15 April 2008
Pulse and Respiration
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It is tax day, and the anniversary of the morning after Mr. Lincoln’s bad night at Ford’s Theater and RMS Titanic’s plunge into the icy waters southeast of Newfoundland.
Normally, I would wander off with you to explore the back bedroom of Peterson’s Boarding House, which is a sobering diversion downtown, or a stroll through the three libraries or the squash courts of the great ship. We might even embark on an earnest discussion of the slag content of the rivets used in the bow and stern sections that may have catastrophically failed, or whether the Lincoln Assassins were executing the last covert action of the Confederacy.
But every day is the anniversary of something, and this particular tax day has the advantage of being in the present, where we have to live.
I’m pretty sure you have already filed. A lot of people these days do it as soon as the W2 forms arrive in the mailbox. Others, who owe Uncle Sugar, can delay paying with a simple request, although the cursed interest grows.
So it isn’t a day that makes your pulse and respiration rise dramatically like it used to. Technology has morphed the significance of the day. Back when we filed paper returns, the postmark was a big deal, since it marked the start of the accumulation of interest.
The local evening news always featured a grimly amusing human interest story about the throng at the main post office. We used to smile at those who had their blood pressure elevated with anxiety.
When I was working with the famous Bell Labs, which used to be an American concern, I was surprised to discover that the wizards had devised a way to detect stress in voice transmissions over cell phones. Part of the algorithm was a change in pitch in the voice, but there was more. They would derive pulse and respiration information as well.
The implications were pretty clear- the cell phone was capable of providing the same sort of information that a polygraph machine could.
The Scientists were only interested in applications, and then were on to the next cool phenomena to explore. That is the way with them, and it is hard to get them to focus and productize things.
One of them looked at me and said it wasn’t a tool to divine the truth. “Better said,” he explained, “It is a way to detect stress. There is no such thing as a lie detector.”
I had to agree with him, of course, since that is the voodoo part of what we have come to adopt as the first line defense against terrorists and spies. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz famously told the government to go stuff itself when they asked him to take a poly.
He could have been a spy, I guess.
The polygraph is an unpleasant fact of life these days. It came up in a very important meeting yesterday, and in fact it may affect implementation of something really important in a real war. There is a lot of the taxpayer’s money at stake, so the pulse and respiration for the capitalists that hope to win it was elevated.
The issue came up with what level of clearances was required for the contractors who would do the work. The customer only cared about one level, but the contracting authorities said that new regulations meant that a polygraph would be required. The government folks glared at each other.
The retired Colonel next to me said he had never had a polygraph in his life and he had managed the program when he was on active duty. I had to shake my head in admiration.
The last time I was strapped to a rigid chair with something that looked like a whoopee cushion under my butt, sensors placed around my chest and index finger, the examiner was very stern with me.
I had to promise not to talk about the experience, so I won’t.
I imagine they told the same thing to Aldrich Ames, who passed his CIA polygraph exam five times as he was selling out his comrades, or mass-murderer Ted Bundy. Dr. Wen Ho Lee at Lawrence Livermore Labs either did, or did not, pass his tests.
They were administered in the wake of the possible disclosure of Q-level information that Mr. Lee had, and which might- or might not- have been compromised.
Like I said, all the box can tell you unambiguously is the level of stress that may- or may not- correlate to a series of questions. There is a lot mumbo-jumbo that goes along with the science. Scientists at Sandia National Labs became alarmed at the extensive polygraph program that my old boss Bill Richardson put in place at the Department of Energy.
Sandia Lab’s President ordered a small group of senior scientists to review the scientific literature on polygraphs in order to make recommendations to the Secretary on the effectiveness of the program. The scientists concluded that polygraphs were worse than worthless, since they improperly identified highly trained personnel as security risks based on anxiety that might- or might not- have anything to do with espionage.
Most people in the business acknowledge the problem, but as a very well respected retired Flag officer told me once, “What are you going to do? We have to do something.”
The adoption of sweeping polygraph exams became common after 9/11, and as I drove back to the office from the big meeting yesterday I heard on the radio that stress phenomenon that Bell Labs noticed was finally making it to market.
I was navigating across the broken concrete near the Navy Yard at the time, which makes my blood pressure go up. The smooth voice coming from the speaker in the Hubrismobile said the Defense Department is deploying hand-held lie detectors” for use in Afghanistan this month.
The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but will detect deception and stress. The Department acknowledges that there will be mistakes, but they have to do something to save American lives. The device has already been tried in Iraq to screen local police and soldiers.
The report didn’t say how often it was wrong in identifying terrorists, but that it was almost always right about detecting stress.
The connection between stress and intent to do anything wrong is what is missing. Since the device is useful, I imagine we will be seeing it around here, possibly on the belt of the police officer walking up to the car at traffic stops, or on the desk at an IRS audit. Or maybe with the TSA folks at the airport.
That was the application I was looking at when I first heard about the technology, but the scientists told me it was a bad idea.
One of them looked at me and shrugged. “Some people just don’t like to fly.”
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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