My first reaction to the Governments proposals to use lie detectors to catch benefit cheats, was rubbish. The proposed Voice Stress Analysis (VSA) system the government intends using doesn,t work. I started to write a post to this effect and then it slipped my mind. However Unity’s post Government Bullshit Risk Detector at the Ministry of Truth has saved me the job.

On of the most damning pieces of evidence Unity cites is a National Institute of Justice field test into detecting drug use amongst arrestees which concludes VSA is no better in determining deception than flipping a coin.

What VSA can do is detect stress; however, people can feel stressed for many different reasons, including getting the third degree from some twat of a council officer about their benefit claim.

Unity has examined the trials and writes.

In piloting this technology it is not enough for the government, Harrow Council or any of the local authorities who’ve been using this technology to 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.

Read the rest of Unity’s post here.

Hat Tip: Chicken Yoghurt.