Big Brother Really Is Watching: Homeland Security Bankrolling Futuristic Profiling Technology
Pastor Dale Morgan
Big Brother Really Is Watching: Homeland Security Bankrolling Futuristic
Profiling Technology*
Big Brother Really Is Watching
Robert L. Mitchell
January 14, 2008 (Computerworld) The year is 2012.
As soon as you walk into the airport, the machines are watching. Are you
a tourist -- or a terrorist posing as one?
As you answer a few questions at the security checkpoint, the systems
begin sizing you up. An array of sensors -- video, audio, laser,
infrared -- feeds a stream of real-time data about you to a computer
that uses specially developed algorithms to spot suspicious people.
The system interprets your gestures and facial expressions, analyzes
your voice and virtually probes your body to determine your temperature,
heart rate, respiration rate and other physiological characteristics --
all in an effort to determine whether you are trying to deceive.
Fail the test, and you'll be pulled aside for a more aggressive
interrogation and searches.
That scenario may sound like science fiction, but the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) is deadly serous about making it a reality.
Interest in the use of what some researchers call behavioral profiling
(the DHS prefers the term "assessing culturally neutral behaviors") for
deception detection intensified last July, when the department's human
factors division asked researchers to develop technologies to support
Project Hostile Intent, an initiative to build systems that
automatically identify and analyze behavioral and physiological cues
associated with deception.
That project is part of a broader initiative called the Future Attribute
Screening Technologies Mobile Module, which seeks to create
self-contained, automated screening systems that are portable and
relatively easy to implement.
The DHS has aggressive plans for the technology. The schedule calls for
an initial demonstration for the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) early this year, followed by test deployments in 2010. By 2012, if
all goes well, the agency hopes to begin deploying automated test
systems at airports, border checkpoints and other points of entry.
If successful, the technology could also be used in private-sector areas
such as building-access control and job-candidate screening. Critics,
however, say that the system will take much longer to develop than the
department is predicting -- and that it might never work at all.
In the Details
"It's a good idea fraught with difficulties," says Bruce Schneier, chief
technology officer at security consultancy BT Counterpane in Santa
Clara, Calif.
Schneier says that focusing on suspicious people is a better idea than
trying to detect suspicious objects. The metal-detecting magnetometers
that airport screeners have relied on for more than 30 years are easily
defeated, he says. But he thinks the technology needed for Project
Hostile Intent to succeed is still at least 15 years out. "We can't even
do facial recognition," he says. "Don't hold your breath."
But Sharla Rausch, director of the DHS's human factors division, says
the agency is already seeing positive results. In a controlled lab
setting, she says, accuracy rates are in the range of 78 to 81%. The
tests are still producing too many false positives, however. "In an
operational setting, we need to be at a higher level than that," Rausch
says, and she's confident that results will improve. At this point,
though, it's still unclear how well the systems will work in real-world
settings.
Measuring Hostile Intent
Current research focuses on three key areas. The first is recognition of
gestures and so-called "microfacial expressions" -- a poker player might
call them "tells" -- that flash across a person's face in about one
third of a second. Some researchers say micro expressions can betray a
person when he is trying to deceive.
The second area is analysis of variations in speech, such as pitch and
loudness, for indicators of untruthfulness.
The third is measurement of physiological characteristics such as blood
pressure, pulse, skin moisture and respiration that have been associated
with polygraphs, or lie detectors.
By combining the results for all of these modalities, the DHS hopes to
improve the overall predictive accuracy rate beyond what the polygraph
-- or any other means of testing an individual indicator -- can deliver.
That's not a very high bar. The validity of polygraphs has long been
questioned by scientists, and despite decades of research and
refinements, the results of lie-detector tests remain inadmissible in
court. While the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Academy for
Credibility Assessment (DACA; formerly the Polygraph Institute) puts
median accuracy percentage for polygraphs in the mid-80s when properly
administered, others say that number is closer to 50% in the real world
and that the results depend heavily on the skills of the examiner.
Schneier goes even further. He says lie detectors rely on "fake
technology" that works only in the movies. They remain on the scene, he
says, because people want them to work.
The presumption that combining the predictive results from the three
areas being studied will increase predictive accuracy is also untested.
"We can't find any indicators that this stuff is being combined [in
current research]. The feeling is that [the DHS is] doing some
groundbreaking stuff here," says Rausch.
Hearing Lies
Many researchers are already tackling different pieces of the Hostile
Intent puzzle. Julia Hirschberg, a computer science professor at
Columbia University, is investigating how deception can be detected by
picking up on speech characteristics that vary when someone is lying.
The research, funded by a DHS grant, has identified 250 "acoustic,
intonational and lexical features" that may indicate when a subject is
lying.
So far, the best accuracy rate is 67%. She admits that's "not great,"
but it's better than human observation alone, she claims.
The results may not apply to real world situations, however. Her work is
based on lab experiments in which the subject presses a pedal when he is
lying, and machine-learning systems process the results. "It's not
ideal," she acknowledges. Moreover, the accuracy rate in predicting
deception varies with cultural background as well as personality type.
Hirschberg says she has identified four or five personality types that
could affect how the results should be interpreted.
Adjusting for personality type might improve accuracy in cases where the
type can be identified, but it's doubtful that interviewers in an
airport or border setting will have the insight necessary to do so.
Dimitris Metaxas, a professor of computer science in biomedical
engineering at Rutgers University, has received funding from both the
DHS and the DACA to use technology to track and interpret the meaning of
microexpressions and gestures. "I'm trying to find the expressions and
body movements that are not normal and could be linked to deception," he
says.
Metaxas says his research focuses on movements of the eyebrows and mouth
as well as various head and shoulder gestures, but he wouldn't be more
specific. That's because the exact indicators that he is interested in
remain secret.
Although the DHS's Rausch believes that micro expressions are
involuntary, she doesn't want people to know exactly what expressions
the agency will be measuring -- just in case.
"Every system can be broken," Metaxas points out.
Objections and Obstacles
Skeptics say that no tech-based system will work.
The Ekman Group has trained TSA staffers on techniques to help them
recognize and interpret microexpressions. The consultancy was founded by
Paul Ekman, a pioneer in research linking microexpressions to deception.
At the TSA, trained officers use the techniques as part of the
organization's Screening Passengers Through Observation Techniques program.
John Yuille, the Ekman Group's director, doesn't think the technique can
be automated. The discipline is a "social science," he says, and
microexpressions merely represent "clues to truthfulness" that require
human interpretation. "Our methodology is not amenable to technological
intervention," Yuille says.
Metaxas says that what's holding him back at this point isn't
technology. "The basic technology to track the face, I've solved that
problem," he says, claiming an accuracy rate of 70 to 80% with cameras
positioned at distances up to nine feet from the subject.
The challenge is optimizing the algorithms that relate those expressions
to deception. To do that, he needs more data from psychologists. The
theories linking microexpressions to deception are largely based on
academic research. Although it has been tested in lab settings, it has
not been scientifically proved in large-scale, real-world studies.
Rules must also be applied in the correct context. For example, a
measurement of something like a microexpression must be associated with
what was being said at the time, and the meaning of what was said must
be correctly interpreted, says Hirschberg. The system must also be able
to determine whether there is a mismatch between a given expression or
gesture and what was said.
"That is very difficult [for a computer] to do," she says, so in the
lab, the matching work has been done manually.
In an effort to refine the algorithms, Metaxas has collaborated with
Judee Burgoon, a professor of communication, family studies and human
development at the University of Arizona. She says the lack of rigorous
research validating the use of microexpressions as indicators of
deception "gives everyone pause." It's not known whether
microexpressions correspond with underlying emotions or whether those
emotional states correspond to deception, she says.
Although it is believed that microexpressions are involuntary, it's
unclear whether subjects can "game the system," as they have done with
polygraphs. And many researchers in the field believe that indicators of
deception are culturally dependent. That means analysis that doesn't
take cultural background into account could amount to ethnic, rather
than behavioral, profiling. That's ironic, since using machines to
analyze the data is supposed to help eliminate biases associated with
human decision-making.
In fact, the development of "culturally neutral" indicators is a stated
goal of Project Hostile Intent. Rausch believes that researchers can
identify microexpressions and other indicators that are universal or
"cross-cultural." That won't happen in time for the initial test
systems. But by 2011, says Rausch, the DHS should have test systems that
use only culturally neutral indicators.
For Metaxas, the challenge now is to prove that the fundamental
assumptions linking microexpressions to deception are correct. "What I
hope I can do is validate and verify the psychology," he says.
To do that he needs to conduct further tests involving interviews in
real-world situations. But that won't be easy. Privacy and security
concerns have prevented Metaxas and other researchers from monitoring
interrogations or conducting interviews in real-world settings such as
airports or immigration points. Even the DHS faces obstacles in testing
the technology in the field, Rausch acknowledges. And in real-world
testing, says Hirshberg, there's another problem: "You don't really know
when the person's lying."
With an aggressive timeline for deployment, Rausch is well aware of the
challenges, and she cautions that the technology is far from complete.
"We're very much in a basic research stage," she says.
Beyond Hostile Intent
Project Hostile Intent is just one of the programs that the DHS's human
factors division is pursuing. Another is violent-intent modeling. By
applying social behavior theory to terrorism, the division is hoping to
assist analysts that must manually sift through thousands for
publications, news feeds and other data.
Researchers are developing indicators for potential violent behavior,
which are used in computerized architectural frameworks that help
analysts extract relevant data as they review documents. "Computers help
in running the models. As you put the data together, you get likelihood
coefficients for violent behavior. Our goal is to get that automated for
the analysts," says Rausch.
The "information-extraction tools" will assist analysts by identifying
important information as they're reading it, but they won't replace
analysts. "We're doing it in a way that's consistent with the way
analysts think," Rausch says.
Another developing area is biometrics. Research is focused on developing
mobile readers that can perform facial, fingerprint and iris
recognition. "As we push out in years, we'll get into remote biometric
[sensors]," as well as more refined, "10-print" fingerprint recognition,
says Rausch.
The systems will tap into "huge databases for identification and
verification," she says.
Other TSA Technologies
The TSA may eventually use the behavior profiling systems that come from
Project Hostile Intent, but that's just one part of the agency's
transportation security strategy. The layered approach includes "a
technology factor, a human factor and shared intelligence," a
spokesperson says.
The TSA's passenger screening technology hasn't changed since the
magnetometer, a metal detector, was introduced in 1973, but it's working
on other technologies including a so-called advanced technology X-ray.
This high-resolution X-ray system provides clearer images of the
contents of carry-on baggage and offers multiple viewing angles. The
machines are already widely used in Europe. The TSA has purchased 250 of
them and plans to have a total of 500 installed by the end of 2008.
That's a fraction of the 751 checkpoints and 2,000 lanes in service, but
500 machines is enough to cover 75% of the security lanes at the
nation's largest airports, which represent 45% of all travelers.
Another technology is the puffer machine. The subject walks into this
phone booth-like device, and translucent bifold doors close around him.
The machine then blasts the subject with a burst of compressed air and
analyzes it for trace amounts of explosives. The puffer is already in
testing in some airports but hasn't worked well. "They're OK, but I
think we'll go more in the direction of whole-body imaging," says a
spokesperson.
In whole body imaging, a machine bombards the subject with
radio-frequency energy as he walks through and creates a very accurate
image of his body -- perhaps too accurate -- in order to detect any
foreign objects. "There's a whole lot of privacy issues with this," a
spokesperson acknowledges.
The TSA is testing two technologies: One, called back scatter, uses a
privacy algorithm that changes the image to a "chalk outline" of the
body while the other, called millimeter wave, creates what looks like a
negative.
To address privacy concerns, facial images are blurred, and images
aren't saved. In addition, the screener who sees the passenger never
sees the images.
The machines are already in use in Phoenix, where passengers can choose
a pat-down instead, and will show up at Los Angeles International
Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport soon. "You'll see more
whole-body imaging [in 2008], a spokesperson says.
Caveats and Ethical Issues
Even if Project Hostile Intent ultimately succeeds, it will not be a
panacea for preventing terrorism, says Schneier. The risk can be
reduced, but not eliminated, he says. "If we had perfect security in
airports, terrorists would go bomb shopping malls," he says. "You'll
never be secure by defending targets."
Assuming that the system gets off the ground, Project Hostile Intent
also faces challenges from privacy advocates.
Although the system would use remote sensors that are physically
"noninvasive," and there are no plans to store the information, the
amount of personal data that would be gathered concerns privacy
advocates -- as does the possibility of false positives.
"We are not going to catch any terrorists, but a lot of innocent people,
especially racial and ethnic minorities, are going to be trapped in a
web of suspicion," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and
Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.
But Steinhardt isn't really worried. He says Project Hostile Intent is
just the latest in a long string of expensive and failed initiatives at
the DHS and the TSA. "I've done hundreds of interviews about these
[airline-passenger screening] schemes," he says. "They never work."
Steinhardt adds that "hundreds of billions" of dollars have been wasted
on such initiatives since 9/11. "Show me it works before [we] debate the
civil liberties consequences," he says.