear they ate some bad schnitzel, just got dumped, you are running late, it may rain on your dream vacation...
There really is no end to the reasons a human will show an emotional response.
In America, "Looking too calm" is a reason for a LEO to perform a search - we cover ALL the bases!
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This is PROVEN Technology
The Voight Kampff test is a well documented and trusted method to spot skinjobs.
Obviously the European authorities saw Blade Runner and wanted to protect their borders from any and all replicants that have escaped from the colonies.
If you aren't an android, you have nothing to fear.
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Try magnets!
How do they work?
... they pick up on irony, but not sarcasm.
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Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
Literally anyone with any kind of divergent neurotype knows they're probably going to get flagged up falsely by these kinds of systems. Because they don't take their normal baseline patterns of responses into account, same as how training people to spot "suspicious" behaviour singles out autistics most of the time. And as the scientific facts show, these kinds of systems get it wrong a significant percentage of the time anyway even with most people. And being false flagged by them can lead to some pretty nasty consequences. So yes, everyone has something to fear from them. Except, ironically, anyone trained to beat them as part of an actual effort to commit some kind of crime.
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So, if you take one of these blue uniformed avatars, and had its camera pointed at another one...
Would they each say the other was lying?
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Re: stress detection?
I have an irrational phobia of flying. Good luck detecting anything but fear in me in this situation.
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Re: This is PROVEN Technology
So THIS is how they got to Rutger Hauer!
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I wonder if the fake terrorist detector folk will end up in jail like the fake bomb detector guy did.
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Re:
The fake self-help author is still running around so... Shrug
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So, combines junk science with junk science?
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Border Resistance Tour
Antifa and other "direct action" protest groups (including Extinction Rebellion, which Nike Spastic*** has amazingly labeled a "charity") have proposed a solution to the so-called "border garbage" issue. This graphic pulls few punches, though activists will presumably be inspired to replace the medieval instruments of war with something more modern. How many more William van Spronsens will emerge to take up the challenge?
https://twitter.com/NewsWrench/status/1154610907483262977
Yes, yet another far-left Twitter account that openly advocates violence without being banned.
*** The name has been changed to avoid this site's moderation queue
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Re: Junk Science
Shufflepants, It's all just a pile of junk science! Lie detectors going to truthfulness is also junk science, and I've cheated the human versions at Russian customs before.
So yup, the caption needs an edit!
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Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
Which is why all honest citizens walk around naked.
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Re: stress detection?
I'd say you're more likely to encounter those people at the airport, as security guards, police, customs agents.
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Re: Border Resistance Tour
I'm sure you think you made a point of some sort or another ... however, what does that have to do with the topic at hand?
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Soon there will be specially trained leo individuals who have completed the Fear Detection Seminars geared toward teaching the art of smelling and seeing fear in or on a suspected terrorist or a plain citizen ... doesn't matter because you are all terrorists who need to be locked up, interrogated, abused and generally mistreated - just because.
/s
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Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
The topic at hand is border security, which that post also deals with, albeit from a different angle.
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Re: Border Resistance Tour
We get it, you don't like it when your friends get punched. Stop making friends with Nazi's maybe.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/far-right-proud-boys-attempt-to-menace-critic-with-late-night-t hreat?ref=scroll
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Re: Stress-detector
In defense of the theory behind the system: It is designed to measure stress, yes, but it doesn't take stress in and of itself as a measure of truth or lies, but rather spikes in stress when asked or answering questions, in relation to a baseline set by the individual subject.
Its still far from perfect, but its not "if you're stressed out, you will fail".
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Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
How dare those anti-Antifa groups start adopting standard far-left tactics! (and a rather feeble attempt at that ... next time, bring a loud angry mob with at least one megaphone)
https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/07/protesters-tucker-carlson-house/
Also interesting that it's considered perfectably acceptable for reporters with camera crews to show up unannounced at people's doorsteps, but reprehensible when the reverse happens.
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Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
Maybe because the reporters show up with cameras while the reverse show up with bats and guns. See the difference?
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Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
You know, there's a simpler way to say anti-Antifa...
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Re: Re: Stress-detector
I know the theory behind the system and know that the lie-detector can be defeated with some training. Yet that's something that users of a lie-detector system won't admit.
(I trained for my finals, so that I would pass them; would you say that's unfair?)
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Re: Re: Stress-detector
Fear, anger, hate, contempt, shame... according to Dr. Paul Ekman (who I guess this comes from) humans have similar expressions when having these emotions, and even if they try to hide them, micro-expressions may betray them.
Whole issue with this is that:
Of course, his theories have a lot of criticism and I guess they fall into something like pseudo-science, or at best, almost science. It's like applying science to socioeconomics, sometimes you are accurate, others you make mistakes.
My take on this is that it can be accurate, but it isn't for checks where you don't get to know the person you're checking, like in border searches.
And to make it work right, you need a thorough and unbiased analysis, something that the LEOs tend to lack.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
They call themselves patriots but that's a word I don't like using for what is essentially a motorcycle gang without the motorcycles.
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Re: Re: Stress-detector
Or spikes in stress when the PA goes off, or any other noise in the environment for that matter.
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Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
I get it - you hate the press with all those cameras, and questions and fact-checking.
Who else hates the press? Putin hate them. Criminals hate them. Oh - so does Trump. El Cheetos really hates the free press too.
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Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
"The topic at hand is border security, which that post also deals with, albeit from a different angle."
And what is that angle?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
Should it surprise us that Trump has followed the trail blazed by his predecessor, Obama, who started the unprecedented prosecution of reporters under the Espionage Act? Like so many other things, the outrage only seemed to start when Trump continued Obama's policies, and in the case of prosecuting reporters, Trump still has a long way to go to surpass Obama.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/shocked-by-the-trump-aggression-against-reporters-an d-sources-the-blueprint-was-made-by-obama/2018/06/08/c0b84d88-6b06-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html
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So... this software is supposed to be used at home as pre-screening?
Have these people never heard of avatars? Seems it should be relatively easy to just project an honest-looking avatar at the camera while you respond to the questions.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
Personal grudge and/or bias because AC is a massive tool and or useful idiot. That and a heapin helpin of strawmen.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
And Proud Boys call themselves Patriots while I’d rather call them something more Accurate like neo-nazis.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
Do you have anything other than a whataboutobama that’s been used to the point that if it were a subway card you’d have 10,000 free subs?
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Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
“start adopting standard far-left tactics”
Which are?
Of course that’s assuming you got a citation from a reputable source and aren’t just making shit up wholesale to try save your dunghill of an argument.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
Like so many other things, the outrage only seemed to start when Trump continued Obama's policies
You're lying...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141014/17395328832/obama-administration-has-put-media-l eakers-jail-nearly-50-times-as-long-as-all-other-administrations-history.shtml
https://www.techdirt. com/articles/20130620/18182823551/obama-administration-has-declared-war-leakers-claims-any-leak-is-a iding-enemy.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120406/12325418410/once-again-administration-v indictively-charges-whistleblower-as-being-spy.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121023/1105 3020801/doj-railroads-cia-torture-whistleblower-into-reduced-guilty-plea.shtml
https://www.techdirt. com/articles/20161211/22175836252/if-youre-worried-about-what-president-trump-can-do-to-press-blame- president-obama.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160330/00553834052/after-leading-attack-in vestigative-journalism-president-obama-whines-about-lack-investigative-journalism.shtml
https://www. techdirt.com/articles/20130722/01430523882/architect-obamas-war-whistleblowers-its-good-to-hang-admi ral-once-while-as-example.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160411/07141334150/obama-word-cl assified-means-whatever-we-need-it-to-mean.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120725/04154019 825/congress-has-lost-all-perspective-when-it-considers-prosecuting-journalists-as-spies.shtml
https ://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120601/16020419176/if-youre-going-to-leak-classified-info-about-white -house-it-better-make-them-look-good.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140918/16364028566/jo urnalists-attack-obama-administration-being-ridiculously-secretive-vindictive.shtml
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Re: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear
Except an over zealous officer determined to find a reason to arrest you, or stop you flying.
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Seems a little redundant, no?
any one of which could be a psychopath, narcissist or just a politician,
Why did you repeat yourself three times there?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Border Resistance Tour
Indeed. TD and many of the readers had been very vocal about Obama's terrible record with openness, the press, and leakers.
Of course where Obama was bad, Cadet Bone Spurs decided he could take it up to all and make it seriously horrible.
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Re: Seems a little redundant, no?
Emphasis!
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