The Technology of Facial Recognition

by Andrea Campbell

Television and movies are famous for zeroing in on the technologies of the present and future. Some are outrageous such as the vertical mid-air computer manipulation screens and the holograms used for facial reconstruction--fascinating but most cities’ law enforcement and forensic science divisions are cash-strapped, so fantasy is more the reality. There is one thing though that criminal justice has been good at, and that’s compiling information, mainly data in regards to identification.

The History of Identification

In 1924, the Criminal Justice Information Services created an FBI Identification division that began with the collection of fingerprints. Prior to that, things were fairly unsophisticated and rather chaotic in terms of holes--states were responsible for their own mug shots and fingerprint collections and since information was collected manually, if a perpetrator crossed state lines, his slate was temporarily clean. The need for centralization and an organized repository wasn’t really met until as late as 1999. Instead of mug shots, photographs and criminal history traveling through the U.S. mail and processed manually, the IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint System), system improved all that. Now with the launch of IAFIS, it made it easy to search, process and store data electronically. Wherever a suspect went, his identification could follow.

The New Generation

With the advent of a growing demand for identification services, the FBI stepped up its criminal justice data system with its new Next Generation Identification or NGI program. Previously, the technology infrastructure was fast becoming obsolete. Just as you have to stay current with upgrading your computer software and equipment--with all the identification requests the FBI receives, they were struggling to fulfill their mission. So while NGI attempts to shore up its reputation, staying a global leader in biometrics is a feat. Because biometric submissions come from tribal, local, state, federal, international and other intelligence systems, the rapidly expanding database is a race--and the timeline for upgrade was posed as a multi-year time frame developed with incremental phases (or one step at a time).

Our Identification Rights

Generally what happens as new technologies evolve, its development has a tendency to stop on people’s rights, that is to say, their right to privacy, searches or just by being required to submit to varied forms of ID.

There are federal codes however, that provide much-needed authorization for such information and it can be found in U.S. Code, number 28 to be more precise, and it outlines how to acquire, collect, classify and preserve such identification and crime records. The exchange of this data between agencies must follow guidelines set out in section 534 of the same code, and section 3771 outlines the authorization for the FBI director to develop new approaches, techniques and devices.

Several of the program increments for the NGI platform have been completed like: increasing the true match rate of fingerprints to 99.6 percent and providing the ability to process less than ten prints as well. Another program named RISC (or the: Repository for Individual of Special Concern) was also completed that helps to ID wanted persons, suspected terrorists, persons of special interest and sex offenders. A National Palm Print directory is on the agenda for next spring, 2013, and Increment 4 called Rap Back, Facial and Scars, Marks and Tattoo search capabilities should be up and running summer 2014. The National Rap Back service is all about notifying searchers about folks who are already in the criminal system, and will include Facial and SMT--Scars, Marks and Tattoo--designs for investigation purposes.

Next Generation for Facial Recognition

A pilot program debuted in 2012 for facial recognition, but should be fully operational summer of 2014. This will make possible image-based facial recognition searches of the FBI’s national repository. What comes back from a search will be a list of candidates to investigate. The bank of photos are based on criminal mug shots that were taken as a part of the booking process during arrest. The concerns have been that photos from other sources like Facebook, or surveillance cameras would be used but the FBI site says they will not use those as sources. Currently the National Repository holds approximately 12.8 million searchable frontal photos. The FBI claim that only authorized criminal justice agencies can query, and the requests are processed in what’s referred to as a, “lights out” manner, meaning that no one person prepares the ranked candidates list--it is constructed without human intervention.

A government act called the “Interstate Photo System Privacy Impact Assessment” (PIA) is in a renewable phase as any evolutionary changes that have since come into fruition will be reevaluated since June 2008. States that have already sampled the facial recognition as part of a pilot program will still need to execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that reiterates why they need the information and how they intend to use it. The Facial Recognition pilot should be fully functional summer 2014.

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Citizen Revolt – Sweep Out the Bums!

by Diane Dimond

Could it be a trend? Oh, please tell me it’s a trend.

There seems to be a mini-movement underway of disgruntled taxpayers and law enforcement officials intent on sweeping out the bums who play-act at being our political leaders while lining their own pockets.

You may have already heard about the situation in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, California, where eight current and past city leaders were arrested and charged with illegally awarding themselves exorbitant salaries and misappropriating public funds. When filing the charges District Attorney Steve Cooley called it a case of “corruption on steroids.”

The scandal erupted when private citizens of that working-class suburb began to show up at public meetings and demand accountability. The drumbeat got loud enough that the law moved in, arrested the eight and made sure they’d never hold political office again. How bad was it? The city manager of Bell, where one in six residents lives in poverty, was “earning” nearly $800,000 a year, twice President Obama’s salary! And even though Robert Rizzo was forced to resign, he’s still in line to draw a pension as high as $880,000 a year!

So, Attorney General Jerry Brown announced his office is suing to try and stop Rizzo’s outrageous pension, along with the excess salaries of all the city leaders. These announcements were met with bursts of cheers and tears by local residents who realized firsthand what community involvement could achieve.

Three thousand miles away, in North Providence, Rhode Island, there is a similar public corruption scandal unfolding--again spurred by angry citizens who said, in effect, were mad as hell and just weren’t going to take it anymore.

In the Rhode Island case, three city council members were forced to resign after a federal indictment reported they had demanded and split a $25,000 bribe to change zoning laws for a supermarket developer. But after U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha announced the charges--and called for anyone with knowledge of other bribery demands to come forward--they did. Citizens exhausted by the stink of corruption in their Rhode Island community reportedly told authorities about other demands the political trio had made, and the councilmen were slapped with more extortion, bribery and conspiracy charges. Two others, a local developer and an attorney, were also charged for acting as middlemen in the illegal demand for more than $100,000 in bribes. There’s an indication that one of the fed-up residents was a fellow city council member who volunteered to wear a wire to help investigators gather evidence. More charges could be on the way as more brave residents come forward to report on similar shakedowns.

In Cleveland, Ohio, the FBI began investigating citizen complaints and the resulting public corruption scandal has already resulted in three dozen guilty pleas. Just last month, the feds charged eight public officials, including Cuyahoga County commissioner Jimmy Dimora and two county judges, in a pay-for-play scheme that allegedly traded jobs for bribes and campaign donations. The FBI says, for example, that Dimora got jobs for people and in exchange he received call girl sex, fancy steakhouse meals, four-figure discounts on a Rolex watch, a gambling trip to Vegas, and free improvements on his home. After this latest round of arrests one jubilant voter showed up at the county building wearing an FBI T-shirt and carrying a sign that she’d made that read, simply: "Thanks, FBI!"

“People are overjoyed,” Rachel Manias told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “I feel like we can move forward with honest government. We have a real fresh slate.”

Look, most public officials are honest, hard working and keep the best interests of their community in mind. But there are some who don’t think twice before violating the public trust. It might be a border official who takes cash in exchange for letting an un-inspected truck through a border crossing or a building inspector who looks the other way at a construction site’s bad wiring. What if that truck carried a weapon of mass destruction or that building later had a deadly fire? There are culpable people on both sides of this type equation--those who take the payoff and those of our neighbors who give it. And with every act of corruption the public’s trust in government erodes that much more. The FBI says it is determined to hold corrupt public officials accountable but the Bureau needs our help.

Let’s face it, rotten politicians and public officials thrive when we ignore what they do. They fail when we are active in our neighborhoods, when we go to public meetings, when the media shines the white-hot spotlight on their actions and when we show up at the polls to vote out the bums. They fail when citizens are courageous enough to go to authorities and report their dishonesty. In other words, public corruption exists only when we let it.

Let’s not let it anymore. Let’s all be brave.

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The Extreme Measures Taken to Hide Fingerprints

by Andrea Campbell

John Herbert Dillinger got an extraordinary share of newspaper headlines as a notorious bank robber in the 1930s. His violent gang terrorized the Midwest between fall 1933 and summer 1934. They robbed banks, killed 10 men, wounded seven others, and staged three jail breaks, during which Dillinger killed one sheriff and wounded two guards. It is believed that he tried to obliterate his fingertips, but FBI agents say they were still able to match what was left of his prints.

From the moment fingerprints became the most reliable way to identify criminals and match evidence to crime, criminals have been trying to get rid of them.

IT STARTS IN THE WOMB

Friction ridge patterns that create fingerprints start in about the fourth month of pregnancy. Their purpose is to help us grip objects we pick up. They remain the same throughout our lifetimes, although they  grow larger until we become adults. Then they stay distinctively ours until we decompose.
 

Jim Patten, a staff writer for The (Lawrence, Mass.) Eagle-Tribune, tells the story of Edgardo Tirado, who, in a February 7, 2008, drug arrest, surprised police when he took off his gloves in the booking room. Lawrence police Detective Daron Fraser says, “I thought right away this guy is hiding from something in his past and is not who he says he is.” When the gloves came off, Tirado showed the booking agent thick stitches in rows on the tips of his fingers and thumbs (photo right). His story wasn’t credible; he told officers the wounds came from defending himself in a knife fight and claimed the other man had cut his fingertips and thumbs. As to where the fight took place, he wouldn’t say. While the police had their doubts, next day information came in from an officer who had dealt with the man earlier.

 
According to reporter Mimi Hall, writing for USA TODAY, “It was after dark when Border Patrol agents in Douglas, Arizona, nabbed Mateo Cruz-Cruz allegedly jumping the fence from Mexico. At first, they noticed nothing unusual about his fingers. But when they got him to the station to take his prints, special operations supervisor Ulysses Duronslet says, the agents made a gruesome discovery: "The tips of the 25-year-old man’s fingers were blackened and burned.” Apparently, Cruz-Cruz had a prior conviction for sexual assault of a minor in Iowa and was deported in March of 2004.
 
Officials claim finding more and more criminals who alter their fingerprints by burning the tips, using acid or other corrosives. A 2007 federal court recently sentenced Dr. Jose L. Covarrubias, of Nogales, Mexico, to 18 months in prison for replacing the fingerprints of a fugitive named Marc T. George with skin from the bottom of his feet. Although a U.S. citizen, Dr. Covarrubias holds a Mexican medical license. The 49-year-old doctor faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison. George, a Jamaican national who was involved in a drug ring, was caught and arrested sneaking across the U.S.-Mexico border May 2006, bandaged and limping badly from the painful procedure. He was facing money-laundering charges.

Every time our government ratchets up efforts to catch and identify people, Manuel Padilla, chief border patrol agent in New Orleans, says: “Whenever we do something, there’s always a counteraction to try to beat it.” Since 9/11 and our government’s tightened security measures, more people are taking similar steps to erase fingerprints, just as John Dillinger did when he tried to burn off his prints with corrosive acid in the '30s. 

 WE COUNTER
 
 When officers suspect something suspicious while printing, they inquire further. Today, in more serious crimes, the printing procedure involves taking full palm prints. Eagle-Tribune writer Patten says that in 2006, police used facial recognition software technology at the Middleton jail to identify a prisoner who had bitten off his fingertips to avoid being deported. (Photo above left. Source: Andover Police Department and an IAI Presentation; Courtesy, Mr. K. J. Burke).
 

The software breaks up facial images and assigns them numeric values, similar to the AFIS system for fingerprints. Of course, in the case of Middleton jail, officials also took a digital picture of the prisoner's hands and fed the image into the computer.

IT'S EVERYWHERE
 

In Calais, France, migrants hoping to get into Great Britain are also mutilating their hands, often trying to remove layers of skin to prevent analysis. Prefect Gerard Gavory claimed that at least 57 asylum seekers questioned in the port town over the past few weeks “had their finger prints removed.” Often polyurethane glue or cuts with razors are used. The most common method however, was burning all 10 on a stove burner. In response, a joint database within the European Union, called Eurodoc, stores asylum-seekers' prints. Gavory added: “We're not sending them to their deaths, but towards peaceful zones. In organizing a return, we will be sending a strong signal to the Afghans. At the moment they have a sense of complete impunity in Calais.”

HOW TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?

Criminals often don’t realize that altering their fingertips in extreme ways also makes them more distinctive and, ironically, thus recognizable. History’s most famous case is Robert J. Phillips, aka Roscoe Pitts, who in 1941 had his fingertips sutured to his chest for weeks in an effort to smooth out his prints. A long time-criminal doing bank robberies and burglaries, Phillips made his New Jersey physician perform this painful operation. Phillips, however, was identified on the basis of the unaltered peripheral skin areas surrounding his fingertips and the pattern on the second joint of his fingers.

Another more recent example, this time rather successful, is Randolph Clifton Kling. Kling managed to obtain 83 driving licenses after altering both his appearance and thumb print. He got by for more than a decade, until finally arrested in 2000.

So what’s next? Likely biometrics — using patterns from the retina and iris. Facial recognition use is becoming more widespread; and, of course, vocal or voice recognition is always an option when circumstances merit. All these systems have their problems though, and so far, DNA is the most reliable. That is, until someone figures out how to manipulate our genes.

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Cutting-edge FBI Data Technology

by Andrea Campbell

This article comes by way of friend and colleague Nancy Thorp. Since I didn't know much about the technological side of forensic science, Nancy got this information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its press releases. I'm happy to share that with you here!

 When FBI agents are on the trail of suspected terrorists, with appropriate legal approval they can access suspects’ e-mail, telephone calls, text messages, and even computer hard drives. But what do they do with those millions of pieces of digital data? How can all that raw intelligence be organized, analyzed, and shared to help stop a terrorist plot before it’s too late?

The answer to those questions can be found within the FBI Special Technologies and Applications Office (STAO). In the high-stakes arena of national security, STAO is one of the  FBI's most technologically advanced players.

Using custom-designed tools and computer applications so innovative they are sometimes beyond state of the art, STAO’s specialty is teasing out critical information — a hidden video file on a hard drive, a key connection among tens of thousands of e-mails — from almost any form of electronic media. Where digital evidence is concerned, STAO Section Chief Christopher (Todd) Doss explained, “We find the needle in the haystack.”

Created in the late 1990s and dramatically enhanced as a result of 9/11, the office consists of more than 200 people with expertise in various digital disciplines. In addition to Bureau personnel, the team collaborates with some of the brightest computer scientists from private industry, academia, and other government agencies.

The primary goal of STAO is to provide investigators with tools to manage and analyze large volumes of digital intelligence and cross-correlate it, making it available to FBI personnel all over the world and to FBI partners in the law enforcement and intelligence communities. Is a piece of data from a cell phone in Southeast Asia linked to a terrorism case in Seattle? STAO applications can help connect the dots.

Some of STAO’s capabilities include:

Visual Analysis. Finding patterns among enormous amounts of related data exchanged among suspects is a huge challenge. Instead of wading through vast lists of such data in a traditional text-based way, such as in a spreadsheet, STAO created a visual solution called FANTOM. It allows agents and analysts to examine connections visually in three dimensions. Each suspect's data relationship is represented on a large computer monitor by a single point, or "node." Lines, or "edges," between nodes indicate one or more communications made between suspects using a particular method. 

Using FANTOM, agents find answers to important questions — “Which nodes were most active and most central to all the communications?" "What communications were made at a particular date and time?" Or, "If two suspects exchanged text messages before planting an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), who else were they texting?" This cutting-edge visual application enables the kind of interactive computing that can provide vital intelligence to investigators.

Malicious code analysis. STAO’s experts on malicious software — malware — work closely with FBI Cyber Division on matters including computer intrusions. These experts are often called upon to testify in child pornography cases when defendants claim that a computer virus was responsible for downloading child porn to their computers. “We can tell if that was indeed the case,” an agent explained. (See: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd632948.aspx for a definition and FAQs about malware.)

Data management. STAO maintains powerful, easy-to-use systems that can store seized digital files including text, audio, video, and photos. Approved users can search, filter, and share case information with others in the intelligence community — an invaluable tool in FBI fight against terrorism.

“The bottom line,” said one STAO official, “is that our office helps the Bureau and others do their jobs. And whenever we can help catch the bad guy on the criminal side, or provide intelligence on the counter-terrorism side, that’s what we’re here for.”

Source: FBI and Nancy Thorp with Police Pulse (a police networking group)

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Reading Body Language with Joe Navarro

by Andrea Campbell

I am happy to share my new friend, Joe Navarro, with my readers. I think you'll enjoy my interview with Joe and take him into your thoughts.

Q.: Joe, for Women in Crime Ink readers, please describe your background.

 A.: I was born in Cuba, but as with so many, we fled communism and the cult of Fidel Castro and found refuge in America. I grew up in Miami and went to school at Brigham Young University to play football. Upon graduation, I was hired by the FBI, where I served for twenty-five years in counter-intelligence. In essence, I was a spy-catcher.

 Q.: What are non-verbal communications?

 A.: Non-verbal communications encompass anything we do as humans that share thoughts, feelings, or intentions, or that appeal to our aesthetic as well as comfort needs. Everything from art, to soothing colors, to good behavior, comes under that broad umbrella, including body language, which is exactly that: what we communicate with our bodies. 

 Q.: Your book, "What Every Body is Saying," is the result of what type of experience?

A.: What Every Body is Saying is based on thirty-plus years of study, training, and teaching, along with hands-on experience. I wrote it to share with others what I learned the hard way by studying non-verbals for many years and by using  that knowledge in a forensic and intelligence setting, where few mistakes are allowed.
(At right above: A man with compressed lips. Compressed lips are always associated with negative emotions or with something we dislike.)

Q.: In "Every Body," you mention that your family and childhood are partly responsible for your instinct for this discipline. How so? 

A.: As with most children, I learned to read those around me. In doing so, I learned to look for their most-useful behaviors, and I learned to look for the things I saw them look for. My mother always insisted on making others comfortable; in doing so she garnered friends from many walks of life and faith. I learned the power of making others comfortable to achieve better interpersonal relationships. Coming to a country where I did not speak the language meant I had to rely heavily on learning to read others. So I became very sensitive to body language.

 Q.: What are some key principles readers should keep in mind about speed-reading others?

 A.: 1. Our bodies are constantly transmitting information about our thoughts, feelings, and intentions. There is no such thing as a body that says nothing. The body is always “on.” Even when someone is deep in REM sleep, their body tells us when they're having a nightmare.
 2. Everyone has different but consistent ways of displaying comfort and discomfort in real time. You may bite your lip when you are stressed, while I press my lips together. Each action and expression serves the same purpose: to pacify us.
 3. We can improve our interactions with others, from children and spouses to workmates and friends, by reading their body language accurately.
 4. Being able to read and interpret body language is key to success in any venture and what Daniel Goleman talked about when he wrote Emotional Intelligence.
 5. Body language alerts us to dangers or potential dangers. When Gavin de Becker wrote The Gift of Fear, he was talking about body language that warns us of danger. It's something we should teach our children and loved ones. For example: Teach children to summon an elevator themselves and to stand far back from the doors while waiting. Only once they've read and quickly summed up the body language of those inside as safe should they enter. Children who wait too close to the doors may feel compelled to step inside as soon as the car stops, without taking a moment to assess others around them.
 6. We can use body language to enhance leadership qualities as well as communicate more effectively. The best leaders have great body-language skills.
 7. Body language is a world-wide lingua franca. When all else fails, our body language will save us.
 8. Non-verbals are all around us, from the curbside appeal of your local bank to your own, personal appeal.
 9. Body language can assist us in detecting deception, but that's very tricky.
 10. Learning to read others accurately enhances our lives and those of the people we care for.

Q.: How were you able to use these skills with the FBI?

A.: In the FBI, body language is the one element you use every day, whether for surveillance or for interviewing.  We watch as a criminal leaves his house. How do we, as observers, know he is up to no good? We look at how often he looks at his watch, how often he peers inside the store he is considering robbing, how many cigarettes he smokes every thirty minutes as his stress level builds, how often he touches the belt on his strong-arm side, where he's hidden his weapon. All these non-verbals tell the trained eye that he's “casing” a place to rob, and that he is armed. 
(At right: Here a woman is touching the neck dimple, or suprasternal notch, which we do when we are insecure, concerned, anxious, afraid, or emotionally troubled.)

Q.: What exactly is counter-intelligence? How many people are in this profession?

A.: Counter-intelligence is that part of the intelligence community that looks for spies and terrorists. It attempts to identify, recruit, penetrate or neutralize them through legal means. The number of people who work counter-intelligence is always classified, but I can tell you we never had enough help. At any one time, we have 20 or more countries spying aggressively against the United States; counter-intelligence agents try to block such spying. 

Q.: What are the benefits of knowing body language and its signs?

A.:  The benefits are that you can read people’s feelings, thoughts, intentions. For instance, while you are talking to someone, you notice their right foot is pointed toward the exit. You know they would like to talk more, but the foot is very accurately saying "I have to leave -- now, in this direction." It allows you to say, “I know you have to get going; we'll talk later.” Or, you see that someone immersed in a cell-phone conversation is holding his heel to the ground and toes in the air. When he's through, you ask: “Good news?” The question is safe because the posture of his foot already answered you. Reading body language makes you look smart, sensitive and caring, at times almost clairvoyant.

Q.: How could we, as ordinary people, interpret and use these signals? How do we learn to do that? How long does it take to become proficient? 

A.: The beauty of body language is that we come elegantly equipped to study it and put it to use immediately. It's not like trigonometry. If I tell you, accurately, that we only touch or massage our necks when something is troubling us, you can put that knowledge to use immediately. And the beauty of it is that you can learn to read and empirically validate more unconscious cues every day. It's a skill that can be learned but is perishable if not practiced. Every study I've read says we can always hone these skills, and that women are usually slightly better than men at reading non-verbals. How long it takes to become proficient depends on how much effort you put into learning and practicing. I've had people take my online course and become highly proficient and professional within four months.

An interesting phenomenon is today's high incidence of autism in children. Autistic children are innately unable to read body language, including basic facial expressions. They must be taught to recognize non-verbal cues and to understand what they mean. That training may help them work with other people and even develop empathy, breaking through their internal isolation.

Q.: Would you relate a particularly interesting criminal case to illustrate this discipline?

A.: I interviewed one spy for over a year. During that time, he confessed, but we didn't arrest him because we wanted him to lead us to others. As in most spy or terror cells, each member knows as little as possible. This spy didn't have the particular information we were looking for, but he likely knew someone who did. He refused to identify anyone involved with him. So we assembled a stack of index cards with the names of each person who might have access to that information.

Twice he reacted to a name; his pupils constricted and the orbits of his eyes narrowed. Out of 32 names, his unconscious eye behavior accurately revealed the two who later confessed. Our pupils constrict and our eye orbits narrow in response to things that can hurt us or make us uncomfortable. (At right, above: This man is rubbing his hands with his fingers intertwined. That reveals a high degree of concern or worry. It usually shows up when someone is trying to explain something very complicated or dense, or when someone is receiving bad news.)

Q.: How have you used these skills outside of criminal applications?

A.: In business, knowing body language is imperative. At one meeting where two sides were negotiating and a contract was being read aloud, I noticed opposing counsel purse his lips when he got to one particular paragraph. Because I caught the signal in time, our lead negotiator used the information then and there, saving us almost $13 million. Pursed lips mean "I disagree" or "I'd rather we do something else."

Q.: What is “concerted observation”? How do we learn to use it, and how hard is it to learn? Is it beyond the reach of some people no matter how hard they try? 

A.: Concerted observation means that we see, observe, interpret, and then use the knowledge body language gives us. It's the opposite of passive observation, where we see cues but don't interpret them or use them. 

Some people can't read others, so they behave in ways that drive others away. They stand too close, don’t know when to stop talking, touch too much instead of observing the other person's unspoken reactions. When someone violates those rules, they make us uncomfortable. In turn, making others uncomfortable burdens the violator with a lifelong handicap that keeps desires and ambitions out of reach.

Q.: What are “multiple tells”?

A.: Multiple tells are clusters of behavior. I see or hear something I don’t like; I tense my jaw, compress my lips and squint my eyes. I don’t have to say a word. That cluster of behaviors, or multiple tells, reveal  attest to something negative no matter what my mouth says.

Q.: Do people have micro-expressions that are so natural, they don’t even realize they are doing them? Feel free to share a case.

A.: Think of micro-expressions as tiny leakage. We all leak something. Maybe it’s a fleeting smirk or a quick squint. The fact that it is small suggests that I am trying to suppress it. Ironically, trying to suppress it is what reveals it. Micro-expressions are very accurate. I interviewed a man who pushed his glasses up his nose with the middle finger of his right hand every time he was asked a question about his travel to China. This let me know he really didn't like those questions; otherwise, he'd have pushed his glasses up with his index finger. 

Q.: What are the most important features to fix on? And how do you observe someone without letting them know they're being watched?

A.: You have to relax your own eyes so people don’t feel you're stalking them. When your eyes relax, they take in more information. Learn to observe the whole body. Most people focus on the face, yet the feet are more accurate in revealing true feelings. For instance, if you walk next to someone you don't like, your feet will not step anywhere close to them.

Q.: Are all of us hard-wired to do one obvious thing?

A.: We're all hard-wired for emotional behavior and anything limbic in nature, such as the sense of smell. The limbic system, also known as the Paleomammalian brain or primitive brain, controls emotions such as anger, fear, and pleasure, along with motivations including those related to basic survival. So if you walk near the edge of a cliff, your limbic system makes you move carefully, protecting you from falling off.  This is hard-wired in. So is covering or closing our eyes when we hear something we don't like. Even children who are born blind cover their eyes.  

Q.: Asked a list of questions, such as “Did you do A? Did you do B?", do people always give themselves away with their body language?

A.: General questions don't usually elicit reactions that reveal the truth. Specific questions often do. For example, asked "did you kill her with a gun?" and "did you kill her with an ice pick?", the murderer knows he used an ice pick, so he'll show signs of discomfort only in reaction to the ice-pick question.

 Q.: Do you analyze people you meet, as a matter of habit?

 A.: It never stops. And it shouldn't for you. Always look for signs of comfort and discomfort. Like software, the search for signs runs in the background and alerts you when necessary. No, I never shut it down.

 Q.: Can parents use body-language knowledge to know their children better?

 A.: Absolutely. The ability to note and interpret body-language cues will help you see when a child is struggling with something, for example. You can use it to defuse tension between you and your child just by standing to the side when you ask questions rather than directly in front of him. When you stand directly in front of someone, they stop wanting to talk to you. People talk more honestly when sitting or walking side-by-side than when directly in front of each other. You can teach your children body language, as already described, to avoid dangers by reading others. There's much more, similarly useful, information in my book. 

Q.: So you blog? Where and why?

Yes. On Psychology Today.  It broadens my exposure to people interested in the subjects I write about; some 10,000 people read the blog articles.  

Q.: What are some of your other books about?

A.: Advanced Interviewing Techniques is about how to best shape questions, your own body language, and other factors to elicit the most information. 
Hunting Terrorists explains the terrorist mind and gives clue to identifying terrorists. 
Read ‘em and Reap is about the "tells" of poker players.
Louder than Words is about the non-verbals of business. 

I also have short, to-the-point books on Kindle. They deal with a variety of subjects including spotting psychopaths, body language of dating, and the psychology of body language. They can be found at:  http://tinyurl.com/y8nsmhv

Q.: What do you think of the popular television show "Lie to Me"? How about The Mentalist?

A.: The science behind Lie to Me is excellent, but I can assure you it's never as easy as they make it seem. Never. Many of the behaviors associated with deception are also associated with discomfort or stress. That’s why so many people who've since been exonerated by DNA had earlier confessed. They suffered so much stress under police questioning that they looked guilty; they signed confessions to relieve the stress. Best example of this: the New York Jogger case, in which five innocent teens were convicted of the rape and nearly fatal beating of a 28-year-old woman based on their videotaped confessions. They confessed after long hours of stressful police interrogation; they withdrew the confessions and pled not guilty at trial. The boys spent years in prison, and were only exonerated 13 years later when the real attacker confessed. Using the only DNA found at the scene, police verified his confession; the DNA matched him. Oops, people do become stressed when not properly interviewed.

As for the Mentalist, good TV I suppose, but not very accurate when it comes to the reality of it all. The shows are interesting but not realistic. 

Q.: What's on your agenda for the future?

A.:  I have eight books in my head waiting to be written. I'm scheduled for some 45 speeches a year, all over the world, for the next three years. I'm also hoping to make a new video with the BBC.  

If you have any questions about body language, write me at www.jnforensics.com. I try to answer all my e-mails.
Photos courtesy of Harper Collins

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