I love stuff like this. Wether or not it delivers the goods, who knows? But I really think a device like this could make the job of the troops out in the field a little bit easier. I do have some reservations about totally depending on such a device, but if used in conjunction with other evidence collected, these kinds of technologies can help in separating the bad guys from the good guys.
This would have been great at the various ECP’s I have had to run. But contractors being authorized to use such a tool might be a little sticky. There are certain situations though, where something like this could be nice. Like screening your guard force for one. I have been on sites where new guards are streaming into the base on a daily basis. Things like biometrics and this device could help to keep tabs on screening your guard force. But yet again, it always boils down to cost, and the various companies out there can be pretty stingy.
At this time, I have not heard of any companies using the PCASS. Although it would not surprise me that there are a few playing around with such a device. –Head Jundi
The PCASS in action.
New U.S. weapon: Hand-held lie detector
U.S. troops in Afghanistan first to get new device; ‘red’ means you’re lying
By Bill Dedman
Investigative reporter
updated 3:00 a.m. PT, Wed., April. 9, 2008
FORT JACKSON, S.C. – The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.
The Defense Department says the portable device isn’t perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We’re not promising perfection — we’ve been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it’s properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”
But the lead author of a national study of the polygraph says that American military men and women will be put at risk by an untested technology. “I don’t understand how anybody could think that this is ready for deployment,” said statistics professor Stephen E. Fienberg, who headed a 2003 study by the National Academy of Sciences that found insufficient scientific evidence to support using polygraphs for national security. “Sending these instruments into the field in Iraq and Afghanistan without serious scientific assessment, and for use by untrained personnel, is a mockery of what we advocated in our report.”
