Scientific researchers are moving past polygraphs and touting a new "science" called 'brain printing':

In the quest to build a better lie detector, scientists are seeking to go beyond the body's indirect signals to the very seat of deceit: the brain. One researcher has built a headband outfitted with lights and detectors able to "see" blood-flow changes in the brain. Another uses magnetic resonance imaging to snap several split-second pictures.

....Research subjects wearing the headband are told to answer some questions truthfully and others deceptively. At the moment a subject makes the decision to lie, before even uttering it, there's a milliseconds-long burst of blood flow. Those bursts are read by the sensors and show up as spikes on a laptop computer.

We agree with these critics:

"There's only one thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work, and that's a lie detector that does work," said physicist Robert Park, a longtime polygraph critic. "It's the last invasion of privacy that you can imagine, and it frightens me that we seem to be almost able to do it."

....Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program, warns that none of the new technology has been proven to work like the scientists claim. But if it does, Steinhardt said, "then it would become another weapon in the arsenal of those who want to put us into a surveillance society where every action, every deed and one's very thoughts can be monitored, categorized and correlated."

[link via PatriotWatch]