The Glade 4.0

Based on how many good people I know that have not been able to pass a lie detector test because the screening process is retarded, I predict hassles, headaches, and stupidity. It takes five minutes to go through, and is 90% accurate, supposedly (don't buy it). That means, every 50 minutes, you're going to hold someone up in order to hassle them, or worse.

I'm not a fan of lie detection technology, but by the same token, if you're trying to come into the country, it's your responsibility to establish your right or privilege to be here. You're not getting "hassled" if someone thinks you're lying; fraudulent attempts at entry are a daily occurance at ports of entry. Without this machine, regular human beings will have to rely on their own skills at detecting deception, and while Customs officers are doubtless better at it than average due to doing it all the time, there's still a lot of room for human error.

So yes, there will be hassles and headaches. No stupidity though, unless the word of the machine is taken as gospel and entry is simply denied with no further investigation. With only 90% accuracy, however, that's unlikely to happen; any positives will be further investigated.

your title is inaccurate, by the way. It's not a "new border security stop". You have to stop at ports of entry already.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

****. Just what the San Diego crossing needs, MORE DELAYS. I hope it's a failure and never makes it here.

It's coming. People like the idea of lie detectors. There's this mystique that they work.

Here's a clue: A radio with a 90% success rate gets sent back to R&D, it doesn't hit production lines, and it sure as **** doesn't get installed into any squad cars.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That's because a radio does something totally different than a lie detector. A lie detector is something that helps humans detect deception. The operators know that their machines are far from perfect, or rather, are supposed to. They're suppsoed to use it to discover a high probability of deceit, not as a magic system that says yes or no unfailingly.

Until something better comes along, it's human judgement with machine assistance, or human judgement without machine assistance. It's not comparable to the radio scenario because a radio that works 90% of the time is unacceptable even though one cannot simply scream louder in its absence. The situations don't compare. Before you get your snark on, try thinking things all the way through.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why do you think a human trying to detect deception himself would be any faster than him using a machine to help himself do it?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't, but the machine doesn't discriminate and people checking ID's at the border crossing very well may. I currently have, in my experience, a 0% likelihood of being asked more than two questions at the crossing.

Yes, and?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And, what? I'm just selfishly *****.

Oh, well then by all means, carry on.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The application of lie detector tests for security clearances is horrendous. I know quite a few people that have been rejected for good jobs simply because they get nervous.

Hell, one guy was asked if he had tried drugs. He replied "yes", and failed the lie detector because it thought he was lying. /boggle I can understand getting nervous when an FBI agent is questioning you and you are confessing to using pot.

The just need Cal Lightman at every border.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Lie detector tests do not work that way. You're exhibiting common misconceptions about the test.

First, a baseline has to be established. Nervousness doesn't matter because you'll already be nervous going into the test. Hence a baseline for your personal state. If someone spikes on a question that means that question resulted in heightened nervousness for some reason.

Second, the machine doesn't "think you are lying.". It detects physiological reactions. If it indicates the reactions common to deception that means the operator must find out why. There may be a good reason.

If the operator failed to do that, he did a poor job. However it may be that your friend didn't understand, or that he failed for answering yes, not for lying. I don't know, I wasn't there.

Poor training can be a serious issue with these machines but if it works like an ATM as the article states, there is no operator. That alao means no baselineam. That means that this is entirely new technology and that assumptions about it based on past experience are of little use.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

None of which makes polygraphy any less of a pseudoscientific crock with a penchant for ruining innocent peoples' lives.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Except that it's neither of those things. It is certainly not pseudoscientific; people most certainly do exhibit involuntary physiological reactions when they are deceptive. As for it "ruining innocent people's lives", when that does happen (which is not every time someone claims it happened to them) it's because of poor technique by the operator, not because the underlying principles are unsound. the machines do not detect lies; they detect physiological reactions. It's up to the operator to determine why.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Pathological liars can beat these machines because they are even to deceive even themselves with their lies (convince themselves it's the truth). Isn't it possible that there are a non-negligible number of people who also exhibit involuntary psychological reactions elevated significantly above the baseline, even when telling a truth?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

No. Each person's baseline is established for that particular individual, and it is re- established at each test.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It absolutely matters. If you get nervous because of a question, even though you answer it honestly, it could flag you as lying. Like in my example. Baseline was fine, then they asked if he did drugs. He had, and admitted so, nervously.

Furthermore, another individual was rejected because he was too nervous to even have a baseline developed.



Sure, but the application of the combination of the machine and operator is horrendous.



No, and again these are multiple people, they did not fail for answering the question. The follow-up discussions were along the lines of "we KNOW you are lying about this" etc.



While true, recent applications of similar technology can at least establish your baseline. And right now, that baseline is "suck".

Yes. The simple act of being questioned can trigger a nervous response above what is established at the baseline. If the baseline is established with difficult questions, or follow-up questions on a previous topic, it might be closer to a good baseline. But as it is, if you ask some people the same question 3 different ways, even an innocent one, they may start to get nervous.

The individual being tested matters. Some people handle stress differently/better than others. I'm not sure how an ATM/Robot is going to be able to set these baselines.

The baseline is established with the person when they know they are going to be questioned.

In any case, the "baseline" thing refers to regular polygraph examinations. Those take hours. This is supposed to be something much, much faster, and so obviously cannot work the same way. I already pointed this out. You are making bad, gut-instinct assumptions about the psychology of polygraph testing, and then assuming it's a problem with new technology that clearly cannot work the same way anyhow.

Worse, it's clearly understood going into it that it is far from perfect. That's not a problem. It doesn't need to be. It's simply an additional tool.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It most likely uses a completely different principle. Baselines are established in regular polygraph examinations, which take hours and hours. They are totally unsuited to the format of a port of entry and so it cannot be assumed that these machines work on the same principles. I also really don't see people getting hooked up to the same types of sensors in anything approaching a timely manner.

The only reason we're even dicussing baselines is because I brought them up to point out how they work in answer to people who thought "being nervous" could cause you to fail the test. I already pointed out that they don't necessarily apply to a fast, kiosk-style machine. I imagine the kiosk thing uses CVSA style technology, but I don't know, and I don't know very much about the differences between the operating principles of CVSA and a polygraph except to say that they are not the same test.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And yet, you don't know if the machine indicated deception or not. He might have been rejected for admitting to doing drugs. It does not "flag you as lying" at all; the information it gives is not yes/no. It requires a trained operator to read it, and part of the operator's job is to ferrett out false positives. I know of one instance of a woman spiking the indicators through the roof at the question "have you ever committed a serious crime?" The reason was that she had been raped and so the reference to "serious crime" caused her to massively stress out. She was still hired for the position because the operator figured out what was going on.

It is entirely possible your friend had a shitty operator. That's my beef with the tests; not the concept but the fact that it requires a very, very skilled operator and yet it is not all that hard AFAIK to get certified to operate one. It is also possible that he was rejected because whoever commissioned the test in the first place had unrealistic expectations of it.



Really? And this is a problem because...? If a person is so nervous about a polygraph that they can't even take the test, it's probably because either A) they know they have something to hide or B) they can't handle stress at all, in which case it's very questionable if they should be in any position that requires on in the first place.



Except that it isn't. the technological premise is quite sound, although the technology will probably continue to experience significant improvement in coming years. There's nothing wrong with the "combination of operator and machine, either." The operator himself can be horrendous, and that certainly is a problem with it, and one of my big issues with their use in more sensitive arenas; I believe operators are susceptible to developing an attitude that they expect deception. That isn't a problem with the technology; it's an issue of training, and that operators need their work checked by someone else for quality control.

A standalone machine, by the way, is not susceptible to operator bias.



Look, I'm not going to just take your word for it. You're giving me one-line information about circumstances and people I don't know, about a process that takes hours and hours, and for which you probably weren't present wither and about which you already demonstrated several basic misconceptions. Sorry, your anecdotal evidence just doesn't cut it and I'm not going to waste time trying to talk about examples where you can just selectively dole out whatever facts you choose from those that you happen to remember even IF you were given truthful and complete information to begin with.

If you want to discuss the technological issues, fine, but I'm not going to spend any more time on your anecdotes. As far as I'm concerned they don't exist.



This line doesn't even make sense. In fact, unless you're just engaging in pointless snark, it indicates you don't even understand what baseline I'm talking about. The baseline I'm talking about is the baseline "level of arousal" (yes yes, sexual puns here) a person exhibits before any questions are asked, and how those baselines compare to specific questions later on. I'm not talking about the baseline level of performance of the technology. Furthermore, I don't see that you're in any position to say that it "sucks" beyond some exceedingly vague send-hand anecdotes.

There's an effect, the wikipedia link to it has been linked in the past, about Americans assuming they know far more about subjects they are ignorant on than they actually do.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, as I said, I'm referring to the system, not just the machine. He was not rejected for admitting to doing drugs. They told him why he was rejected.



Yes, see, these types of baseless assumptions are why the test sucks balls. He must have something to hide! As for B - that's for the hiring manager to decide, not some polygraph goon.



Horrendous, bro - horrendous. There are many, many documented cases of bad application, all waved away because "they must have had something to hide". Much as you are doing. It doesn't work well because you say it does. In fact, there's no way to prove it works one way or the other, because you can never be inside someone's head.



Programming bias. Also - it's not stand alone. It flags people for follow up with peeps. Which is a good thing, obviously, you don't want a machine making important decisions, but it will all boil down to what assumptions the follow up goon will have when he begins the assessment. Assume he was wrongly flagged or assume he's lying? If they start with assumptions, they will only validate them. And how can you not if you do this day in and day out?



Who gives a ****?



LMAO - dude are you serious? You go on constantly about anything and everything enforcement related like you are an expert. Guess what, bro - you can't be. Do you design these systems? Then you're not an expert. I'm sure you have more experience with them than I do, but that doesn't change the fact that you're sitting there acting like an expert when you are not. What's worse, is that you are actually agreeing with me. You've said several times that operator bias is an issue. I know how these machines work, in a general sense, including measuring level of arousal, etc, and I've never contested its ability to do this.

What I'm saying to you, and this would be painfully obvious if you weren't being so biased, is that there is a hell of a lot of variability in PEOPLE - including how they react to questioning and how they interpret results. This variability impacts the quality of this system.

You don't get to make anecdotal evidence count just by saying "who gives a ****" when someone points out that it's anecdotal. Neither do all your unspecified cases of "bad application". What cases? What does "bad application" even mean? You want to talk about "goons" and stuff; evidently you don't give a flying **** about the actual facts involved and would much rather just engage in your typical attitude of "I"m better than all them gummint people" and call things "Stupid" and talk about how they "suck". Oh, but who gives a ****, right? Guess what? I really don't give a **** if you get held up at a port of entry by a false positive. Too bad, so sad. If this is how you write letters to your Congressman about **** you don't like, it's no wonder they ignore you. You sound like an angry teenager not getting his way, not an educated man with a real, scientific issue.



I didn't claim to be an expert on lie detecteor tests, but I do understand the very basics of how they are employed and guess what? You don't. I don't need to be an expert in order to correct you on things I do know you're wrong about. You sound like Monty claiming that since I'm not a 4-star general I must not know the first thing about artillery rounds and therefore am on the same level as his totally untrained ***. Maybe try discussing the issue instead of worrying about my level of expertise on it and acting as if claiming I'm not an expert somehow makes what you say more accurate?

You're hilarious. Every issue with you comes down to you making some post with a line like the one above with some LMAO-type comment, acting as if your personal derision is somehow a counterargument. If all you want to do is score rhetorical points, then go right ahead. Calling me "bro" over and over and generally being as condescending as possible does not make your arguments any stronger either.



Except that I'm not. I haven't claimed to be an expert on them at all, and haven't discussed how they work beyond information that's very publicly available. You obviously didn't bother to look up that information. Furthermore, you admit that, depsite being far from expert, I have more experience with them than you do and yet you still want to make all kinds of assertions about the concept that simply are not true - without one shred of evidence beyond your own say-so.

Other than this, it's not worth replying to you. You're not even concerned with the issue at hand, you're just worried about disagreeing with me. Why the **** is my level of expertise so important? If I'm wrong about something, show it. There's all kinds of problems with truth-detection procedures, with some spectacular failures like Aldritch Ames. Like I said, I'm not a fan. But it's absolutely hilarious to listen to a bunch of people complain about them being "pseudoscience" without first bothering to educate themselves on how it actually works.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."