Can we stop using the word "finger" please?
That is all.
London council to use lie detectors to finger benefit cheats
Lambeth Council has done a deal with KPMG Capita* to use voice recognition software to finger cheats contacting call centres to sort out benefits. Everyone contacting the centre will be told they are being scanned and will then be asked 19 questions."Voice Risk Analysis" will then finger voices it considers suspicious. The …
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Tuesday 11th September 2007 15:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
UK media in London-centric shock !
Heard this news 2 weeks ago. Birmingham City Council have already sent letters out informing claimants of the system.
Personally, as long as a questionable/negative result is merely used to direct investigators attention to one case over another, then I can't see a problem ... it's not that different to investigating every <n>th case where <n> is decided upon by the daily horoscope etc etc etc.
Problem is, this being the UK, it won't be long before we skip the "investigation" phase (as that requires people and money) and jump straight to "you failed the lie-detector, so you can wave goodbye to your benefits).
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Tuesday 11th September 2007 15:58 GMT Dan
Stress?
So, the KPMG software is likely to flag up any call where the claimant is told something they don't want to hear, surely?
Sorry sir, you are not entitled to benefit x because you did not correctly fill in form v1256(b) section 9 question 2a...
But, but...!!
Sorry sir, blah blah, stress goes through roof...
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Tuesday 11th September 2007 15:58 GMT Chris
Stress meters are "lie detectors"
In this day in age, it amazes me how many seemingly intelligent people actually consider stress to be symbolic of lying, and how they figure measuring stress can detect when a person is lying. Mind you, they're not actually measuring stress. They're measuring a person's physical and physiological reactions, which may or may not be stress-related. What's the difference between someone becoming stressed when lying and worrying about getting caught, and someone telling the truth but worried that the machine will flag them as lying anyway? Many people are stressed/nervous when speaking to a person of authority to begin with. I, myself, don't like to talk on the phone to anyone, so I'll almost always sound stressed/nervous. There's a reason the courts (at least the U.S. courts, to my knowledge) consider "lie detector" tests to be inadmissible as evidence -- because they're not accurate. They flag a lot of innocent people as lying, and they let the true criminals go (the ones who know how to control their reactions).
Personally, I would question whether this is a way to claim that all people requesting benefits are lying, and thus not dishing out any benefits.
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Tuesday 11th September 2007 15:58 GMT Harry Stottle
Not quite Snakeoil but...
I suspect they're using the Israeli company Nemesysco's "Layered Voice Analysis" software which has been in use by some of the Insurance companies since 2003.
(see http://www.nemesysco.com/technology-lvavoiceanalysis.html)
as opposed to the "Voice Stress Analysis" software
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_stress_analysis)
You can even download software claiming to do the job here:
http://www.lie-detection.com/
Neither of the voice analysers are quite snakeoil but they don't work very well. That is to say, they do work, but not in any sense that could be legally useful, or more importantly, as a valuable biometric security tool capable of spotting malintent.
The best claim they can make for the technology is that it identifies stress in the voice with significantly better than chance reliability. But it cannot identify the source of stress, so inferring anything at all from the stress is of limited use.
It still has far too many false positives and false negatives to be used, for example, to sustain a fraud prosecution. All it can do is warn a human in the loop that it might be a good idea to look more carefully at the callers' claims.
Nevertheless, ANNOUNCING ITS EXISTENCE - and making people believe that there is a tool which can detect their lies - can have a useful deterrent effect. And that is what is really going on.
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Tuesday 11th September 2007 17:12 GMT Morely Dotes
Wonderful method of making the professional scammer's job easier
Neither the polygraph nor the VSA/LVA systems detect anything unusual when someone who spends all their time lying, is lying. All it takes to fool the devices is a lack of conscience (and perhaps a couple of shots of Dutch courage, for the novice scammer).
So the people who are "caught" by this system will be the harried Mums with a few rowdy children in the flat, and the worried parents who need help due to unusual expenses.
Those who make a living at "playing the system" will be given a free pass, and those with legitimate stress in their lives will be shown the red card.
Only a heartless professional bureaucrat, possibly one who gets a kickback from the vendor, would have even considered this system.
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Wednesday 12th September 2007 00:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Lambeth are still mad, just mad government loyalists now
Lambeth Labour Party are as mad as they ever were, just mad Labour rightists now. This quackery makes them look so tough and hard ya know - strutting round the borough - ban this, ban that, asbos here and there..
Has anyone suggested using polygraphs for their recent ALMO announcements? (support votes were counted as "don't knows" as well as "yes"). Tests for crack in the Council chamber are long overdue..
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Wednesday 12th September 2007 04:19 GMT Jack Prichard
Not just sheep in vac...
How about a standard of measurement that measures how much government spend to fix problems against how much these problems cost in the first place?
To use this story as an example:
If the total cost of benefit fraud for the council is (all costs in New Zealand Dollars, of course) $1,000,000 per year and the voice recognition system costs $100,000,000 to set up and $500,000 per year to maintain. Then the system can be said to have an initial cost of 100 Beneyears and half a Beneyear there after.
This could be applied to all sorts of things.
Jack
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Wednesday 12th September 2007 04:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Test the council
Personally I don't care if my taxes go to give the odd person in need, who doesn't technically qualify, 55 quid a week.
If we really want to encourage the conscientious use of tax payers money, run lie detection tests on the government, local and national. They bilk us for significantly more.
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Wednesday 12th September 2007 09:41 GMT radigois jean-max
scourge of society....
what a brilliant idea it is..... how on earth didn't anyone think of it before??
Coming from a government that sold us a war based on lies, that promotes in its own capital the biggest arm fair in the world, and an economy growing on the back of the most impoverished nations of the planet, surely the unemployed are the scourge of this society, are a bunch of lazy liars and should be treated as such.In the meantime, i shall myself fake my C.V, lie about my experience, and go and work for a company that contributes directely or indirectely to global warning, poverty, wars etc.....
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