Bullshit Risk Detection Technology
When stories start appearing about the government’s plans for a nationwide rollout of the use of so-called ‘lie detectors’ to trap ‘benefit cheats’ there seems to little else for a diligent blogger to do but run the whole idea through their own personal bullshit detector to see what shakes loose.
So, lets start at the beginning by knocking a large hole in the biggest lie of all, the idea that what the government are rolling out here is actually a lie detector, or as its manufacturer seems to prefer, ‘voice risk analysis technology’.
The science which underpins systems of this kind is nothing particularly new.
Voice stress analysis (VSA), which is the basic foundation of these systems, has been around since the 1970s and, in its standard form, works by detecting involuntary psychophysiological modulations in a subsonic component of the voice called the ‘Lippold Tremor’ at a frequency of between 8Hz and 12Hz. As such, there is a reasonable body of research available relating to the use of this technology, most of which validates the claim that VSA systems can and do reliably detect whether an individual is stressed.
The basic problem with this, however, is that people can feel stressed for many different reasons, including getting the third degree from some twat of a council officer about their benefit claim.
The actual system in use in this case is not a straightforward VSA system but one based on what’s called ‘Layered Voice Analysis’, which is of a much more recent vintage and purports to assess the subject’s voice across a much wider frequency spectrum than conventional VSA, a distinction that we’ll come back to in a moment.
So far as this system’s use by local authorities is concerned, this comes in two parts.
In the first instance, the technology is used as a threat in order to persuade some of those who may be cheating the system to turn over a new leaf and not risk trying it on, and its in this mode that the system has delivered most of what has been claimed of it by way of successes as, according to Harrow Council, which ran the first pilot of the system on housing benefit and council tax benefit claimant, the number of existing claimants who voluntarily declared a change of circumstances which meant that they no longer needed to claim one of these benefits doubled in the first three months of the pilot.
So that’s obviously a good thing, then?
Maybe, but then again maybe not…
…because when a benefit claimant withdraws their claim the local authority is under no obligation to enquire after or ascertain whether they withdrew the claim for good reason or whether they were merely so intimidated by the threat of taking this test that they withdrew their claim even though they are perfectly entitled to the benefit they were claiming. I’ve no doubt that, as far as the council are concerned, they don’t give a toss about this fine distinction as each withdrawn claim is money saved (and also money lost due to the manner in which local authority revenue support grants are calculated but that’s another story) but as a matter of basic justice this does actually matter as it means that there is a clear possibility that genuine claimants may have been frightened off claiming money they are legally entitled to, money that they actually need.
As ever, when bullying and intimidation is deployed by the apparatus of the state it is the most vulnerable members of society who are the first to suffer, and when it comes to a system of this type and the manner in which its being used, the big concern has to be the potential impact it may have on claimants who have a history of mental illness. Laugh as we might at the paranoid image of a guy wearing a tinfoil hat to prevent the government/aliens beaming signals directly into their brain, that image still carries an underlying grain of truth. Some people are genuinely paranoid about such things and the prospect of being subjected to an electronic test that will purportedly reveal their innermost thoughts is more than enough to make such individuals run for cover and withdraw their claim despite it being a legitimate one.
In piloting this technology it is not enough for the government, Harrow Council or any of the local authorities who’ve been used this technology simply to assume that every additional claimant who withdrew their claim over and above the number who did so before this system was implemented must automatically have been cheating the system. An assessment of the extent to which it may also act to deprive genuine claimants of benefits to which they are legally entitled should also have been a feature of the pilot but, on what little published information is available, I can find nothing to suggest that this has been the case.
The second use to which this system is put is, naturally enough, that of actually administering the test to claimants and that, of course takes us on to the question of just exactly how reliable is this system given that a ‘positive’ result for voice stress places an individual under heavy suspicion that they may be defrauding the system…
…and the answer to that question if one looks at both the research literature and at the data from the Harrow pilot, doesn’t seem at all promising.
Before getting into the detail, it’s worth noting that the patent holder/developer of the LVA system that has been used in the pilot, Nemesysco, makes some pretty extravagant claims about its technology which, in its latest iteration, can allegedly identify:
various types of stress, cognitive processes, and emotional reactions.
Stress..? Okay, although I’m a touch dubious about the ‘various types’.
Emotional reactions..? Perhaps, but how accurately?
Cognitive processes…? No, I really don’t think so.
Although it’s being used over here, in a system provided by a company called Digilog, for assessing (and threatening) benefit and insurance claimants, Nemesysco’s main sales pitch in the US is directed towards Law Enforcement (hence the company’s seriously twatty name) and the more paranoid arms of corporate America, all of which ensure that the more you read about this ‘wonder’ system the more your personal bullshit detector goes right off the scale.
For example, the big new feature is the latest version of the system (6.50) is:
Added SAF (Sexual Arousal Factor) analysis – suitable for sexually oriented crimes investigations. Find the motive behind the crime!
All of which conjures nothing more than a series of rather uncomfortable mental images of Alex the Droog being subjected to the Ludovico Technique.
So that’s the hype, but about the evidence base?
Despite the heavy law enforcement sales pitch, the technology has not fared particularly well when put to the test.
A field study funded by the US Department of Justice and published in March this year, in which Nemesysco’s LVA system was one of two systems evaluated for its ability to detect lies about drug use found that:
their ability to accurately detect deception about recent drug use was about 50 percent.
In which case, a coin flip would do just as well.
Elsewhere, a 2005 evaluation study presented to the annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences provided somewhat better results – 63% accuracy overall across 516 tests…
…but this was a ‘data only’ study in which analysts with years of training behind them made the evaluations based on raw data provided by the test system and the study still generated a false positive rate of 23%.
By comparison, those ‘analysing’ the tests in the Harrow pilot will have had nothing like the same level of training and will be relying heavily on the processing software to distinguish the ‘cheats’ from the genuine claimants, all of which nicely explains why the false positive rate after the first three months of the Harrow pilot was running at around 64%. Of the 998 individuals tested in Harrow, 119 (12%) were flagged as having a ‘high risk’ of dishonesty and only 43 of these were then found to be on ‘incorrectly paid benefits’, which is a rather ambiguous turn of phrase and one which raises distinct suspicions that at least some of the ‘incorrect’ payments to these claimants may have stemmed from genuine errors and or misunderstandings rather than from dishonesty or fraud.
Fortunately, our criminal justice system has more sense than to let a system like this and the ‘evidence’ it generates anywhere near a court room as you wouldn’t wish the experience that Michael Crowe, of Escondido CA, went through on anyone…
After Michael Crowe’s 12-year-old sister, Stephanie, was found stabbed to death in her bedroom, the Escondido, Calif., police department brought him into the station for questioning and hooked him up to the CVSA in the middle of the night.
From tapes recorded during his questioning, Crowe answered “Yes” when the detective asked, “Is today Thursday?” But when Crowe replied “No” when asked whether he took Stephanie’s life, the detective told him that he had failed the test.
“I started to think that, you know, maybe the machine’s right, especially when they added on top of it that the machine was getting my subconscious feelings on it, that I could be lying and not even know it,” Crowe, now 21, told “Primetime.” “They said the machine is more accurate than the polygraph and is the best device for telling the truth, for finding the truth.”
Once the detective told him that he had failed the test, Crowe said he began to doubt his own memory and wonder whether he might have killed his sister.
“I didn’t want to go to prison, and I just wanted to be out of that room,” Crowe recalled. “So my only option was to say, ‘Yeah, I guess I did it,’ and then hope for the best.”
Luckily for Michael, DNA evidence which identified his sister’s real killer was found, but only a week before he was due to stand trial and in the shit-storm that blew up afterwards, one VSA expert admitted that the system was routinely used as a scare tactic to elicit confessions.
On of the most striking things one finds on reading research evaluations of these systems is the extent to which studies that fail to deliver better than chance results are routinely written off with the explanation that the conditions under which the evaluation was undertaken failed to place test subjects under a sufficient ‘threat’ to deliver the expected response. Most studies have this kind have evaluated these systems with an eye of their use in law enforcement rather than as a means of uncovering benefit ‘cheats’ – and the Digilog system in use in Harrow and other councils is actually design for and marketed to insurance companies and used to ‘assess’ customers making claims – but the fact remains that what these studies appear to indicate is that intimidation is not merely a side-effect of these systems but a necessary component of their use – a latter day rubber hose.
There’s nothing in the case of Michael Crowe to suggest that he was anything other than a normal teenager at the time he was subjected to a VSA test and then intimidated into giving a false confession on the basis of the test having decided, falsely, that he was lying, which raises pertinent questions about just exactly where that might leave those benefit claimants who have a lower than average intelligence and/or a diagnosed learning disability.
It’s worth pointing out here that I’m not alone in harbouring serious reservations about the use of these systems. The Disability Alliance have produced a factsheet which is well worth a read and which notes that, in addition to the point I made about the potential impact of these system on individuals with mental health problems, the system that’s being rolled out by the DWP:
has not been tested on those who have speech/language impairments – about 700,000 people in the country.
And that:
It appears that the DWP does not have any way of identifying those claimants with disabilities who could innocently fall foul of this system.
They also raise perfectly valid questions about record-keeping and whether individuals who have been classified as being ‘high risk’ by the system only to be found to to be ‘low risk’ following a personal visit/interview will have their records amended accordingly and that those classified as high risk by the system may face a much slower claims process through no fault of their own.
The TUC is, similarly, unhappy with the introduction of the system, pulling out the classic if, almost certainly apocryphal, police tale of the Xerox ‘lie detector’ to illustrate its concerns:
“I remember the Xerox machine being a valuable investigative tool as well. All the detective had to do was push the magic button and out came a piece of paper with the word LIE or TRUTH on it. ‘What’s your name?’ was the first question. ‘Sam Jones’ was the reply. Push the button and out came the answer ‘TRUE.’ ‘Okay Sam, you’ve done pretty well so far. Now, did you steal your Bill Doe’s bike this morning?’ asked the detective. ‘No,’ says Sam. Push the Xerox button, and here comes the answer, ‘LIE.’
As the Snopes article notes, the only verified ‘sighting’ of this particular story is a fictional one which appeared in the series ‘Homicide: Life on the Streets’ – and if I recall the episode in question correctly, I think it was Richard Belzer’s character, Det. John Munch, who pulled off the photocopier stunt.
That fact that the TUC have chosen to illustrate its point with what is almost certainly an urban myth in no sense negates its argument that innocent people can. and do, confess to ‘crimes’ they haven’t committed and while Harrow Council and the DWP are, naturally, keen to talk up the systems presumed ‘successes’ there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that either have shown any interest in conducting any kind of objective evaluation of the system of the kind which examines the possible extent of its ‘failures’ in terms of the extent to which legitimate claimants may have been denied benefits to which they were, and are, entitled as a result of their having been intimidated into withdrawing a valid claim.
So, what all this amounts to is bad science?
Yes… and no.
In so far as we have sound scientific evidence to go on, the basic premise that its possible to evaluate whether and individual is under stress by assessing tonal micro-modulation in their voice is basically sound and, when confined to that task, and that task alone, the success rate of this technique stands up to scrutiny and gives consistently high success rates in region of 95-98%.
So, underpinning these systems is an element of good science, but where it becomes bad science is when, as in the this case, it is being hopelessly misapplied to a task for which the best evidence we have available indicates it is ill-suited and, at best, no more effective in detecting benefit ‘cheats’ than flipping a coin. In fact, when one looks at the number of false positives evident in the data from Harrow trial, it’s actually somewhat less successful than flipping a coin.
In the broader civil liberties debate there are some occasions where rather too much is made of the idea that a particular policy or initiative somehow alters the relationship between the citizen and the state, a theme which is typically accompanied by a sizeable amount of hyperbolic shouting about ‘Stalinism’ and the use ‘Stasi-like tactics’ but in this case there is considerable merit in deploying this line of argument – the one of the changing relationship not the ‘Stalin’ thing, which is becoming hopelessly overused to the point at which its losing all meaning and impact in much the same way that the some parts of the left rely heavily on the reflexive characterisation of anything it disagrees with as ‘fascist’. The use of these system does implicitly treat all benefit claimants as suspects whose personal honesty and integrity is there to be proven – make a benefit claim with any one of the councils who have taken up this system and you are automatically treated as being ‘potentially’ guilty of fraud until the little black box in the corner says otherwise, and that is a wholly unacceptable state of affairs.
That said, before anyone goes off an starts riffing on the subject of the secret police and tractor factories, not least because the mental image this conjures is nothing more than one of Rik (from the Young Ones) time-shifted twenty-five years into the future but still ranting at the world in a situation where he lives the surburban life as a bloated Daily Mail-reading middle manager with two kids, a mortgage and a put-upon wife who only succeeds in getting through the day with the assistance of Prozac and white wine while praying desperately for the day that he kids leave home so she can also walk out on the marriage, this ‘you’re all suspects now’ mentality is by no means only a feature of the state. So far as one can see, the insurance companies who’ve adopted this system and for whom, in fact, the system was designed, are no more inclined to exhibit any concern as to the extent to which it might be generating false positives any denying legitimate claimants redress for their losses.
It’s not socialist authoritarianism driving forward the introduction of these systems, but capitalist authoritarianism, a point which too many self-styled right-wing libertarians are prone to overlook.
And with that observation I’ll leave thing there for now but for putting up one important general question for the ‘Cry Stalinism and Let Slip the Dogs of Free Market Capitalism’ brigade to ponder.
If socialism genuinely lies behind the systematic ratcheting up of state authoritarianism across the globe then how was it that when the IMF and World Bank were swanning around the heavily indebted developing nations of the world during the 80s and 90s and demanding that those countries make savage cuts in public expenditure and privatise public utilities in return for the munificence of being bailed out of their financial difficulties, they were also privately advising those same countries to increase expenditure on policing and the armed forces and bring in laws which dramatically increased the power and authority of the state at the same time?
And the effects of this? Well, for that, one need only read any of the following…
Who Shot Argentina? The Finger Prints On the Smoking Gun Read ‘I.M.F.’
Sell The Lexus, Burn The Olive Tree
Failures Of The 20th Century: See Under I.M.F.
Eyes-Only Memos Show Who Done It
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'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
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Reader comments
Brilliant.
Maybe while we’re trying this out on people who suck money off the state, we could put a few bankers through the test – ask them if they mean it when they say they’re going to act responsibly now that they’re living off the rest of us just like anyone on a benefit, and if they plan to stop themselves from fleecing us now that competition law no longer applies to them?
I agree with all this Unity, except your labelling. Our international financial system is one of capitalist profits, and socialised losses, or what anarcho-capitalists call ‘state-capitalism’ which is really only a disguised form of socialism – and something which tends towards more obvious socialism anyway. When it comes to increasing state power through the police and the military, the IMF and World Bank’s policy is only a slightly paler form of what the Soviet Union encouraged its sattelite states and allies to do. But you might be right that some self-styled libertarians may not see it like this and mistakenly take multinational institutions to have good intentions. And while I believe that welfare benefits drawn from coercive taxation is, in principle, wrong, it is also wrong to start reforming the system by victimising the poorest and least emancipated in this society. Especially, while there are plenty of rich and middle class individuals drawing their own selections of benefits from the state.
Relax, Nick…
The labelling is there simply to remind some of the self-style libertarians, many of whom are no more than disaffected Thatcherite Tories with a bit of shiny veneer, that there’s altogether more to libertarianism than tax cuts and moaning about the welfare state.
A good rule of thumb for sifting the real Libbies from the faux variety is to give then a quick run through Rothbard and see how much of a panic they get into as the penny drops and they realise just how radical his ideas are.
That said, yes, there’s little to choose between the state capitalism of Stalin-era and the corporate capitalism that operates at the nexus between what are effectively stateless multinational corporations and global financial institutions.
Superb post, thanks.
Unity,
There is no such thing as a lie detector.
It is all bullshit.
Why couldn’t you have just said that?
If you are the scientist you seem to be, it is really up to you to come down off the 12″ long posts that you go in for and tell the simple, straightforward truth. Lie detectors are woo woo .
Your apologia for it – that stress equals dishonesty – to which you offer nothing but, maybee aye, maybee naw, arguements are frankly ridiculous.
Yes, if I was captured by the Police and subject to questioning, I’d be fucking well stressed. Doesn’t matter whether they were right or wrong. I’d feel the fear.
So stop being so ridiculous.
The number of false positives amongst normal folk would always exceed the negatives. Makes for a high,and wrong, conviction rate.
But what do you care? At least it bludgeons free thought.
Can I have your mask as you are obviously finished with it?
Sunny,
btw, I think you’d find my comment on Chapter 4 is a bit shorter than this.
And this – Unity’s post right here – worries me about what a Liberal Conspacy is about.
Frankly I do not need to be educated on the potential of evil. Neither do I need to see an apologia for it.
This waivers this way and that way, for no obvious reason.
I’d quite like Liberal Conspiracy to simply state:
“We believe that lie detectors are bullshit”
Perhaps Unity could be the first to sign?
socialism genuinely lies behind the systematic ratcheting up of state authoritarianism across the globe then how was it that when the IMF and World Bank were swanning around the heavily indebted developing nations of the world during the 80s and 90s and demanding that those countries make savage cuts in public expenditure and privatise public utilities in return for the munificence of being bailed out of their financial difficulties, they were also privately advising those same countries to increase expenditure on policing and the armed forces and bring in laws which dramatically increased the power and authority of the state at the same time?
That makes a lot of sense . It is impossible for capitalism to work without order . You have to be able to trust people to order ordinary trade credit . It is pointless to invest when you are at the mercy of the nearest big man and without the certainty of contract required and law which will enforce it capitalism is impossible . Capitalism emerges from a civil society and when the state in question is an economic basket case it is not unlikely that it will on the one hand x be a corruption ridden inefficient statist sink as well as too lawless for ordinary business to start
One essential is the ability to buy insurance to cover capital investment and without reasonable order it cannot be provided except at prohibitive cost , capitalism relies on the is risk mechanism far more than is generally discussed perhaps because it lacks glamour , in emerging economies it is crucial.
Incidentally it is the security and surveillance techniques which have emerged from the Insurance industry have been responsible for much of the improvement in crime figures especially PDH and Motor . The state has taken credit whilst actually pissing tax payers money up the wall aka creating sinecures for paid voters . Because there is market mechanism the intrusive use of CCTV alarms and surveillance on private space has been beneficial.
Most supposed Libertarians are actually Conservatives yet to grow up . Conservatives are keen on order believe the natural state of man is not freedom but a state of enslavement under the biggest bastard around . This is quite a different matter from seeking to organise the minutiae of peoples lives from the desk of Gordon Brown
“The basic problem with this, however, is that people can feel stressed for many different reasons, including getting the third degree from some twat of a council officer about their benefit claim.”
Given that the majority of council or central government employees who interview claimants are simply performing an unpleasant duty (which is also stressful to them), a duty which does not make them guilty participants in a fascist regime, I suggest that Unity removes the word “twat”.
Twenty years ago, I worked with market research colleagues investigating plethysmographs (devices that try to measure response to stimuli via blood flow rate). As a test subject, I ran around the block to raise my heart rate so that my colleagues could test me. Basic functionality checks. If I had been tested under VSA, a different technology, I would have been identified as “under stress”.
If you are late for a meeting, run for the bus, had an argument with the child minder — you could “fail” VSA. It isn’t that physiological tests do not work as an indicator, but that they only work in controlled circumstances.
“Fred, have you taken your beta blockers?” “No, I’ll take them after I’ve phoned the council.”
the last paragraph is spot on.
Douglas – huh? I didn’t understand…
Douglas:
Huh?
I think you’ve misunderstood the science.
What ‘lie’ detectors actually detect is stress, which can be indicative of dishonesty,,,
…and lots of other things besides.
And that’s the problem with these systems. Its not that they don’t work at all, but they don’t work reliably, hence they’re not bad science per se, rather they misapply science for a rather spurious and over stated purpose.
And that’s why this system SHOULDN’T be used.
Beyond that, explaining the limitations of these systems illustrates the deficiencies in the reasoning behind the decision to roll them out. Regardless of any political justification the government might like to put forward for their use, the scientific evidence does not support the policy – in essence, the argument is that the manner in which the systems have been piloted and evaluated is wholly inadequate by any reasonable standard of scientific research.
‘Quite how you get from that to an apologia, I’m not sure.
Here is what I think at least partially explains the supposedly positive results:
Few people understand all the benefit rules. One way to find out if you qualify is to apply and see what happens. The worst that can legally happen to you is that, as long as you tell the truth, they turn down your claim.
But if people are made to believe (wrongly) that there could be immediate consequences for making a claim when they are not entitled to, they may decide to play it extremely safe and avoid claiming at all. Ironically it is probably the ‘hard working families’, in work but on a low income, and pensioners, who will be discouraged due to lies about all benefits going to immigrants and lone parents.
Unity and Douglas, I don’t see that you’re actually in disagreement with each other:
Unity is correct in that ‘lie-detectors’ do DETECT something to some degree, namely bodily stress.This is however,indicative of of umpteen different things, so many in fact that to take it as indicating lying is unscientific, wrong and utterly unfair. In other words they may have a genuine scientific purpose but the the way in which they are being deployed is nonsense and unscientific
Douglas is right to say that LIE-detectors are woo/utter bullshit, as they do not and cannot indicate lies.
BTW, is Purnell about the worst wanker ever to wear Labour colours (worse perhaps evn than Milburn). He’s too Thatcherite to even be a wet Tory.
Unity,
Well, I don’t think I have misunderstood the science. Stress can be indicative of anything you like. Being taken into custody by the Police, for instance.
And it is the problem with these systems – that they don’t work at all. It is ‘bad science’ to suggest that they measure anything useful. Sure, they measure something, they just don’t measure truth and lies. You bloody well know that!
You do it here:
Although it’s being used over here, in a system provided by a company called Digilog, for assessing (and threatening) benefit and insurance claimants, Nemesysco’s main sales pitch in the US is directed towards Law Enforcement (hence the company’s seriously twatty name) and the more paranoid arms of corporate America, all of which ensure that the more you read about this ‘wonder’ system the more your personal bullshit detector goes right off the scale.
To fall off the fucking scale here:
It’s not socialist authoritarianism driving forward the introduction of these systems, but capitalist authoritarianism, a point which too many self-styled right-wing libertarians are prone to overlook.
If that is so, Unity, why is this daft idea, let’s call it no more than that, a government initiative? I’d be far happier if you just said it as it is. “This is pish.” Or “this is anti-science.”
You, frankly do not have to write thousands of words to say the obvious.
I was hoping someone would take this piece of shit to bits. You haven’t done it. This is just a piece of governmental authoritarianism, as you, no doubt, know.
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Sunny,
It is quite important that something goes up on chapter four lest we lose momentum. If you like, I’ll cut it down…..
Sunny,
Though, given the complete utter idiocy of the somewhat longwinded and utterly wrong Mr Unity, why, exactly, you find it necessary to cut what I had to say is a bit beyond me.
Unity has the space to say, Christ the ludicrous amount of space to say, yes and no to lie detectors, when the obvious conclusion is no.
And then he says this:
And that’s why this system SHOULDN’T be used.
Beyond that, explaining the limitations of these systems illustrates the deficiencies in the reasoning behind the decision to roll them out. Regardless of any political justification the government might like to put forward for their use, the scientific evidence does not support the policy – in essence, the argument is that the manner in which the systems have been piloted and evaluated is wholly inadequate by any reasonable standard of scientific research.
Which is what he ought to have been said at para one. This is a arguing in reverse. His stupid government supports lie detection, and therefor Unity argues a whole load of shit:
So, what all this amounts to is bad science?
Yes… and no.
No folks it is shite.
Another parasitical company on the taxpayer, akin to the computer firms which have contracts for the ID card scheme.
The real Labour client state is amongst these supposedly private-sector firms, which are in fact beholden to the state & not only that but to a government of one particular party.
I cut & paste my responses to the Letters From A Tory post which references the article.
“Do these geniuses realise that bullying & intimidating the most vulnerable people in the country won’t get them into sustainable work or save money, it will be an expensive waste of time?
I have encountered more than enough people sent on wholly futile “courses” & just as unlikely to get jobs afterwards. The best thing that can be done is allowing them to do voluntary work, whilst still receiving their benefits.
This should not be made mandatory or directly paid for as it would be bad for the voluntary organisations to do so. (In a similar way, one of the main things that sunk the original National Service was that the army didn’t want to have to deal with young, unwilling recruits). But those who want to improve their skills should be exempt from looking for low-paid jobs as they are making a long-term investment.
There should be much wider education about this. Additionally, it could be arranged with universities that students can receive credits if they volunteer.
I reiterate that no one should ever do this kind of work for financial gain as it would be deeply counter-productive. But it is better for them to do this than be forced into applying for jobs they are never going to get.
With any luck, as middle-class people become unemployed, the Job Centre will stop treating its “clients” like minions.
But the first thing to do is to put this piece of idiocy right next to ID cards on the bonfire, preferably with New Labour ministers & the Daily Mail in the middle of the flames
[2]
The above applies in a recession far more so than in normal times. That loud-mouthed ignoramus David Freud, who admitted to knowing nothing about welfare, assumed the credit-fuelled boom would go on forever.
Well, what are superior forms of life like him going to do when mass employment is upon us & many hitherto respectable, mortgaged types are turning into scum overnight?
I would have almost all of these people in better jobs in 5 years. All New Labour could ever do is make a hash of what should be a natural, human-led recovery by trying to get the Daily Wail’s approval.”
Douglas:
At the risk of repeating myself, I really don’t see how you get from an explanation of why these systems are unreliable – based on the data from Harrow, rolling a D8 every time someone rang in with a claim would have done just as well – to the view that I’m in any sense supportive of the DWP’s policy of rolling these systems out on a UK wide-basis.
What I would hope, and what seems to be the case when it comes to other readers/commenters, is that the people who’ve read this leave with a much better understanding of the flaws in the system and, in doing so, will:
a) find themselves much better placed to challenge the use of these systems, and,
b) in the event that find themselves in the position of making a claim to a council where they are being used, be in much stronger position to refuse to be interviewed using these systems.
In Harrow, only about 5% of those asked to take part in the pilot refused, a figure that should increase the more that people are informed about the unreliability of the systems and the risk of finding themselves under suspicion because of a false positive.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and when it comes to sparring with the DWP and its offshoots, the best way to beat the system is to know the system and its flaws and loopholes better than they do.
Believe me, I’ve been at this game on and off for more than 20 years, having cut my teeth in anti-poll tax unions, so I do know quite a bit about how to gum up the works of officialdom and nothing works quite as well as beating them at their own game.
Put it this way, once the system is rolled out, anyone who refuses to be tested point blank on the back of an unsupported claim that its flawed or unscientific is just going to get their benefit cut because that’s what happens to those who cannot articulate their objections.
On the other hand, those who can put up detailed objections are unlikely to get sanctioned for fear of them fighting back and challenging the validity of the system with something like a judicial review.
The technology might alter over time, but the bureaucratic mindset doesn’t and there’s nothing that spooks a bureaucrat more than a face-off with someone who knows more than they do.
Given that the majority of council or central government employees who interview claimants are simply performing an unpleasant duty (which is also stressful to them), a duty which does not make them guilty participants in a fascist regime, I suggest that Unity removes the word “twat”.
Nope, sorry…
I’m happy to concede that much of the twattery one encounters when dealing with council officers and DWP employees is situational rather than personal but the appellation is entirely appropriate when making a subjective ‘claimants eye-view’ remark –
- and I never did swallow the Nuremburg defence anyway.
The voice analysis from Nemesysco is a scam.
Two Swedish professors of linguistics, Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda have published an article called “Charlatantry in forensic speech science” in an international magazine for voice experts working for the police and security services. Here they condemn the use of speech analysis for lie detection.
But Nemesysco demanded that the article should be withdrawn from the online version of the magazine, and the publisher Eqinox did so.
Here you can read Equinox apology for insulting Nemesysco: http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/IJSLL/article/view/3775
Nemesysco’s lawyers have also sent letters to the Swedish professors where they threaten to sue them for defamation if they publish similar articles again.
Read more from the University of Stockholm: http://www.su.se/english/about/news_and_events/scientists_threatened_with_legal_action
Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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