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Insurance Claims to be Tested by Lie Detector
Albanach writes "HBOS, one of the largest UK banks is to introduce random lie detector analysis of insurance claims according to this article from the Edinburgh Evening News. The three month trial will see calls from its 1.5 million policy holders randomly subjected to voice stress analysis. Those flagged up will then receive a set of questions designed to expose 'potential fraudsters'."
Antipolygraph.org
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Unless I missed something, these are banks doing this not the government or police. And they aren't detaining you or performing any search or seizure. It is a phone system that looks for stress in your voice. I am sure it is pretty unreliable and not admissable in any court of law, though.
Or did you just mean - First Post?
From a page about the Truster Voice Stress Analyzer:
What is a voice stress analyzer, you might wonder? It is a machine that measures components of the human voice--frequency modulations--that are correlated with stress. No machine can detect stress directly, much less distinguish whether the stress is due to lying, guilt, stutter, fear, constipation, or some other emotion or physical condition. The frequency modulations, called "micro tremors" by those who measure them, must be interpreted by a human being. The machine doesn't do the analysis, the examiner does.
Here are some basic facts about insurance companies:-
1) They are out to make money
2) They make said money based purely on others suffering
3) They will try to weasel (no offence to weasels) out of *any* contract
4) Any money saved will *not* reduce premiums but increase bonuses and dividends
5) Insurance companies have never worried about legality. If they reject 50 claims (illegally) and only 5 have the time, energy and money to fight them they have made money on the other 45. All costs that the 5 have to pay, they cannot get back
6) Lie detectors are inammisable in UK courts - but that won't stop Insurance companies.
In the UK insurance companies work a "your a lieing defrauding piece of crap" policy. It's not even "guilty until proven innocent" policy. Most of the time Insurance companies believe _all_ people are trying to illegally claim.
Thats why they do a baseline first. You start with questions that are pretty much guaranteed to be right.
Actually that' "baseline" is all bullshit.
The first questions to "calibrate" a polygraph are simply to mindfuck the person being tested. The user is told to tell the truth on a meaningless question, then told to lie on another meaningless question. The polygraph operator looks quizzically at the data then says something like "You're a terrible liar! It's off the charts!".
Lie detecting is fraud,whether by voice stress analysis or any other means. Read deeply at www.antipolygraph.org
It's about gaining confessions from gullible people. There is no real science involved. No lies are actually "detected".
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
I'm lucky enough to have been polygraphed, but not for having done something important. I was actually a guinea pig for police officers being trained to become polygraph operators. I am not sure if polygraphs are completely worthless or not, but I can guarantee that the way they're used is not as a "lie detection device" but more as an interrogation technique.
When they polygraphed me, they used some cheap magicians tricks. They had me choose a random card, then told me to say no for each card when they asked "is this your card?". Using the polygraph they claimed to know what card I had chosen -- but the way they set things up it seemed more like magicians tricks, than it did polygraph operation. They also showed me a wavy line with a spike afterward, claiming that the spike was when they detected me lying... but when I tried to get some more details they avoided the subject.
When it came for the real test, it ran mostly like what you see in the movies. After the test was done they thanked me for cooperating and then started trying to usher me out. I asked if I could see the results and they refused. Later on, I was told that a polygraph operator never shows their results to anybody, not even their partners.
I'm not sure if the machines are completely worthless, or if they can do something, but it certainly isn't a lie detector, it's more a "reaction sensor" if anything. I wouldn't be surprised if the cops get more out of watching someone's face, eyes, and posture than they do out of the device. It's just that the device has such fame from TV and movies that guilty people think it will catch them, making them more nervous (and presumably innocent people feel it will vindicate them, making them more relaxed).
The only think I learned from the experience is that police interrogators are good at getting confessions. That doesn't necessarily mean they're good at getting only guilty people to confess, however. If you ever get accused of something and a cop wants to question you, whether you're completely guilty or completely innocent, insist on a lawyer.