
We tested Europe’s new lie detector for travelers and triggered a false positive - rchaudhary
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/26/europe-border-control-ai-lie-detector/
======
lazyguy2
Wow. What a horrorshow.

Humans operating lie detecting machines with personal interviews has yet to
rise above the standard of 'Mostly used to bullshit and intimidate suspects',
but these clowns think they can use facial recognition to detect lying?

What a huge scam. I don't know what conman dreamt this up, but to convince
multiple governments to go along with it he has to be good.

Maybe it's time to resurrect the Canadian Fruit machine project and get some
idiot in the EU government to finance it. Except instead of detecting
'gayness' it detects 'Terrorist thoughts'.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_\(homosexuality_test\))

~~~
jstummbillig
I am so confused. There seems to be a blatantly obvious method to find out how
well this machine works, no anecdotes or trust required: You get a decent
amount of test subjects to dry run it in a controlled environment.

Has this not been done? If not, why? Or am I wrong in believing it's that
simple?

~~~
mcherm
> Has this not been done?

No, this has not been done.

> If not, why?

Because it would fail.

> Or am I wrong in believing it's that simple?

Nope... it's that simple.

But let's be honest here: we SHOULD use this approach for ALL of these kinds
of assessment, yet we don't. Even in the US, we use things like fingerprint
matching, handwriting analysis, drug testing laboratories, DNA analysis, dog
sniffs for drugs and so forth in legal cases yet we don't perform independent
blinded tests of the accuracy of these tools.

~~~
sli
Don't forget hair analysis.

And out of all of those, the only one that actually works is DNA analysis and
even that fails from time to time due to how easily samples can be
contaminated.

~~~
ergothus
My understanding is that DNA is basically unique, but the patterns use for
conventional DNA analysis are not. While they may be statistically close
enough to unique to trust over the whole population, there have been different
issues when you start scoping things to different racial groups or areas with
smaller gene pools (not dangerously small, just smaller).

Because actually sequencing and comparing someones entire DNA would be
prohibitively expensive if done for every case, they just look for a set of
markers and assume that a large enough collection is close enough without
accounting for distribution patterns of those markers AMONG THE SAMPLE
POPULATION. (e.g. you don't have to look hard in small towns or in populations
of the same heritage to notice a lot of physical characteristics that are
quite common in that sub-population while being pretty distinct in the human
population at large, the same is true for these markers.) . Since crimes often
involve suspects from the same location and/or racial profile, a rule that is
pretty reliable for the earth is not so reliable for this town/community/group
of suspects.

So the science is a problem even before you get to human error. The odds of a
false match take hits of multiple orders of magnitude.

Note: I'm not qualified to speak on the topic, but I've followed the topic
with interest at a layman level for a while - be glad to hear from someone who
IS qualified to speak on it to shed more light on why I'm right/wrong.

~~~
bsder
> My understanding is that DNA is basically unique

It is, in a lab environment with lots of source material.

If you are taking small samples of DNA from terribly dirty places and then
amplifying the hell out of it, you get massive amounts of contamination.

Rape kits are "mostly" reliable under most circumstances, but have some
problematic edge cases. Swabs from crime scenes, on the other hand, are
generally garbage.

------
gherkinnn
How is this real?

> Travelers who are deemed dangerous can be denied entry, though in most cases
> they would never know if the avatar test had contributed to such a decision.

Jesus fuck. Denied entry because the clowns who thought this face[0] is a good
idea inadvertently screwed up somewhere else. Slaves to _the algorithm_.
Disgusting. Takes diffusion of responsibility to a whole new level.

> iBorderCtrl Why? Seriously. Clowns confirmed.

> A study produced by the researchers in Manchester tested iBorderCtrl on 32
> people [...] 75 percent accuracy [...] unbalanced in terms of ethnicity and
> gender.

I’d bet a decent lunch that these dummies tested it on themselves. It’s like
QA-ing my own stuff. That one path I implemented works fine. What do you mean
there are other ways?

I’ll add a dessert to said lunch if the accuracy of a representative sample is
better than a dice roll.

> this face [0]

> An EU research program has pumped some 4.5 million euros into the project

Kewl. I can think of many ways this could be spent more productively. Like
setting it aflame and frying up some bacon.

[0] [https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-
uploads/sites/1/2019/07/gu...](https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-
uploads/sites/1/2019/07/guard-photo-1000-1564076275.jpg)

~~~
khuey
It doesn't seem that much different than being denied entry because of the
country you were born in. Borders are full of arbitrary decisions.

~~~
dependenttypes
One is deterministic and you can easily avoid a 7 hour travel if you know that
a country rejects people from your country while the other not so much.

~~~
petre
The US has visa interviews for that kind of thing. That's part of why I do not
intend to travel to the US. Too much of a hassle.

~~~
retiredcoder
Adding to the GP, in the context of the USA, US Border control officers can
still deny the entry of a visa holder traveler based on whatever.

Also, members of visa waiver program can also be denied entry. That’s just
like any one country.

------
noident
Working as designed: a smokescreen for arbitrary interrogation and denial of
groups that border agents don't like. Everybody else that fails the test gets
the benefit of the doubt. 75% accuracy is exactly useless, and I find it hard
to believe it beats random chance anyway. More racism packed into black box
quackery.

------
throwaway40000
This is an horizon 2020 project. This is an EU program that distributes money
to groups of companies + research institutions to do some research. The
funding is usually a few millions over a few years. The requirements on the
delivery are very lax. Basically you can get away with doing nothing useful,
after all it’s research and you can’t be penalized for not finding anything,
as long you show you did what you said you would try you’re ok. The commission
requires the projects to have a validation part, what is described in the
article is probably exactly that.

Having worked in such projects the money is sometimes completely wasted. There
is a whole cottage industry dedicated in bidding and executing these projects,
it survives just out of the research funding and they are expert in meeting
the commission requirements instead of being expert in the subject matter.
Sometimes I have the feeling part of this money is a way for EU to keep some
engineers busy in the poor parts of the continent, some times I feel it’s just
soft corruption (reviews are often also reviewees), but for sure some project
are scientifically horrible: this one looks to be one of those.

That being said some projects are also nice, for instance Firefox is going to
merge a web page translator which was produced by another h2020 project. The
program as a whole is most probably a positive contribution to society as a
whole. It’s like VC money for public research, many projects are a disaster
but some are very good and make the endeavor worth.

~~~
antpls
There never is a guarantee of result in R&D, and a few millions isnt much
compared to the trillion budget of EU.

However the _goal_ of this project, with ethical concerns, is worrying

------
zizee
Ignoring the fact that this doesn't work, can you imagine if you could
accurately detect someone is lying with devices that everyone carries with
them?

Just imagine the power that such a technology a totalitarian government could
wield using this.

 _Jethro 's phone beeped incessantly to remind him that he had not completed
his patriot assessment in the last 24 hours. He groaned internally, and even
though he was running late for work he decided that he had better take the 5
minutes to complete the test. He couldn't afford to lose any more social
credit points this month._

 _Opening the app, he could see his face in the top corner of the screen to
help him know the camera was centered on his face, not that he really needed
this after doing the assessment almost daily since his 10th birthday._

 _The first question flashed onto the screen, "Have you committed any crimes
in the last 24 hours"_

~~~
reaperducer
_Just imagine the power that such a technology a totalitarian government could
wield using this._

Just imagine the power of the people in a crowd pointing them at a politician
making a speech.

~~~
zizee
I imagine there has been many a time with someone making a hateful speech
where they believe every word that they are saying (regardless of whether are
right or not).

Politicians are also masters of speech where they are technically correct,
they sound like they are saying one thing, but remain evasive/non-committal.

------
p0llard
> Manchester Metropolitan University

As a Brit, I can confirm that this is most certainly _not_ a well respected
institution; the UK has some of the best universities in the world, but this
is not one of them.

~~~
tialaramex
Well it depends, all the UK universities have strengths and weaknesses. In
some cases there are straight up practical reasons. Years ago my university's
chip fab caught fire and burned to the ground, because chip fabs do that
sometimes, and obviously that significantly reduced the ability to expose
students to practical skills in a clean room and so on. But most UK
universities don't have a chip fab at all, which means they don't have
academic staff who need one, which means undergraduates are also not getting
classes with people who have that knowledge at the front.

MMU has a bunch of expertise in subjects like textile making and some
practical engineering disciplines, where as I wouldn't necessarily regard some
of the UK's more famous universities as good on those subjects.

~~~
p0llard
Soton is in an entirely different league to MMU.

Textile making isn't an academic discipline, and historically would not have
been taught at a university at all. If you want high quality academic research
and rigour, you're far more likely to find it somewhere other than MMU.

This is an unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.

~~~
tialaramex
It's definitely true that "historically" textile making wouldn't have been
taught at a university. Sure looks like a real academic discipline to me
though, at least as much as say, law (maritime law being another of Soton's
specialities) or indeed electronics. It so happens our culture prizes
knowledge of electronics very highly and the development of new textiles much
less so, but it could be otherwise.

------
s5ma6n
It sounds like a story we have heard so many times. A sense of false security
enforced by fear of terror and a system that does not work correctly. Looks
like now it's the turn for European citizens to lose all their privacy and
have the remaining of their data to be collected. Very unfortunate.

------
switch007
> Currently, the lie detector test is voluntary

Who the hell opts in to that?

> A spokesperson for iBorderCtrl declined to answer questions for this story.

Oh, they don't have anything to hide, do they?

Before scrolling down I knew the UK would be involved somehow. They must do
anything except admit that their continous meddling (to put it mildly) in the
middle east incites retaliation.

~~~
Accacin
That's not entirely fair, it's in the UK it's a "EU research program has
pumped some 4.5 million euros into the project, which is being managed by a
consortium of 13 partners, including Greece’s Center for Security Studies,
Germany’s Leibniz University Hannover, and technology and security companies
like Hungary’s BioSec, Spain’s Everis, and Poland’s JAS."

~~~
switch007
I didn't say the UK was exclusively involved, did I?

> IBorderCtrl’s lie detection system was developed in England by researchers
> at Manchester Metropolitan University

I.e. the system which is the subject of the article?

------
mc32
At least they could use something like what has been used in India[1] (though
many jurisdictions forbid its usage), at least there is some science behind
it. However, because it’s science based and not just a bunch of “woo”, it has
the inherent danger of being ”incontrovertible”. Kinda like DNA,but obviously
flawed none the less.

[1][http://theconversation.com/if-a-brain-can-be-caught-lying-
sh...](http://theconversation.com/if-a-brain-can-be-caught-lying-should-we-
admit-that-evidence-to-court-heres-what-legal-experts-think-80263)

~~~
eth0up
My golly - the havoc that beast would wreak if applied to all officials! It
would almost be worth unleashing on the public, if perfected from the top
down. Though it never seems to work that way. I'm already lucidly envisioning
future politicians murmuring very nervously through federally issued mandatory
truth helmets.

~~~
cwkoss
I would love to see presidential debates where each candidate is hooked up to
an EEG polygraph-type device. Might not work on psychopaths though.

~~~
eth0up
Realistically, I truly wonder if the consummate versions of such tech won't
become the keystone of the future world's pyrrhic utopia. In some paved global
labyrinth of potted plants, designer integrity and perfect safety, where lies
are only fiction of the past and dissidence is a vestigial dead synapse in the
collective mind.

------
cgrealy
A “lie detector”? Seriously?

If you’re going to put people through this kind of system, you should have
some solid science to back it up and as far as I can see, this is just some
bargain basement ML agent.

------
throw9879879
Unreliable junk like lie detectors are used on purpose. Random reinforcement
simply ups the fear the peasants have of the system. Which is the intended
result; who cares if a few innocent people get chopped up in the process.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
Meanwhile, we aren't far removed from the year when image recognition confused
black people and gorillas. Who would ever roll this out thinking that we've
made such progress since then that we can tell such nuances as lies or truth?
And they _still_ didn't balance the training set with regard to ethnicity and
gender?? What a shit show. You can bet your ass that it has higher false
positives for some group or other.

------
neiman
It is:

\- Inaccurate (surely, since real lie detectors are) \- Does more harm than
help \- Humiliating \- Will not stop any real threat \- Looks like something
of a dystopian film

We shouldn't automate human interactions. We shouldn't automate social stuff.
You automate mechanical things which are clear, not the delicate inaccurate
job of a human to tell if another human is suspicious or not.

------
outworlder
> IBorderCtrl’s lie detection system was developed in England by researchers
> at Manchester Metropolitan University, who say that the technology can pick
> up on “micro gestures”

Aren't "micro-expressions" pseudoscience? Furthermore, AI based micro-
expression "detector" sounds even more like snake oil.

------
antpls
> IBorderCtrl’s lie detection system was developed in England by researchers
> at Manchester Metropolitan University, who say that the technology can pick
> up on “micro gestures” a person makes while answering questions on their
> computer, analyzing their facial expressions, gaze, and posture.

As an European, I don't even know how that project obtained funds from EU.
Even if it "worked", it's the opposite of the future I would like to build.

I suspect this project will never be implemented full-scale, and is only for
research on human emotions understanding.

This project should be reviewd by more journalists, because very few Europeans
know their taxes are used for that kind of anti-humanitarian projects and they
should be informed about it

------
rhn_mk1
What can EU citizens do to indicate this is unwelcome?

~~~
icebraining
Seems some people are trying to answer that question:
[https://iborderctrl.no/act](https://iborderctrl.no/act)

------
jupp0r
Even if this worked with high accuracy, it’s pure base rate fallacy [1] to
assume it would have any practical usefulness beyond security theater.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy)

------
sammorrowdrums
Released a paper that suggested "75% accuracy on 35 people" with admission of
bias in the test set participant make-up.

Sounds like the confidence interval would be very poor. This is exactly like
all those other studies that found an effect in a small sample but didn't use
basic statistics to realise what kind of sample size they would need to
actually prove an effect.

Nor (if I can tell) was there any acknowledgement about the fact that asking
normal people to lie and trying to observe a hardened criminal /
fundamentalist is not the same. I worked on something with an ex-chief of the
flying squad who said that there is a huge difference.

------
aiyodev
The lied detector was invented by the creator of the Wonder Woman comic after
he noticed his wife's blood pressure rose when she was angry. It gained
widespread adoption after he made commercials for Gillette to "prove" that
their razors were superior to the competition. It's wacky comic book
technology that doesn't work. It only appears to work because it tricks people
into confessing to crimes.

Why stop at the lie detector? Why not have a block of kryptonite at every
airport to protect them from attacks by Zod? Why not give every cop a
batarang? It's insane that we still allow our governments to spend our tax
dollars on this.

------
ckemere
One of the big challenges with software to detect lies is getting good
training data. I would be suspicious of anything that wasn't trained using
actual data from the particular domain that it was going to be used in. So
maybe the best that can be said for this effort is that for the first few
years they should ideally report scores that are actually just random (but not
tell the actual border agents this, obviously) until they get enough data to
train a reasonable classifier. I wouldn't be surprised if this is what is
actually being done.

------
chiph
There's no way I'm installing software like this on my computer. They already
snoop through your phone when you pass through border control, I'm not
assisting them in their data collection efforts by granting them access via an
install.

------
Krasnol
Describe in single words, only the good things that come in to your mind
about... your mother.

------
rootusrootus
Ha, for once this kind of insanity is happening in Europe instead of the US.

------
anonymouswacker
Regardless of how stupid, wrong, and dangerous this is, it or something just
as useless will crop up because government can easily justify wasting money
when "your safety" is at stake.

------
monksy
They expect people to take that fake "official" seriously?

If I go up to it.. what's stopping me from having it take a picture of my junk
or telling that it can sod off?

------
jmvoodoo
This is begging for a deepfakes-style adversarial system.

------
dabbledash
Good. A version of this that actually worked would be a lot more horrifying.

After all, the problem with oppressive governments isn’t usually “accuracy.”

------
I_am_tiberius
Sounds dystopian. Somehow we seem to have moved to a parallel universe. I
thought Europe is the last safe place on earth.

------
campfireveteran
Does it come with a coupon for the Kafkaesque social credit system patterned
on China that isn't far behind it?

------
gowld
> Ray Bull [...] told The Intercept that the iBorderCtrl project was “not
> credible”

What an aptonym!

------
anigbrowl
Why would anyone in their right mind contribute to or cooperate with such a
project?

------
raverbashing
While this system is hard to defend, it is still in test and it's possible it
will never go into production. Less BS than a polygraph maybe?

> Our reporter — the first journalist to test the system before crossing the
> Serbian-Hungarian border earlier this year — provided honest responses to
> all questions but was deemed to be a liar by the machine, with four false
> answers out of 16 and a score of 48.

He might have answered them truthfully, but if he tried (or even
unintentionally acted) to influence the perception of the answers is not
known.

~~~
anigbrowl
Regardless of how good it is, do you really want to be told where you can or
cannot travel by a machine? Call me an egotist but I think of myself as better
than cargo.

~~~
raverbashing
No, I don't. But that already happens unfortunately.

