The year is 2010, and an immigration officer at New York's JFK Airport questions passengers newly arrived from London. 'What is your business in the United States? How long do you plan to stay?' But the officer is no longer relying on intuition alone to decide if he is being told the truth. Unseen by the passengers, a thermal imaging camera monitors the bloodflow around their faces and reacts to the changes that occur due to the anxiety of lying. If this sounds implausibly Orwellian even in the current state of global paranoia the US Department of Defence would not agree. The Engineer can reveal that the DoD has just begun a concerted effort to develop new lie-detection technologies, committing almost $2m (￡1.25m) to its 'deception-detection programme' this year alone. The work will be done by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the US military's hi-tech thinktank behind such advances as the robot tank and the unmanned aircraft. A Darpa spokeswoman confirmed that the programme's aim was to develop technologies capable of 'detecting individuals involved in high-stakes deception'.
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