Wow, what will be next? The Nexus series becoming reality?

Bladerunner Style Lie Detector To Be Developed » Spy Review

Science fiction and movies have often been forerunners of technological innovations which have actually been realised in the future. Whether it was man’s journey to the moon or innovations in Star Trek like the communicator or others – they found a place in reality after some time.

As far as detection techniques are concerned we have come a long way from fingerprints, polygraphs and DNA analysis – all are commonplace and used to catch criminals. But what if criminals could be caught before a crime was committed? That does seem futuristic, but the seeds of this are already in place.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has invited companies to bid for research on a project which can scan eyes and be able to tell if the person has any criminal intentions. They are looking for a system to use advanced technology to scan a person’s eyes and the proposal states that “early research has shown that pupil size varies with changes in a person’s cognitive processing load. Current but unproven studies suggest that a cognitive decision to deceive or practise deception will result in an increased pupil size due to the greater cognitive processing required in comparison to truthful recall”. In other words, if someone is trying to deceive, their eyes will give them away.

This was already shown the movie, Bladerunner, a 1982 science fiction classic. Presumably, when this research and technology bears fruit and is put in use, particularly in crowded places like airports, we can hope to face longer queues but also a greater level of security. Then again, if terrorists are willing to blow themselves up, there is nothing much that can be done to counter that!

But this may also have some pitfalls given the possibilty the size of one’s pupils may change due to circumstances like stress, nervousness, etc. It does sound a little gimmicky for now to rely on reaction to human behavior as a means of security rather than the various tried-and-tested methods they have in use already, although it has to be said security has failed time and again even when it was thought very stringent methods were being used, so using this with other methods and maybe not by itself may enhance overall security.

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