U.S. Government Wants Lie Detector Tests at Airports and Border Crossings

The U.S. Government is soliciting bids for a project that, if implemented, could see travelers facing lie detector testing at airports, border crossings, and other high traffic venues. The project is sponsored by the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment (DACA), which until recently was known as the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute (DoDPI). “Credibility assessment” is the U.S. Government’s latest buzzword for “lie detection” and supplants the now démodé “detection of deception.”

Although DACA nominally falls under the Department of Defense’s secretive Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), it is more than just a DoD agency in that it trains all federal polygraph operators, including those from non-DoD agencies such as the FBI and CIA. DACA also controls the federal research budget for lie detector testing (despite a history that includes burying unwelcome research results, such as those that suggested innocent blacks are more likely to fail the polygraph than innocent whites).

According to the amended solicitation, the scope of the project is:

To identify, implement, empirically evaluate, and validate optimal procedures for speedy accurate credibility assessment of humans passing through a security checkpoint in high volume environments (e.g., airports, border crossings, building entry). The effort shall specifically address physiological and behavioral assessment using instrumental and/or non-instrumental procedures applicable in multi-cultural environments with emphasis on the identification and reduction of factors affecting assessment accuracy and variability. It is anticipated that the scope of the project will be broad enough to justify a multi-disciplinary investigatory team and multi-site data collection.

What this would amount to is a program for mass lie detector testing of travelers. This is a truly bad idea. First, although the U.S. Government pretends that it already has a working lie detector (in the form of the polygraph), it is deceiving only itself. Al-Qaeda and other Islamic insurgents know full well that the lie detector is a sham. Moreover, even if a 90% accurate, countermeasure-proof lie detector were developed (something this project has virtually no prospect of achieving), it would be worthless for such a task as screening travelers for terrorists. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that as many as 1 in 100,000 travelers is a terrorist. With a 90% accurate lie detector test, for every 1 terrorist correctly flagged as deceptive, some 10,000 innocent travelers will wrongly be so flagged. One remains stuck with the hopeless task of finding the needle in the proverbial haystack.

This problem is similar to that associated with using the polygraph in an attempt to screen for spies. In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences completed a research review and concluded that “[polygraph testing’s] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies.” The federal government ignored that conclusion and has instead actually increased its reliance on employee polygraph screening. Now it would seem the U.S. Government wishes to subject the traveling public at large to such madness.

The open period for proposals has been extended until 2 P.M. EST on 10 July 2007. Scuttlebutt has it that Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Massachusetts is favored to win the contract.

Comments 6

  • This is an idea on the level of preposterousness as shooting a cannon with people in it straight to the moon.

    Imagine the time it will take to ask all these questions and assess the answers. This can be done reliably, in the context of a busy airport, with thousands upon thousands of people moving through the process? What raving lunatic came up with that one? You’re hurried because the plane was late -again-, you’re annoyed because the plane was overbooked -again-, you’re tired after having spent 8 hours in the most gruesomely uncomfortable traveling experience since shackling slaves to the deck of a ship [with all due respect for all those people who were so mistreated], and then some Homeland Security schmuck is going to ask questions to which someone is going to answer calm and collected. Imagine what that is going to do with all the people who don’t speak English very well.
    Imagine how totally ineffective this is for people who take pride in lying to officials because they just don’t give a damn.

    Do this to me and I’ll answer all questions with a question. At that point I don’t care what the TSA does, I’m a criminal already anyway.

    If they implement this on a wide scale, I hope nobody will want to come to the US anymore and if I don’t have to, they won’t see me there anymore. I realise it’s a country with a prisoner’s cult, but I just don’t have that background. Treat someone else like a criminal, I can’t be bothered and I’m certainly not going to respect the process.

  • I think the end of aviation and mass motoring is upon us. Oil depletion is really picking up speed, so these measures may not ever be implimented as the number of cars on the roadways drops by double digit percentages each year and too high of airfares swats the airlines from the skies. However, fascim must be confronted and countered or else the citizens of the USA will have no one to blame for the loss of freedom but themselves.

  • Bush started mass wiretaps upon taking office, not after 9-11 — wake up!

  • There, unless we do plenty o’ hollering, go we…

    It says here that, “The U.S. Government is soliciting bids for a project that, if implemented, could see travelers facing lie detector testing at airports, border crossings, and other high traffic venues.” So, the idea is they’re gonna to start……

  • this is not as foolish as it sounds. mass lie detection can be carried out in air by the simple expedient of passengers clasping the two seat rests which will contain detector circuits. Stewards are to be trained in the task of clipping the electrodes. this is probably going to add 1 or 2 minutes to the departure time. Only individuals who are obviously lying will be detained under the terms of rendition.

    Access to america should be denied to anyone who fails to meet the lie detector test. the best first question is; are you going to tell the truth? then do you believe in the god of the bible? and then do you want to spend time at guantanamo bay detention facility?

    these are 3 questions that will immediately flush out liars.

    liars dont deserve to visit free countries.

    it would serve them right.

  • As a lawyer who has fought the test I can say it is never advisable to submit to testing without a lawyer.

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