It'll be just like that Gilligan's Island episode where they all read minds...

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:29:49 -0800
From: "Kevin Bankston  @ EFF" <bankston () eff org>
List-Id: EFF Privacy  <eff-priv.eff.org>

Combine this voice analysis software with pervasive voice
communicators/recorders (smartphones, lifelog type stuff, whatever) and
voila...everyone can practically read each other's minds in realtime and/or
record for later analysis, and all past recorded statements can be analyzed
too.  I can easily see these types of products being in every new cellphone
(or downloadable for every cellphone) very soon.  Much too soon.

Called Ex-Sense Pro, the V software measures voice for a variety of
parameters including deception, excitement, stress, mental effort,
concentration, hesitation, anger, love and lust. It works prerecorded, over
the phone and live, the company said. V Entertainment recommends it for
screening phone calls, checking the truthfulness of people with whom you
deal or gauging romantic interest.

It's worth pointing out that this technology originated with Israeli
anti-terrorism guys.  It's also worth pointing out that in addition to doing
data-mining research with Northwest's passenger data, NASA was also doing
research on "noninvasive neurologic sensors" for use in airports.





Lie-detector glasses offer peek at future of security
By R. Colin Johnson, EE Times
January 16, 2004 (2:05 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20040116S0050


Portland, Ore. — It may not be long before you hear airport security
screeners ask, "Do you plan on hijacking this plane?" A U.S. company using
technology developed in Israel is pitching a lie detector small enough to
fit in the eyeglasses of law enforcement officers, and its inventors say it
can tell whether a passenger is a terrorist by analyzing his answer to that
simple question in real-time.

The technology, developed by mathematician Amir Lieberman at Nemesysco in
Zuran, Israel, for military, insurance claim and law enforcement use, is
being repackaged and retargeted for personal and corporate applications by V
Entertainment (New York).

"Our products were originally for law enforcement use — we get all our
technology from Nemesys-co — but we need more development time [for that
application]," said Dave Watson, chief operating officer of parent V LLC
(www.vworldwide.com). "So we decided to come out sooner with consumer
versions at CES."

The company showed plain sunglasses outfitted with the technology at the
2004 International CES in Las Vegas earlier this month. The system used
green, yellow and red color codes to indicate a "true," "maybe" or "false"
response. At its CES booth, V Entertainment analyzed the voices of
celebrities like Michael Jackson to determine whether they were lying.

Besides lie detection, Watson said, the technology "can also measure for
other emotions like anxiety, fear or even love." Indeed V Entertainment
offers Pocket PC "love detector" software that can attach to a phone line or
work from recorded tapes. It's available for download at
www.v-entertainment.com. Instead of color-coded LEDs, a bar graph on the
display indicates how much the caller to whom you are speaking "loves" you.
V Entertainment claims the love detector has demonstrated 96 percent
accuracy. A PC version is due next month.

The heart of Nemesysco's security-oriented technology is a signal-processing
engine that is said to use more than 8,000 algorithms each time it analyzes
an incoming voice waveform. In this way it detects levels of various
emotional states simultaneously from the pitch and speed of the voice.

The law enforcement version achieved about 70 percent accuracy in laboratory
trials, according to V Entertainment, and better than 90 percent accuracy
against real criminal subjects at a beta test site at the U.S. Air Force's
Rome Laboratories.

"It is very different from the common polygraph, which measures changes in
the body, such as heart rate," said Richard Parton, V's chief executive
officer. "We work off the frequency range of voice patterns instead of
changes in the body." The company said that a state police agency in the
Midwest found the lie detector 89 percent accurate, compared with 83 percent
for a traditional polygraph.

The technology delivers not only a true/false reading, but a range of
high-level parameters, such as "thinking level," which measures how much as
subject has thought about an answer they give, and "SOS level," which
assesses how badly a person doesn't want to talk about a subject.

How it works


Nemesysco's patented Poly-Layered Voice Analysis measures 18 parameters of
speech in real-time for interrogators at police, military and
secret-services agencies. According to Nemesysco, its accuracy as a lie
detector has proven to be less important than its ability to more quickly
pinpoint for interrogators where there are problems in a subject's story.
Officers then can zero in much more quickly with their traditional
interrogation techniques.

V Entertainment is leveraging the concept to let consumers in on the truth
telling, eyeing such applications as a lie detector that could be used while
watching, say, the 2004 presidential debates on TV.

Called Ex-Sense Pro, the V software measures voice for a variety of
parameters including deception, excitement, stress, mental effort,
concentration, hesitation, anger, love and lust. It works prerecorded, over
the phone and live, the company said. V Entertainment recommends it for
screening phone calls, checking the truthfulness of people with whom you
deal or gauging romantic interest.

The display can show each measured parameter in a separate window, with
real-time traces of instantaneous measurements while flashing the overall
for each parameter, such as "false probable," "high stress" and "SOS."
Ultimately, the company plans to offer versions of its detectors for cell
phones, dating services, teaching aids, toys and games.


 --
Kevin S. Bankston
Attorney, Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
ph: (415) 436-9333 x126 / fx: (415) 436-9993
bankston () eff org / www.eff.org

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