Slashdot Mirror
Technology and the End of Lying
HughPickens.com writes: The Washington Post reports that lying may soon become a lost art as our digital, data-hoarding culture means that more and more evidence is piling up to undermine our lies. "The research shows the way lies are really uncovered is by comparing what someone is saying to the evidence," says Tim Levine,"and with all these news analytics that can be done, it's going to enable lie detection in a way that was previously impossible." For example in Pennsylvania, police are prosecuting a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted earlier this year after data from her Fitbit didn't match up with her story, Just like you can Google a fact to end an argument, instant messaging programs that archive digital conversations make it easy to look back and see exactly who said what — and if it matches up with what a person is saying now. "Lying online can be very dangerous," says Jeff Hancock. "Not only are you leaving a record for yourself on your machine, but you're leaving a record on the person that you were lying to."
Even more alarming for liars is the incorporation of lie detector technology into the facial recognition technology. Researchers claim video-analysis software can analyze eye movement successfully to identify whether or not a subject is fibbing 82.5 percent of the time. The new technology heightens surveillance capabilities—from monitoring actions to assessing emotions—in ways that make an individual ever more vulnerable to government authorities, marketers, employers, and to any and every person with whom we interact. "We must understand that—at the individual level and with regard to interpersonal relations—too much truth and transparency can be harmful," says Norberto Andrade. "The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people."
Even more alarming for liars is the incorporation of lie detector technology into the facial recognition technology. Researchers claim video-analysis software can analyze eye movement successfully to identify whether or not a subject is fibbing 82.5 percent of the time. The new technology heightens surveillance capabilities—from monitoring actions to assessing emotions—in ways that make an individual ever more vulnerable to government authorities, marketers, employers, and to any and every person with whom we interact. "We must understand that—at the individual level and with regard to interpersonal relations—too much truth and transparency can be harmful," says Norberto Andrade. "The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people."
Liars won't stop lieing. Few enough do even after confronted with their lies IRL. If anything, the lies will be more elaborately spun. That too can be done very convincingly online, we've seen enough evidence of that, too. Sure it will probably come out eventually. But by then the damage may well be done.
... not always... just easier in some cases. Good liars will learn to work around the evidence and bad liars as usual will be caught as they always have been caught.
I am disturbed by how many fake rape claims there are though. Something about that should be done. I don't know... maybe its all just media hype but it seems like that has gotten out of control and maybe the law needs to be tweaked a bit to discourage false claims.
One thing which I think is reasonable with false accusations is having the person sentenced to a smiliarly harsh prison sentence.
If you accuse someone of murder and you KNOW they didn't do it... if you fake the evidence up... whatever... and it is proven in a court of law that you did all that stuff. I'm okay sending that person away for 30 years. Because that's effectively what they tried to do to someone else. They tried to get someone kidnapped and kept in a cell for 30 years. Imagine if I just grabbed you and threw you in a cell. What would the sentence for that be? Again... at least 30 years of me in being in a cell, no?
Alright... so if some person makes a fake rape accusation and stages the whole thing... falsifies evidence... commits perjury. Then lets look at how long whomever would have gone to jail had the scam worked. If the guy would have gone to jail for 10 years then... if you can prove she tried to set him up... then she goes away for 10 years.
The sorts of people that do this thing are generally cowards. They do it because they think they can get away with it and they think the consequences of being caught will be nothing.
If you make it clear that their story will be audited and if it is proven that they tried to set someone up that they'll do the time instead... I think a lot of these bullshit cases will go away.
I am applying this to all crimes. Not just rape. Everything. If you try and make it look like someone stole something... same thing If the person would go to jail for 4 years or something... you go to jail instead for 4 years.
Do not make false claims before the court.
The sword of justice must cut both ways.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Technology is just another piece of evidence that can be manipulated. Would a good liar use it to their advantage? Absolutely. Had Risley been smarter, could she have taken a nap and then started thrashing around as she woke up? Yes. Then the FitBit would be _evidence_, not contradiction, that she was raped.
There's a reason things like lie detector tests don't have to be admissible in court- they're still fallible. Don't be fooled into thinking anything new still relying on humans to analyze and use is going to be any different.
Lying is a self defense mechanism. When someone faces a threat it takes more energy to build up the courage and tell the truth, because our natural instinct is to tell a lie point the finger to someone else. For the most part telling the truth is better long term, but for many of those white lies it is probably better.
Now on more of a point.
This technology isn't about finding lying, nor is Though shalt not lie one of the 10 commandants. It is baring false witness or perjury. In essence where they need to take your statements as truth. So in this article electronic data is useful in solving crime and if you lied in court then you can be shown that you did, due to more evidence. Was I talking on the cell phone when the cop pulled me over? We can take his word for it, or we can just show the court the phone bill showing that we didn't make a call at that time. Is that acquisition that I did something that day true, perhaps there is digital evidence that I wasn't there. A cell phone log, where I was getting some data at a different location, or on the other side showing that I was indeed there.
Now with this technology it can go both ways, that why it is extremely important that we don't have blanket over-site of our data, from the NSA, or other officials, unless via a warrant. We can't have truth cops, or even being flagged for suspicious activity if we very from our normal activities.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The art of a good lie is in weaving it into truth.
A lie on its own without some truth to back it up is doomed to failure. This has always been the case. If you want to be convincing in your lies, they need to be just small parts of a larger story which is mainly truth.
If I told you that I was once interviewed by the TV news, talking about Princess Diana just after she died, then you might disbelieve me. And you'd be right to: it never happened.
However, if I told you about the day I was walking around London minding my own business when a roving news camera crew approached me and started asking me questions about her, and then it ended up on TV... well, then you might be more inclined to believe it, because you'd know (or could check) that I had been in London that day, and the events described are perfectly plausible (there were a lot of news crews doing exactly that in London around the time). This version of the story is also a lie, but it's a lot more believable, and more importantly, the lie can survive a basic fact-check.
So, no. This isn't the "end of lying". It may mean that a good liar now needs to be more careful in building the back-story, and it might mean that a few more liars are caught out, but lying in general will continue. It's human nature.
The only time lying is permissible is in hard situations like the classic "Nazi asking if there are Jews in your house" or some other flavor of serious and unjust consequences for telling the truth. For most people, there won't be dire consequences because their lies will just make them lose face the way it's always been. For women like the one in PA who is being prosecuted, it will help those they victimize (both the male unjustly accused and real rape victims whose claims are viewed more skeptically).
People wonder why lying is such a problem now in courts, well the reason why is that perjury is a joke compared to what it should be. The Old Testament definitely got that right. The price in the Mosaic Law for perjury was to be sentenced to the exact same punishment that is ordered for the list of offenses filed against the defendant. If the woman in PA knew that her perjury would get her say 20-30 years in prison and permanent sex offender status, you can bet she'd have taken it a lot more seriously than the usual at most few years it actually carries. Add a civil component that immediately pierces government immunity and you'd see cops behaving like boy scouts on the stand.
"The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people." Maybe this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. It makes cultures too cautious to go explore the Universe. Christopher Columbus, for example did not lie when he told Isabella that the Earth was 18,000 miles in circumference; he simply had bad data. But the ancient Greeks had good data that could have been replicated in the time of Columbus. If it had been suspected that the distance to India, sailing west from Spain, was an extra 7000 miles, the mission would have been "no go".
Not only lying will vanish then, but changing one's mind over time, too :-(
This is not quite correct about Columbus. Pretty much everyone except Columbus knew that Columbus was wrong about the travel distance to Asia. In fact, Columbus proposed his voyage to King John II of Portugal as early as 1485, and was laughed out of court. His brother was rejected by Henry VII of England in 1486 for the same reason.
The Spanish Crown financed Columbus, over the objections of their scientific advisers , for two reasons: the conquest of Grenada was wrapped up in 1492, and the Crown needed to find something for their surplus soldiers and sailors to do, and more importantly, the Crown was absolutely desperate to do something, anything, to break Portugal's trading monopoly with the East around the Cape of Good Hope.