U.S Spooks Want a System That Automatically Gauges Who Can Be Trusted

Just as DARPA pushes the wackier Pentagon ideas and ARPA-E backs next-gen energy projects, IARPA serves the intelligence community by checking out "high-risk, high-payoff" research. The spooks' lab has now launched a "TRUST (Tools for Recognizing Useful Signals of Trustworthiness)" program that aims to figure out whom can be trusted, even under the most stressful or deceptive circumstances.

Trust has always presented a problem for the shadowy world of espionage, where believing in the wrong person could mean death and the loss of military or national secrets. A sobering reminder of that came in December 2009, when a trusted informant turned suicide bomber killed seven CIA analysts in Afghanistan who had been directing drone attacks against Pakistani militants.

IARPA's five-year plan aims to design experiments that can measure trust with high certainty -- a tricky proposition for a psychological study. Developing such experimental protocols could prove very useful for assessing levels of trust within one-on-one talks, or even during group interactions.

Read the complete article at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-02/us-spooks-want-better-gauge-trust-matter-life-and-death