Query Details
| Query Subject: |
Airport Lie Detectors
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| Author: | Mark Jones | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Applied Linguistics
Phonetics |
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| Query: |
A recent report on Yahoo (and in sections of the British press) mentions a
walk-through airport lie detector being developed in Israel by the company Nemesysco. Story below: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051117/tc_nm/security_liedetector_dc The software apparently relies on picking up ''uncontrollable tremors'' in the voice to 'identify' liars. The system would seem to be very unreliable in principle, given that a speaker with an inherently creaky voice will show a great deal of random variation in vocal fold vibrations (jitter). A slight cold, some voice pathologies, and low pitch accompanied by creak at the end of an utterance would also produce jitter. Older speakers, and those suffering from e.g. Parkinson's disease, would also produce more jitter. Is anyone aware of the background to this research and testing of its accuracy? It seems some governments are willing to spend between £6,000 and £17,000 per unit on this system in the light of security concerns, but my fear is that it is money wasted, and the introduction of this system may lead to a number of innacurate identifications of 'liars' at airport check-ins. I will post a summary of responses. Thanks Mark Jones Mark J. Jones British Academy Post-doctoral Research Fellow Department of Linguistics University of Cambridge http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark/ mjj13@cam.ac.uk |
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| LL Issue: | 16.3385 | |
| Date posted: | 25-Nov-2005 | |
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