more on Brain fingerprinting AND A PANEL IN DC

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Stanley, Jay" <JStanley () dcaclu org>
Date: June 19, 2006 3:20:29 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Brain fingerprinting

Note that, despite the kinds of problems that Nick Knouf outlines, at  
least two private companies have announced that they will begin to  
offer "lie detection" services using fMRI as early as this summer.  
These companies are marketing their services to federal government  
agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Justice,  
the National Security Agency, and the CIA, and to state and local  
police departments.

See http://www.cephoscorp.com/
    http://www.noliemri.com/

Also, for those who are interested, we are hosting a panel discussion  
tomorrow in DC with several of the foremost experts on this subject.   
Details are at www.aclu.org/future.

Best,

Jay Stanley
Public Education Director, Technology and Liberty Project
ACLU
202-715-0818 (office) 202-222-8398 (mobile)




-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 2:37 PM
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] Brain fingerprinting




Begin forwarded message:

From: Newmedia () aol com
Date: June 19, 2006 1:42:39 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Fwd: <nettime> Brain fingerprinting

Interesting stuff . . . !!

From: nick knouf <nknouf () media mit edu>
Date: June 19, 2006 11:43:50 AM EDT
To: Nettime-l <nettime-l () bbs thing net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Brain fingerprinting
Reply-To: nick knouf <nknouf () media mit edu>


On Jun 19, 2006, at 10:21 AM, twsherma () mailbox syr edu wrote:

> Here's how it works. A criminal suspect or a terrorist is shown
> pictures of the scene of a crime or a terrorist training site. The
> suspect's  brain waves are monitored, looking for brain waves of
> recognition, signs  in the suspect's memory that links the suspect
> to the scene of a crime or terrorist activity. These brain waves of
> recognition are called P300 waves. The suspect may deny any
> involvement, but a real-time  analysis of his or her brain waves may
> conclusively establish prior criminal  activity.  Previously
> undetectable memories determine guilt.

As someone who has designed, run, and analyzed a number of EEG, MEG,
and fMRI experiments in the past, I can say that this is still far
off as an everyday device.  There are a number of practical and
conceptual problems involved.  Oftentimes the journalistic accounts
gloss over the difficulties, which are many.  Yet I think it's still
important to be concerned and develop appropriate responses and
procedures for using any type of "lie detector".

But onto some of the issues.  First, getting a reliable result within
a single subject is extremely difficult for these types of
measurements.  The data are so "noisy" (physical noise from the
measurement device, as well as physiological "noise" that we may
someday find out holds interesting data) that results must be
averaged across many subjects before stable peaks can be found.
However, it can be done in some cases and for some stimuli in single
subjects: if you want to get reasonable results from only a single
subject, you must present him/her with a large number of trials---
anywhere from 150-200 trials per condition (in EEG/MEG) and around
100 (in fMRI) (this is all based on my experience and with the
analysis tools I've used).

Second, we still do not know enough about the underlying mechanisms
of memory to know how, in the case of EEG or MEG, the signals we
measure are related to the underlying mental processes of memory and
recognition.  All we have here (and with fMRI) is a correlative
measure; none of these techniques can establish causation.  Perhaps
the correlation is enough for a court of law; I don't know enough
about legal standards of evidence to know for sure.

Thirdly, all of the techniques require a willing subject to remain
still for anywhere between one and two hours.  It's possible to
sedate a subject, however the sedation process will affect the
results measured to an uncertain degree.  Also, with fMRI (and
somewhat so for MEG, but for different reasons), you cannot scan
people who have certain types of metal in their bodies, suggesting a
possible (if invasive) countermeasure.

Finally (for now), there are still open questions as to the best way
to analyze the data.  For example, with fMRI data there are a number
of tactics to use: you can morph the data for each subject into a
standard template, allowing direct averaging across subjects; you can
"localize" areas in individual subjects, and then average the results
across the localized areas; you can map the data into an agnostic
"spherical" space to again allow averaging across subjects; and so
on.  Besides these spatial issues, there is also certain disagreement
as to the signal and statistical analysis techniques to use, both in
fMRI and EEG/MEG.

Some journalistic articles:

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb111401.shtml
http://neuroethics.stanford.edu/documents/HankArticleStanfordReport.pdf

Some articles from scientific journals (I have not read these
articles to know if I agree with their methodology):

http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=11835606
http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=16161128
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10%
2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epbio%2E0020150
http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=11588589

Cheers,

nick knouf


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