The Machinery of Spreedom
Somewhere the Stiftung argued that our federal "security" system was forever desperate for technical fixes to its manifest incompetence at the human conduct of relating to, or even running, the world. (I’d welcome a link. He talked about advances in robot war machines and maybe body armor.)
Exhibit 5,271,009 in evidence of his thesis is the new hand-held lie detector on its way to Afghanistan – and, eventually, to a police force near you (pdf). It has two advantages over the traditional lie detector:
- It’s easier to carry around.
- It’s even less reliable than a traditional lie detector, which is pure witchcraft already.
What’s the word I’m looking for he – oh yeah. Evil. Sorry, my fellow Americans, there’s no other word for it. Innocent people will die because
The designers of the PCASS said they attempted to make it lean toward detecting deceptive people, because of the disproportionate consequences of green-lighting a liar in a war zone. The Johns Hopkins researchers said they tweaked the algorithm so it takes only a little evidence of deception to turn the lights red. They also tried to minimize the yellow lights, at the Pentagon’s request.
But they acknowledged that this was no easy task. They use the word "non-trivial," which in scientific lexicon means a problem is difficult, even unsolvable.
"Determining these decision rules," the researchers wrote, "is both non-trivial and subjective."
They’ll be denied access to places they want to go and be prevented from getting jobs they’d do well. They’ll be imprisoned and tortured and put on very bad lists to be on because our political class wants to rule the world but doesn’t have the first clue how to deal with the world’s major sentient species.
And anyone who wants to call the above "anti-American" should kiss my ass beforehand. America was created by humans. Humans are flawed. All men’s righteousness is as filthy rags next to Christ, as the Apostle said. That’s the good part of Christianity right there, the humility of recognizing that we are inevitably worse than we can imagine being, and all our institutions too. The trick – okay, duty – is to try to become less so over time. This government is becoming worse.
Comment by Jennifer —
April 12, 2008 @ 2:20 am
Tarot cards would be just as effective and a hell of a lot cheaper: shuffle and deal, and if the Death card appears the suspect is guilty and deserves just what the card says.
Comment by Fraud Guy —
April 12, 2008 @ 3:13 am
MSNBC has the story also.
The best (worst) bit, to me:
And being stopped at a check point by a bunch of armed men who do not speak your language won’t affect accuracy, I’m sure.
Comment by Mark —
April 12, 2008 @ 5:33 am
“Let’s take a worst-case scenario here, and let’s say PCASS really is 60 percent accurate,†said Krapohl, who heads the project for the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment at Fort Jackson, S.C. “So let’s get rid of the PCASS because it makes errors, and go back to the approach we’re currently using, which has less accuracy?”
This man’s name starts with “Krap.” I think that’s appropriate somehow. I’m pretty sure I can be 60% accurate at telling when someone is lying without the use of a portable divination rod.
Comment by PR —
April 12, 2008 @ 7:21 am
If a Republicans lips are moving you can bet he’s lying over 60% of the time.
Comment by LWM —
April 12, 2008 @ 7:26 am
He talked about advances in robot war machines and maybe body armor.
Sorry, I don’t have a link but here are your “robot war machines” and no, this is not the UK Onion:
A shame, really. The master interrogator of WWII was a German officer in the Luftwaffe who merely engaged in pleasant and friendly conversations, and the best lie detector is still another a human being with the proper training.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
April 12, 2008 @ 9:35 am
Thus, getting into a land war in Asia.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
April 12, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Also, you may laugh now, but what happens when the warbots make common cause with the dolphins?
Comment by bdr —
April 12, 2008 @ 10:24 am
Policemen, one of these in one hand, a tazer in the other, coming soon to your neighborhood.
Comment by Kief —
April 12, 2008 @ 10:55 am
Even if you accept the lower accuracy rates, the Pentagon officials say, the device is still better than relying on human intuition.
Even if it is less accurate, soldiers using their intuition having the benefit of knowing that they’re just guessing whether someone’s lying. But a little red light on a lie “detector” gives the impression of certaintly, especially if the pentagon decided to have it tweaked to avoid indicating ambiguous results.
Comment by sglover —
April 12, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
Isn’t it a sound, conservative design decision to assume that the devious Arab mind will ALWAYS lie?
Anyway, even if it is pure bullshit-in-a-box, it can always be improved with a few billion dollars. Just call those Iraqis killed or imprisoned in the meantime “beta-testers”.
Comment by Thoreau —
April 12, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
Not only that, but even if they aren’t lying it’s better to be forceful. Those folks aren’t so clever, the only thing they understand is overwhelming force.