January 14, 2010
New Technology to Prevent Terrorism Being Suppressed by Bureaucrats?
Bob McCarty has an article over at PJM about the use of Computer Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA) in terror prevention. He implies that had the technology been used, then the underwear bomb plot of Christmas day might have been averted.
I asked him how that would work since my understanding of CVSA was that it was a post hoc analyizing tool that might be used to replace polygraphing. As you know, polygraphing tries to detect lies after the fact. So how could this be used to prevent terrorism?
But Bob explains that the technology is passive but nearly foolproof. In other words, you could use it to monitor the voices of potential airline passengers who are trying to hide something. Those passengers detected by the technology as lying to screeners could then be diverted to secondary screening.
With that in mind go check out his article about CVSA here. And if it's true that professional polygraphers are keeping the technology out only to protect their jobs, then heads should roll.
