The
DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is considering offering a contract to
PRI (the Psychotechnology Research Institute), where a group of researchers claim to have developed software that can pick out terrorists and even train individuals to pick out terrorists -- subconsciously.
The technology, called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology (SSRM Tek), is said to gauge a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages. Images are shown to test subjects who press buttons in response. SSRM Tek supposedly measures those responses and understands what the subject is thinking subconsciously.
One obvious application of the technology may involve security checks at airports. Based on subjects' responses to the images and messages, "clean" respondents would be allowed through while "suspect" individuals would be taken through further testing.
Geoff Schoenbaum, a neuroscientist at the
University of Maryland, dismisses PRI's technology, saying that modern neuroscience is just now trying to figure out how rats learn that a light can predict food. In reference to the idea of subconsciously sensing a person's intentions, he said, "If we could do [what they're talking about], you would know about it, it wouldn't be a handful of Russian folks in a basement."
From
Boing Boing and
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