An ATM with an ear for the truth

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An ATM with an ear for the truth

New York Times | Jun 10, 2011

Russia's biggest retail bank is testing a machine that the old KGB might have loved, an ATM. with a built-in lie detector intended to prevent consumer credit fraud.

Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank's end. The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include "Are you employed?" and "At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?"

The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients include the Federal Security Service - the Russian domestic intelligence agency descended from the Soviet KGB.
Dmitri V Dyrmovsky, director of the center's Moscow offices, said the new system was designed in part by sampling Russian law enforcement databases of recorded voices of people found to be lying during police interrogations.
Technology consultants say the machines, if they go into commercial use, would be the banking world's first use of voice analysis in ATM's .

The bank's , Sberbank , executives said the new ATM's would adhere to Russian privacy laws.
The software detects nervousness or emotional distress, possible indications that a credit applicant is dissembling. That information, Mr Orlovsky said, would be used in combination with other data, including credit history.
A prototype of the machine is on display at Sberbank's Branch of the Future laboratory in a nondescript office building above a Moscow subway station.

The lab bristles with biometric surveillance technology. When a person walks in, a facial-recognition camera takes note, and an artificial voice cheerily greets known customers. Or, more often, it utters a glum, "Hello, you are not registered," because only a few of the lab's staff members have had their faces scanned so far.

Source: India Times