This just in from those sharp-eyed folks in our News of the Weird Department:
Headline News (HLN), a subsidiary of CNN, citing the British Daily Mail newspaper, says that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has contracted with an information technology company to initiate use of a virtual reality Border Patrol Agent named "Elvis" to determine when individuals taken into custody may be lying. Let's call him VBPA Elvis. After all, every government employee has to have some kind of catchy acronym for a job title, right?
Although the article says that determining an individual's mendacity (or truth) is made on the basis of "complex algorithms", I'm thinking that it's as simple as this: those devious information technicians probably designed VBPA Elvis to put the suspect off his guard right from the jump because from the moment they are seated in front of him, they see that patented Elvis sneer staring back at them from the computer screen. Now, combine that with an endless loop of "A Big Hunk O' Love" that commences blaring from the monitor speakers the instant that the subject is suspected of lying, and he'll be spilling the beans in no time in exchange only for a promise that Elvis stops his crooning. (We don't need no stinking algorithms!)
Kidding aside, the article tells us that VBPA Elvis is already in use on a prototype basis in Arizona. What we don't know is how much this effort is costing the government, or what they have committed to. Not much, I hope. I'm still in a state of consternation when I think of the mega-bucks that Homeland Security spent on the failed explosive-sniffing machines at airports.
Technology is wonderful, but seems to have its finite limits. Living creatures just seem to do some things better.
Want bomb sniffers that excel at their job? Train dogs and handlers — it would have been a lot cheaper, and a lot more effective.
Want to know when suspects are lying? Train agents in the fundamentals of interrogation, including how to detect the giveaway autonomic responses that occur when most people (except perhaps psychopaths) lie. After all, detecting the truth is an integral part of a law enforcement officer's job. Why try to outsource it?