What’s New With Handheld Devices?
Handheld devices are undoubtedly becoming more and more popular with the people of this world. That is because handheld devices give people the convenience and portability that they need from their equipment.
For example, notebooks are becoming more popular with society because it allows a person to have a computer with them anytime and anywhere that they need them. Notebooks are useful for several jobs, like writers and even graphic designers, since these people need to be in a place or state of mind in order to be able to work effectively. Writers particularly need to be somewhere they can think clearly so that they can write.
Another handheld device that is popular among people is the mobile phone. With the mobile phone, a person need not spend some time looking for a landline in order to be able to make a call. With a mobile phone in hand, as long as they have the credits and the signal is good, it is possible to make a call even when you’re in your car driving home or to work. Mobile phones have also made it possible for families to be able to communicate with each other no matter where they may be.
Almost everything has been compacted and turned handheld these days. Everything, including lie detection devices.
The PCASS
Perhaps one of the most controversial innovations to handheld devices is the PCASS. It is short for Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System. It is famous because of its deployment to the US military stationed in Afghanistan in April of 2008.
Specifically, it is a commercial hand-held personal digital assistant. However, the PDA includes wires and sensors that are then connected to the hand of the person being interrogated. It works almost just like an actual polygraph; it shows the word “Green” for truth, and “Red” for lie. It also has a middle ground, in which it says “Yellow” if it cannot read anything from the person’s response.
According to the military, they made an investment in PCASS – it had bought 94 units by the time the MSNBC reported about the device in April of 2008 – to protect the U.S. Military and preventing “enemy” supporters from infiltrating the ranks of the American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.
How Does It Work?
The PCASS hand-held polygraph, like mentioned earlier, works just like a real polygraph. It has three sensors: two electrodes and one pulse oximeter. The electrodes are attached to the skin, and are designed to find out if the person being questioned is undergoing stress which is what most people feel when they are about to lie or is uncomfortable with the question. The pulse oximeter, on the other hand, is used to calculate the rate of heartbeats – another sign of stress.
However, the PCASS does not have a device for detecting sudden changes in breathing, which is what makes it different from an actual polygraph.
One feature of the PCASS is, aside from giving truth or lie answers, is that it also displays the previous question that elicited the response. This is useful for record-keeping purposes.
Criticisms
The PCASS has garnered a lot of criticisms from different sectors. For one, they are considered to be risky for use by American personnel. According to the MSNBC report, critics are citing the lack of polygraph training for the intended users of the device which are simply enlisted personnel in the US Army. While polygraph interrogators in the Defense Department undergo a long training course in order to qualify, the enlisted soldiers who will be using the device have only a week to train in the usage of the device.
Second, critics also consider the device as less reliable than polygraph tests. That is because the PCASS reads physiological reactions differently from a real polygraph. It is also very simple, and very reliant on a computer to make decisions. As they say, “to err is human but to really foul things up you need a computer.” This simply means that you cannot trust a computer to do some things that require human intuition and understanding. Since it uses a computer, it can still be fooled by countermeasures, which can otherwise be prevented by human thinking and decision-making.
Mark Robinsson writes for GizmoDesk.com. It’s a technology blog about consumer electronics.
In a two-part investigative series I published this week, I revealed the inside story about the “turf war” being waged by bureaucrats within the Department of Defense. The war, in this case, revolves around the military’s use of portable lie detection technology during interrogations of enemy combatants, terror suspects and others on and off the battlefield.
In Part One, I explained how questions about the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture during interrogations of enemy combatants and terror suspects might be largely irrelevant today if not for a memo signed by Under Secretary of Defense James R. Clapper Jr. Oct. 29, 2007. That memo granted “Operational Approval of the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System” and designated the polygraph and its newer portable cousin, PCASS, the “only approved credibility assessment technologies” in the Department of Defense.
In Part Two, I offered a dozen solid pieces of evidence from individuals and agencies inside and outside of DoD that make a solid argument in support of a more accurate and versatile technology — Computer Voice Stress Analyzer® — that realized unprecedented success when used by the U.S. military from 2002 to 2008. Furthermore, I revealed how Americans on the front lines of the War on Terror — including active-duty members of the Special Operations community, senior interrogation officials at Guantanamo Bay and others — believe the actions of leaders within DoD are “doing great damage to our national security” by keeping the best equipment available from the war fighters who need it the most in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and GITMO.