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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-drink-to-that! dept.

There is growing interest in the potential for a technology known as brain fingerprinting to be used in the fight against crime and terrorism, but it's far from reliable.

Its use without consent violates human rights. And importantly, the technology (as it currently exists) can be tricked.

Brain fingerprinting seeks to detect deception by essentially reading thoughts. It works by using electroencephelography (EEG) to read the electrical activity of the brain, with the aim of trying to identify a phenomenon known as the P300 response [DOI: 10.1097/00004691-199210000-00002] [DX].

The P300 response is a noticeable spike in the brain's electrical activity, which usually occurs within one-third of a second of being shown a familiar stimulus. The idea is that our subconscious brain has an uncontrollable and measurable response to familiar stimuli that the machine can register.

Imagine, for example, that a particular knife was used in a murder, and police show an image of it to their lead suspect who denies the crime. If the suspect registers a P300 response and thus a positive recognition of the knife, this would seem to suggest he's lying. Alternatively, if the suspect doesn't register a positive recognition, maybe police have the wrong guy.

Could you escape culpability for your crimes by taking a roofie afterward?


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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:00PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:00PM (#573849) Homepage

    Of course, since it's "science" (which really means "magic/scam" in that type of situation), nobody shall have the right to protest the results!

    The right to protest the results is called a trial.

    Honestly, this type of search for the "ultimate silver bullet" crime-solving tool (because that's what it is)

    No, that's what it's being written up as in popular science articles.

    I have a kitchen knife 2 meters away, if someone showed me a picture of another kinfe of that same model, how could I know if it's mine, or not? And on a picture? LOL.

    So you just tell the jury you have a similar knife, just as could say you just happen to have a similar hat or shirt to someone caught on CCTV.

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