Malintent detection: what it is and how it works
Malintent detection systems help security staff find out if a person is hiding something from them when they need to decide to let that person through their check point or not.
The system displays a picture or one line of text or a mix of these to a person and then measures changes in that person’s body temperature, heart rate, or eye movement patterns for thirty seconds. It then instantly matches those reactions with patterns stored in a database.
Based on the match found, the system will then give the security officer a green/go signal to let the person through, or a red/suspicious signal to stop them and examine the person further, or a yellow/inconclusive signal if the person’s reactions cannot be reliably matched to a stored pattern.
What’s the idea behind this? Let’s say we test four people and tell them not to react to whatever they see; we want them to keep a poker face. We the show them a picture of an older woman. Even if they are standing still and keeping all expressions from appearing on their face, a person will react differently from the others if the picture happens to be of his mother.
When stimulated by something familiar, our bodies react in subtle ways. Our eyes move differently, our body temperature changes, we blush. In fact these reactions are consistent from person to person. Whether of European, Asian, or African descent, whether Muslim, Christian or Atheist, whether French or British or German or American, the body reacts in similar ways to familiar stimulus. Malintent systems make use of these reactions to sort those with something to hide from those who are just going through their business.
The hardware consists of cameras, PCs, spot thermometers, and motion sensors so there isn’t anything new there. We can say the same of the software used by these systems: slide show, image capture, and database software are all that’s needed. Nothing especially innovative.
We’ll find the real wizardry in the psychometric studies that have led to understanding how our body reacts when we see something with which we are familiar. But that’s just information. At this point in time, companies like WeCU and SDS jealously protect their proprietary systems and databases, both for commercial reasons and for security reasons.
But these systems result from scientific research which will one day be reproduced by others. Inevitably these systems will proliferate as we find new applications for them. Won’t we find ourselves oppressed or labeled in a world where we are continually examined?
We can say the same thing of bug and wire tapping technology. In 1974 when Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” played in movie theaters bugging and wire tapping was expensive; today it is commonplace. But are we afraid the authorities listening to everything we say? Not really, because there are laws preventing the authorities from using the technology without due process, e.g. without being given a warrant by a court.
Protecting our privacy requires strong governance of how malintent detection technology is used and I’ll discuss this in a later post in this series. The next post will be about applications of these systems, about their advantages and limitations, and I’ll compare them with polygraphs. I’ll follow that with posts on airport security as the most obvious example of a place to use malintent detection systems.
Copyright 2011, Vincent Poirier
Disclaimer: I am helping promote a malintent technology system developer in Japan, so be aware of the possible conflict of interest.
