Re: Motives and false negatives
Excellent idea in principle David M, but a few would not be enough. The population sizes for false positive and false negative testing must be at least approximately the same size to get reliable results. Consequently in this case false negative testing is pretty much impossible to perform. That's just one of the reasons why "statistical" justification for this intrusive technology is without merit.
However that won't stop it being used, as statistics are only used selectively to justify adoption. There are also apparently moves to introduce "lie detectors" into some interrogations, despite decades' worth of objective evidence that they don't detect lies, only physiological stress.
However both these technologies may, by frightening people into behaving in certain ways, serve coercively to elicit predictable behaviour patterns that can be "assumed" to indicate guilt.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
