DarkGovernment

New Technology Advances Lie Detection

Brain test could be used for next polygraph

A Seattle scientist who has developed an electronic brain test that he says could improve our ability to force criminals to reveal themselves, identify potential terrorists and free those wrongly convicted may have finally broken through the bureaucratic barriers that he believes have served to stifle adoption of the pioneering technique.

“There seems to be a renewed surge of interest in this by the intelligence agencies and the military,” said Larry Farwell, neuroscientist and founder of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories based at the Seattle Science Foundation.

Contrary to the Hollywood image of law enforcement always employing the latest science to track down the bad guys, Farwell’s years of struggle suggest that law enforcement and intelligence agencies are just about as reluctant to change as any other entrenched government bureaucracy.

“There is always this ignorance, inertia and active resistance by those who benefit from the status quo,” Farwell said.

The technique he calls “brain fingerprinting” is an electronic test of a specific kind of brain wave that he says can identify incriminating information despite an individual’s attempt to conceal the knowledge.

“The lack of acceptance has been more about turf than science,” said Drew Richardson, a former top anti-terrorism investigator with the FBI in Virginia who teaches forensic science and also consults with Farwell. “If this had just been about the science, I think this technique would have advanced much more quickly.”

Law enforcement and other investigatory agencies still routinely use the standard lie detector “polygraph” stress test today even though most scientific organizations (including the National Academy of Sciences) have found the polygraph to be highly unreliable — a finding that makes it legally inadmissible in court.

The disturbing news that some in the military and intelligence community have resorted to waterboarding or other forms of “physical” interrogation of prisoners appears to have provided a potential breakthrough for brain fingerprinting.

“Torture, or doing the kind of things that approach torture, might get someone to say what you want them to say but it’s been shown time and again that it is not a good way to get accurate or reliable information,” Farwell said.

The Seattle native, son of a University of Washington physics professor, added that he personally regards such methods as a fundamental violation of human rights.

On Monday, Farwell and Richardson will be in Washington, D.C., to make a concerted pitch for brain fingerprinting as one of five semi-finalists in an international contest known as the Global Security Challenge. It is co-sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, and the prize is $500,000 plus more support from venture capital firms. Winners of the U.S. competition will head to London in November for the final contest.

“We’ve already done some testing with experts in national security and showed, for example, that we could accurately identify people who were FBI agents from experts in bomb-making,” Farwell.

He said he couldn’t go into too much detail but that military officials and others in federal government have shown interest lately in seeing if the technique could be used to identify those making the improvised bombs in Iraq that are used against soldiers.

“It’s all based on well-established science,” Farwell said. Trained as an undergraduate at Harvard University and as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, he initially pursued studies in cognitive science and in the 1990s worked on one of the first demonstrations of brain-computer interaction.

As part of this research, Farwell ran across what would become the scientific basis of brain fingerprinting. It is a type of signal in the brain known as a P300 wave, so-called because it is an involuntary response to a recognized object or piece of information that happens within 300 milliseconds.

It’s been a well-known and widely accepted phenomenon within neuroscience. What Farwell did is connect it with another related electrical brain response that he dubbed a MerMer (for “memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response”) that he contends provides a foolproof method for testing an individual’s knowledge — or lack of knowledge — of a criminal act.

“It’s 100 percent reliable and has been ruled admissible in court,” Farwell said.

That was in Iowa, during a court case in which a man, Terry Harrington, was found innocent of murder and in 2003 released after spending 24 years in prison. Brain fingerprinting played a role, Farwell emphasized, but was not the only reason for Harrington’s exoneration. And in another case, that of Jimmy Ray Slaughter in Oklahoma, Farwell’s brain fingerprint finding that Slaughter was likely innocent did not persuade the court or prevent his execution.

“There is still a lot of resistance to accepting this in law enforcement,” Farwell said.

Richardson said he sees brain fingerprinting as being viewed by the courts and many in law enforcement as where DNA fingerprinting was back in the 1980s — exotic, not fully proved legally and too complicated for regular use. Today, he said, DNA testing is considered fairly routine and hardly even that high tech.

“Similarly, we’re just in the early phases of brain fingerprinting,” Richardson said. But he agreed with Farwell that a confluence of events seems likely to speed up adoption of the technique.

The recent suicide of Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins, subsequently identified by the FBI as the lead suspect in the 2001 anthrax poisonings, is another example of a case in which brain fingerprinting could have helped either confirm the FBI’s suspicions or perhaps exonerate Ivins, Richardson said.

“My understanding is that they did polygraph testing and Ivins passed them,” he noted. Unlike the indirect and unreliable nature of polygraph testing, Richardson said, brain fingerprinting can directly identify if a subject is aware of incriminating knowledge or information.

“We’ve proven this can work and is based on science,” Farwell said. Now, he added, all they need is to see if they can get the bureaucracy to budge a bit. “That part has taken a lot longer than I would have expected.”

Tags: brain waves, Larry Farwell, lie detector, polygraph, seattle, seattle scientist

Time Eater Clock

They call it the time-eater. Tonight, a monster will begin measuring the passage of time using new and decidedly sinister technology outside one of Britain’s most prestigious colleges.

Unlike conventional timepieces, the extraordinary “Chronophage”, due to be unveiled today by Stephen Hawking at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, does not use hands or digital numerals to show the time.

Instead, it relies on a mechanical monster – part demonic grasshopper, part locust – that rocks back and forth along a golden disc, edged like a lizard’s spine. By a complex feat of engineering, its movement triggers blue flashing lights that dart across the clockface, letting students know if they are late for a lecture.

About two metres in diameter, the clock is made from discs of stainless steel and plated with 24-carat gold. With each slackening of the monster’s jaw, and release of its claws, another second is devoured. Each new hour is signalled by the rattle of a chain on an unseen coffin to remind passers-by of their mortality.

The £1 million invention is a tribute to John Harrison, the world’s greatest clockmaker, who solved the problem of longtitude in the 18th century.

The timepiece is completely accurate only every five minutes. The rest of the time, the pendulum pauses then corrects itself as if by magic. The blue lights play optical illusions on the eye, whirring around the disc one second, then appearing to freeze the next. The effect is hypnotic.

The clock is the brainchild of John Taylor, an inventor who made his fortune developing the kettle thermostat after graduating from Corpus Christi in the 1950s. A long-time admirer of Harrison, Dr Taylor, 72, said that he wanted to make a clock that would revolutionise the art of timekeeping. So he took the so-called “grasshopper escapement”, a tiny device invented by Harrison hidden away inside 18th-century clocks, and turned it into the time-eating insect that can be seen today on the college wall. The ultimate aim, explains Dr Taylor, was to create a timepiece that kept time while, paradoxically, showing it, as they say, to be relative.

“Clocks are fixed, whereas we all know, time is fluid. It drags and it flies. Like Einstein said, an hour sitting next to a pretty girl can be like a minute, and a minute sitting on a hot stove can seem like an hour. I wanted this clock to reflect that, to play tricks with observers.” Dr Christopher de Hamel, Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi, said: “I wanted it to be a monster, because time itself is a monster . . . It is horrendous, and horrible, and beautiful. It reminds me of the locusts from the Book of Revelations.

“It lashes its tongue, and flicks its eyes at you. It’s bonkers.”

Time is of the essence

— John Harrison (1693-1776) was a working-class Lincolnshire joiner with little formal education who solved the longitude problem that had defied astronomers and scholars for centuries

— Galileo Galilei, Jean-Dominique Cassini, Sir Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley had all failed in the task. Their mistake was to believe that the answer lay in the “clockwork” of the heavens – in mapping the stars. Instead, Harrison believed there was a mechanical answer

— After 40 years of work he proved in 1764 that a clock could be used to locate a ship’s position at sea with extraordinary accuracy

— His invention of the marine chronometer finally enabled ship navigators to establish their east-west position, or longitude, while at sea, revolutionising maritime travel

Watch List of Terror Exceeds 1 million

A terrorist watch list of suspects has exceeded 1 million records, which translates to around 400,000 people, a leading civil rights group said on Monday that amount is far too broad to be effective, and will just hinder many innocent people.

The Bush administration calls it an extremely effective tool, which was used after the September 11 attacks, when a federal no-fly list held only 16 people considered threats to the aviation industry aviation.

The ACLU publicized the 1 million mark with a news conference and release.

It said the watch list was an impediment to millions of travelers and called for changes, including tightening criteria for adding names, giving travelers a right to challenge their inclusion and improving procedures for taking wrongly included names off the list.

“America’s new million-record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources (and) treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought,” ACLU technology director Barry Steinhardt said in a release.

President George W. Bush ordered in the current list in September 2003 as a way to wrap several growing terrorism watchlists into a single government database compiled and overseen by the FBI, through a Terrorist Screening Center.

Suspected terrorists or people believed to have links to terrorism are included on the list, which can be used by a wide range of government agencies in security screening. About 50,000 individuals are included on the Transportation Security Administration “no-fly” or “selectee” lists that subject them to travel bans, arrest or additional screening.

Critics have pointed to troubles that figures such as U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, 1960s civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis and singer Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) have had with watch lists as evidence the consolidated database is poorly managed.

The Terrorism Screening Center, which maintains the list, has already put in place several steps to ensure the list is accurate and up-to-date, spokesman Chad Kolton said.

He cited a report last year by the Government Accountability Office that said there was general agreement within the federal government that the watch list had helped to combat terrorism.

“The list is very effective. In fact it’s one of the most effective counterterrorism tools that our country has,” he said.

About 400,000 individuals are included on the list, about 95 percent of whom are not U.S. citizens or residents, Kolton said. The watch list also includes separate entries with aliases, fake passports and fake birth dates, bringing the total number of records to more than 1 million, he said.

TSA spokesman Christopher White said the agency’s “no-fly” watchlists to screen travelers were “scrubbed” last year to remove about half of the names, leaving them with somewhat fewer than 50,000.

He said Kennedy and Lewis were never on the list, and that problems they reported were due to their misidentification with names properly on it.

FYI: Bush Pardons Himself in the Military Commissions Act of 2006

Yes it’s nice to be king or in Bush’s case, President of the United States

I did not know this, but deep in the language of this passed legislation, which is S. 3930 [109th]: Military Commissions Act of 2006 Bush actually pardons himself for any present or future violations of law or human rights connected with torture of prisoner of war detainees.

Yes my son, become President of the United States and you too can violate the law and get away with it!

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Democrats Ready to Forgive Warrantless Wiretaps

Proving the old axiom that Congress “is the best that money can buy,” congressional Democrats are preparing to gut the Constitution by granting giant telecom companies retroactive immunity and liability protection on warrantless wiretapping by the Bush regime.

According to Congressional Quarterly, “Congressional leaders and the Bush administration have reached an agreement in principle on an overhaul of surveillance rules.”

According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the compromise would be very similar to the last proposal by Sen. Christopher S. Bond , R-Mo., to House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md.

Sources said the major change is that a federal district court, not the secret FISA court itself, would make an assessment about whether to provide retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies being sued for their alleged role in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. (”Agreement Could Pave Way for Surveillance Overhaul,” Congressional Quarterly, June 13, 2008)

In other words, the telecommunication corporations and their “customers,” the NSA, FBI and other members of the “intelligence community” will get everything they want–retroactive immunity and billions of dollars in continued taxpayer subsidies for intelligence “outsourcing.”

Under rules being considered by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Kit Bond (R-MO), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Bush administration officials, the deal would allow the federal district court “to look at a lower standard of evidence to determine if companies received such orders–a provision sought by the GOP, according to one person involved in the talks,”

Without clear standards for determining whether immunity for these privateers is even justified, the courts will be forced to issue virtual get-out-of-jail-free cards to corporate executives and their shareholders, thus freeing them from any and all liability, should companies claim they had “received assurances” from the state that its spying program was “legal.”

Indeed, no warrants at all would be required when the administration and their outsourced private “partners” choose surveillance “targets” under “exigent,” or urgent circumstances. Needless to say, such “exigent” circumstances are determined by executive branch “intelligence officials,” of whom fully 70% are private mercenaries in the employ of corporatist state structures.

However, civil liberties’ campaigners charge that language currently under consideration by House and Senate “leaders” is “judicial theatre” and a “mirage.” According to the ACLU,

Allowing phone companies to avoid litigation by simply presenting a “permission slip” from the president is not court review. This is immunity pure and simple because the companies are NOT being judged on whether they followed the law. A document stating that the president asked them to conduct warrantless wiretapping is not enough justification for violating the basic privacy rights of Americans. (”Facts on Senator Kit Bond’s (R-MO) FISA Proposal,” American Civil Liberties Union, June 13, 2008)

Who then, are the privateers that “opposition” Democrats want to “protect” from litigious “radicals” such as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Some of the wealthiest recipients of “outsourced” intelligence handouts, that’s who! Major players in the administration’s illegal spying programs include, according to Washington Technology’s 2008 Top 100 Government IT Contractors : Verizon Communications Inc., $1,320,637,982 (No. 18); Sprint-Nextel Corporation, $839,946,000 (No. 25); AT&T Inc., $505,358,533 (No. 38); Qwest Communications International Inc., $306,617,000 (No. 51).

If this weren’t bad enough, mendacious “leaders” such as Jay Rockefeller claim that spying telecoms “deserve” immunity because they were “ordered” by the NSA to cooperate with the administration. Indeed, back in January,

Rockefeller defended the actions of the telecom companies, arguing that the companies received explicit orders from the National Security Agency to cooperate with the supersecret surveillance effort. The West Virginia Democrat said the telecom companies were being “pushed by the government, compelled by the government, required by the government to do this. And I think in the end, we’ll prevail.”

Rockefeller added: “If people want to be mad, don’t be mad at the telecommunications companies, who are restrained from saying anything at all under the State Secrets Act. And they really are. They can’t say whether they were involved, they can’t go to court, they can’t do anything. They’re just helpless. And the president was just having his way.” (Daniel W. Reilly, “Rockefeller predicts win in FISA fight over telecom immunity,” Politico, January 23, 2008)

Pity the poor “helpless” telecoms! But as investigative journalist Tim Shorrock documents,

The history of telecom cooperation with the NSA is a guide to how the NSA went about winning cooperation with the industry in 2001. During the 1940s, when telephone and telegraph companies began turning over their call and telegram records to the NSA, only one or two executives at each firm were in on the secret. Essentially, the government raised the issue of patriotism with them, and the companies went along. That kind of arrangement continued into the 1970s, and is likely how cooperation works today. “Once the CEO approved, all the contacts” with the intelligence agencies “would be worked at a lower level,” Kenneth Bass, a former Justice Department official with the Carter administration, told me. “The telecos have been participating in surveillance activities for decades–pre-FISA, post-FISA–so its nothing new to them.” Bass, who helped craft the FISA law and worked with the NSA to implement it, added that he “would not be surprised at all” if cooperating executives received from the Bush administration “the same sort of briefing, but much more detailed and specific, that the FISA court got when [the surveillance] was first approved.” (Spies for Hire, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008, p. 320)

Helpless indeed! Let’s make a couple of things clear: the Democratic party is completely beholden to their “constituents”–the multinational corporations, including the telecoms, the giant defense contractors and the well-heeled lobbyists who fill their campaign coffers. Since 9/11, with few rare exceptions that can be counted on one hand, the Democrats have been complicit with the Bush administration’s quasi-fascistic “war on terror” and everything that followed in its wake–illegal spying, torture, wars of aggression, not to mention the looting of public assets for private profit known as “outsourcing.”

The facile “debate” over retroactive immunity for spooky telecommunication corporations will reach its inevitable denouement with the Democrats allowing either the FISA court or Federal District courts to essentially rubberstamp immunity orders issued by the Bush administration.

As the ACLU’s Caroline Fredrickson told The Hill, “Whatever silk purse Hoyer tries to make of Bond’s sow’s ear and no matter how they try to sell it, the end result of all this negotiating will be exactly what the administration has wanted from the beginning–FISA rewritten to delete court oversight of surveillance and immunity for its pals at the telephone companies.”

In the final analysis, these “negotiations” are taking place behind closed doors, subject to input by influence-peddlers and corporate lobbyists, without even a cursory–let alone, public–exploration of whether these mercenary outfits violated the law.

Tags: at&t, fbi, NSA, spying, telecom, warrantless, wiretap