No benefit in using lie detectors

Aug 31 2008 by Ian Robson, Sunday Sun

IT’S a bad day for anyone who believes modern technology is fallible.

Four North councils are testing a voice recognition telephone system to trap benefit cheats.

We’ve got the usual suspects banging on about how great it is. But is it really? Perhaps it’s not the ground-breaking gadget it’s cracked up to be. The system works by picking up changes in voice during a telephone conversation to detect stress.

Pass the test and you get housing and other benefits from Derwentside, Durham, Chester-le-Street and Sedgefield, all County Durham councils. Fail it and you’re marked as a suspected fraudster.

There is a real possibility that the wrong people will be singled out by the computer. After all, it’s not only fraudsters who suffer from stress.

Others include the widow, perhaps recently bereaved, who is making a claim on her own for the first time. Or the single parent, fraught with worry, who has a hundred things racing through her mind.

And what about claimants who are uncomfortable using the phone or simply do not have the information required at hand and get flustered when the operator asks a question they can’t answer immediately.

All of these, and more, could develop stress as the phone call progresses. And, under the pilot system, all would get the attention of the “Voice Police”.

The system is a variation of the lie detector . . . another bit of technology that should be regarded with suspicion.

Among early pioneers of the lie detector was a certain William Moulton Marsden. He was a nutjob American who lived with two women and was heavily into bondage.

He also created Wonder Woman . . . in which he explored topics of submission and dominance when the comic book character first appeared in the1940s.

Many experts have yet to be convinced of the science behind lie detectors. They are not allowed in British courts and there are good reasons for that.

Derwentside and the other councils might be better off borrowing Wonder Woman’s magic lasso. The lasso, as any comic fans knows, forces those tied up in it to tell the truth . . .