ILLEGAL BRAIN SEARCH

So, let's say the subject under investigation is like Bill Clinton, an "exceptionally good liar." What would the polygraph operator see? Probably nothing. And, that is exactly why polygraph data are not allowed to be used in court. Clearly, the results are not dependable.

In truth, the most important part of a polygraph test is the interview given the subject after being disconnected from the equipment. Many times the unsuspecting target of an investigation believes the machine really can catch them in a lie and so confesses during the interview. There is little scientific basis for the lie detector, but it sure makes police work easier when some nitwit confesses after thinking he was caught in a lie.

Other devices are just about as undependable. Some devices measure blush, pupil size and now even brain waves. None of these results are usually admissible in court, nor should they be.

Now comes some sophisticated equipment that is more complicated to operate and produces results even more difficult to analyze accurately. This time the idea is to attempt to search the brain of the subject.

Brain Fingerprinting has been featured in many TV news reports and in print throughout the world. According to the executive summary(1) from Farwell Brain Fingerprinting:

"Dr. Lawrence A. Farwell has invented, developed, proven, and patented the technique of Farwell Brain Fingerprinting, a new computer-based technology to identify the perpetrator of a crime accurately and scientifically by measuring brain-wave responses to crime-relevant words or pictures presented on a computer screen. Farwell Brain Fingerprinting has proven 100% accurate in over 100 tests, including tests on FBI agents and tests for a US intelligence agency and for the US Navy. Dr. Farwell recently presented Brain Fingerprinting in court in defense of a man falsely convicted of murder."

According to Farwell, "brain Fingerprinting is based on the principle that the brain is central to all human acts. In a criminal act, there may or may not be many kinds of peripheral evidence, but the brain is always there, planning, executing, and recording the crime. The fundamental difference between a perpetrator and a falsely accused, innocent person is that the perpetrator, having committed the crime, has the details of the crime stored in his brain, and the innocent suspect does not. This is what Brain Fingerprinting detects scientifically. Words or pictures relevant to a crime are flashed on a computer screen, along with other, irrelevant words or pictures. Electrical brain responses are measured non-invasively through a patented headband equipped with sensors. A specific brain-wave response called a MERMER (memory and encoding related multifaceted electroencephalographic response) is elicited when the brain processes noteworthy information it recognizes. (The MERMER contains another, well known and scientifically established brain response known as a P300.) When details of the crime that only the perpetrator would know are presented, a MERMER is emitted by the brain of a perpetrator, but not by the brain of an innocent suspect. In Farwell Brain Fingerprinting, a computer analyzes the brain response to detect the MERMER, and thus determines scientifically whether or not the specific crime-relevant information is stored in the brain of the suspect."

Don't look for this device in a police station near you anytime soon, though. The device is little more than a computerized electroencephalograph (EEG) programmed to pick out the signals of interest, computer average them, and present an averaged image of that data on the screen.

First, the necessary research has not been completed to sell the equipment as a medical device. It may be used by police in an investigation, but we will need a few thousand studies before the results can be believed.

That data may never come, either. That's because, even though most human brains appear to look and operate alike, those who map human brains for a living have identified many very significant exceptions.

Are electrical potentials produced by the thought patterns of the brains of murders, thieves, rapists, spies and common thugs the same as those from the brains of scientists, engineers, chess masters, mathematicians or school teachers? If not, what is the difference? Scientists have been asking these questions for many years. They have some ideas. But, at this time, there is no defining data.

So, how may we be sure that the electrical activity received means the same in every subject? Fact is, we cannot.

Ruben Gur, a neuropsychologist at the University of Pennsylvania(2), theorizes that another new kind of brain scan is the answer. According to Gur, the scanning machine, called a functional MRI, takes pictures that highlight specific parts of the brain activated during certain tasks. Telltale parts of the brain "light up," he said, when someone is presented with a face they have seen before.

So, they are talking about MRI being used in interrogation of criminal suspects or terrorists. And Gur described just that for national security experts at a recent Penn workshop. "Everything we do, and everything an enemy does, starts in the brain," he told the meeting, sponsored by the Institute for Strategic Analysis and Response, which includes Penn epidemiologists, germ-warfare specialists, political scientists, and computer experts.

Daniel Langleben, also from Penn, has found that a functional MRI can act as a lie detector. "In the long term, I think we will have technologies powerful enough to understand what people are thinking in ways unimaginable now," Langleben said. "I think in 50 years we will have a way to essentially read minds."

However, visions of the Orwellian thought police may be a little premature. Neither the computer averaged EEG or the MRI are very easy to use. Their data cannot be produced in "real time." And, all lie detector devices, except for the voice stress analyzer, require close cooperation by the person under investigation.

Will the new devices work to detect a lie? Maybe. After electrophysiologists know a lot more of how the brain works. But, that may be quite a few years away.

Most of us understand the common polygraph. All it amounts to is a device that crudely records physiological responses. The operator makes a big deal of wiring up the subject, asks a few questions and records the physical response of the body. So, let's say the subject under investigation is like Bill Clinton, an "exceptionally good liar." What would the polygraph operator see? Probably nothing. And, that is exactly why polygraph data are not allowed to be used in court. Clearly, the results are not dependable.

Other devices are just about as undependable.

Brain Fingerprinting uses sophisticated equipment that is more complicated to operate and produces results even more difficult to analyze accurately. Does it work? Maybe. But, I wouldn't bet any money on it.

So, how may we be sure that the electrical activity received means the same in every subject? Fact is, we cannot.

A very dear friend of mine, Jim Newman, who was CEO of PACE a company dedicated to perfecting communication between people and used by many corporations to enhance communication between management and workers, during a visit to his home in Studio City asked if we would be interested in seeing if plant life reacted to basic threats or comfort and careing.

He hooked a big plant up to a polygraph machine and then he lit a match and threatened the leaf with the proximity of the heat. The needle went nuts. He then played music and the needle reacted lazily. He stroked the plant and the needle reacted somewhere between being threatened and listening to music. Made a believer out of me.

There is no doubt that the body reacts to telling lies. But if you are an accomplished liar and lieing is something you do even when the truth would do, then it would be easy to fool the machine. Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Hillary would all pass a lie detector test hands down. Lieing is second nature to them. Tipper would show a lie. Carville and Bagalia would not. When subterfuge is how you are reared then the stress of lieing is muted. It is a way of life. I am referring also to the education these people recieved at the hands of communists.

>> A very dear friend of mine, Jim Newman, who was CEO of PACE a company dedicated to perfecting communication between people and used by many corporations to enhance communication between management and workers, during a visit to his home in Studio City asked if we would be interested in seeing if plant life reacted to basic threats or comfort and caring.

He hooked a big plant up to a polygraph machine and then he lit a match and threatened the leaf with the proximity of the heat. The needle went nuts. He then played music and the needle reacted lazily. He stroked the plant and the needle reacted somewhere between being threatened and listening to music.<<

This, my friend, is what Cleve Backster did back in the 1968. Cleve is the “father” of the modern polygraph and he pioneered research in this area, starting back in the late 40's.

Try
http://www.backster.net/
http://falundafa-newengland.org/MA/science/Backsters.htm
http://www.insight-books.com/books/0914918966wb.htm
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh6.html (“Cleve Backster was also famous, notorious in fact, and had been since about 1968 when he first claimed that plants have primary perceptions which can sense human thoughts and respond to them. . .it wasn't until the late 1980s that neurobiologists discovered and confirmed that plants do possess "primary perceptions" because they have ‘rudimentary neural nets.’. . .Backster was (and still is) one of America's most noted polygraph experts who had refined and improved lie-detecting methods. But at some point he began experimenting by hooking plants up to polygraphs. He lit matched and burnt their leaves, and the polygraphs reacted. At some point after that, he began noticing that when someone merely THOUGHT about lighting a match to burn the plant, the polygraph readout showed big spikes in it.”

I met and spoke with Cleve this past summer during a conference where I was Master of Ceremonies. He is a gentle man, a good man and he is astounded and saddened at the abuse of his polygraph tool. While speaking with Cleve, I related my own polygraph story. I begin:

I had to go to an “agency” for a polygraph in order to receive one of those ultra-hyper sensitive clearances, you know, they type where you need a clearance to know just the name of the clearance you are getting.

Anyway, I was wired up and this is what happened:

Q1—Do you intend to answer truthfully?
A1 – Yes (No deception indicated)

Q2 – Do you watch TV with the lights on? (a “control” question, answer already agreed beforehand—I was supposed to lie)
A2 – No

Q3 – Have you disclosed classified information to unauthorized people?
A3 – No (“Inconclusive” response—so they tell me)

Q4 – Are you concerned about something we have not discussed?
A4 – No (No deception indicated)

Q5 – Have you answered truthfully?
A5 – Yes (No deception indicated)

Now, the “inconclusive” opened a ball of heck and the interview became an interrogation. Nothing like being in a room made up of 4 walls of mirrors and cameras and being wired to a machine and having a number of people calling you a liar.

I asked the interrogators how do they get around the logical inconsistency between the results of questions 1, 4, and 5. I mean, if the machine was accurate then how can I show no intention to lie (Q1), had nothing to hide (Q4), and answered truthfully (Q5). They had no answer and focused like a laser on the “inconclusive. Over the next 5-months I had to endure investigations and sit for a couple more polygraphs. Same result on the same question. In that 5-month time period I did a little research on polygraphs and found out that Mormons and Catholics have the highest rate of false positive (I am Catholic), and that exceptionally honest guys like myself (meaning those type of people that cringe at the mere thought of spilling secrets), we are another group with a very high rate of false positives. And finally, overall, at best, at BEST, there is a 10% false positive rate. That means for every 1,000 tested, 100 will be falsely accused of deception.

I told “them” to pound sand when they presented me a list of 9-questions they were going to ask, and each question began, “In your life. . .” I knew then that they were fishing and they just couldn’t let it go.

Bottom line: I kept my clearances but my life was heck for a long time.

Oh, yes, there are counter-measures that anyone can use to beat the machine (wish I had known them). In fact, in its entire history, the polygraph has NEVER caught a spy. Never.

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