WASHINGTON — Coming one day to a government checkpoint near you: a thermal imager that just might tip off a guard to a liar.
The research arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency has been working since 2000 on a camera that measures minute changes in facial skin temperature. Those fluctuations — involuntary and undetectable even to the owner of the face — indicate a stress response.
And that might signal you’re telling a lie, says Troy Brown, chief of research at the DIA’s Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment in Fort Jackson, S.C.
The DIA is deeply interested in deciphering deception in job candidates applying for positions with access to classified information and in prisoners captured on the battlefield undergoing interrogation.
So far, the only way the government can get an inkling that someone may be less than truthful is a polygraph, the so-called lie-detector test.
The DIA is developing the camera, which could be used at border crossings, crime scenes and terrorist-attack sites, and in interrogations.
