The grubby concrete of Harrow Council's carbuncle of a civic center in northwest London does not look particularly Orwellian. Inside the cramped reception, harassed locals jostle pot plants, queue for forms and complain loudly about being caught by bus lane cameras.
This is the mundane business of government bureaucracy today; the future lies beyond a secure door. In a hot, gloomy first-floor room ringed by tatty feltboard dividers, members of Harrow's benefits team, or "handlers" as the jargon has it, talk through scripts on their computer screens.
You can imagine the caller at the other end dozing off as one handler begins that breezily familiar routine about their conversation being recorded for training purposes. But then she says a sentence you won't have heard before.
"Before we start I must tell you under the Data Protection Act 1999 that our calls are recorded and analyzed using technology for the purpose of fraud prevention, detection training and quality control and may be reviewed later to check the details you have given are correct," she said.
Most citizens of Harrow probably don't realize the implications.
As they tell the council about their housing benefit claim (financial assistance towards rent), their voice is being constantly assessed for whether they are telling the truth. This is a ?63,000 (US$127,300) pilot scheme using lie-detector tests to root out benefit fraud.
The early signs, it is claimed, are encouraging. Harrow says the technology has identified 126 benefit cheats in three months since May. When the pilot finishes next year, the Department of Work and Pensions could expand the scheme to cover the whole country.
The belief that man can use machines to read minds has had a powerful grip on our imagination for centuries and never more so than today.
Next year, the British government will introduce mandatory polygraph tests for pedophiles in three regions. Some insurance companies have been using Harrow's system to expose fraudulent claims for several years.
In the US, traditionally more taken with lie-detector technology than Europe, a department in the Pentagon is dedicated to detecting deception; it goes by the wonderful name of the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment.
Beyond government, a US company, No Lie MRI, claims that an emerging technology of brain imaging called "functional magnetic resonance imaging" (fMRI) offers a powerful new form of lie detection.
At the lighter end of the deception spectrum is the Love Detector, a device marketed by the makers of voice stress-analysis software that claims to reveal whether people you telephone fancy you.
In Colombia, the gameshow Nothing But the Truth offers US$50,000 to any contestant who can truthfully answer 21 questions while wired to a polygraph, the classic interrogative kit you see in movies that measures physiological responses such as pulse, blood pressure, breathing and sweat on hands -- the signs assumed to accompany deceit.
The show has elicited dramatic confessions and exposed thieves, cheats and adulterers. The format is so popular that it is being exported to the US and the UK, where it will be broadcast by Sky this fall.
OLD TECHNOLOGY
People were using technology to expose dishonesty in 1000BC, when the Chinese would force suspected liars to chew rice powder and spit it out. If the powder was dry -- betraying a dry mouth -- the suspect was believed to be lying. In ancient Russia, the accused would have to remove a ring from boiling water or hold hot iron in his hands; if there was no injury three days later they were declared innocent.
The idea that a lie is accompanied by physiological activity has never left us, and by the start of the past century, scientists were measuring it with machines.
In the 1920s the police department in Berkeley, California, developed a version of the modern polygraph. It captured the American imagination: By the 1970s a quarter of US companies deployed the polygraph on employees, although a new law banned many tests in 1988.
Despite numerous studies casting doubt on polygraph reliability, the aging technology has clung on.
Harrow's voice stress-analysis system is run by Capita, the private company that has made its fortune administrating aspects of British government work including TV licensing and the Criminal Records Bureau.
The council prefers the phrase "voice risk analysis" and Capita calls its combination of software, special scripts and training for handlers the "Advanced Validation Solution."
Just don't say it's a lie detector.
"Please don't call it that. We're not happy with that. It's an assessment," says Fabio Esposito, Harrow's assistant benefit manager.
One of Harrow's benefit handlers talks softly into his headset to a caller who is claiming a housing benefit. He takes them through his script of questions -- the period living at the address, the rent they pay and so on.
At the same time, a computer program samples the caller's voice, "calibrating" it to identify its normal levels. Voice stress analysis is based on measuring inaudible tremors in the human voice, which indicate when you are delivering words under stress.
What happens to us when we lie, explains Richard Sheridan of Capita, is a bit like when we give a speech to a room full of people: Nerves change our voice.
Everyday lying over the phone is not audible to the human ear -- but this means you can't control it, either. The computer program claims to take account of natural stress, excitement and nerves; after all, shy people get anxious picking up a phone, and others may be scared when claiming benefits.
"Just because someone gets stressed does not mean they are not truthful," Sheridan said.
As the handler asks a question, a blank box on his computer screen is filled with code. "LR LR" means there is a low risk that the caller is lying. Another graphic in a small pop-up window shows the subject's speech in wave form, oscillating like those pointless graphics on naff stereo systems.
"Just you and your two sons in the house?" asks the handler. "SNS" -- subject not sure -- comes up, requiring further confirmation.
If the software judges that a speaker is being deliberately misleading, there is a blizzard of beeps and "HR HR HR" alerts, signifying a high risk of deception. In this case, however, they don't: it looks like the benefit claimant will get the money.
Harrow and Capita are keen to emphasize that decisions on people's benefits are not based on bleeps from a computer. Handlers are also trained to analyze caller responses. When risk alerts flash up, they investigate further -- without lie-detector technology -- to determine if a claim is fraudulent.
"Technology always gets the headlines but it's the handler who makes the decision supported by what the technology is saying," Sheridan said. "The process is a risk assessment. You're having a conversation with the consumer and assessing the level of risk in what they tell you. You're looking to identify the low-risk consumer and give them a fast-track process. If you pick out something that's high risk you're not going to reject the claim -- you go and do more checks."
Lie detection technology may not be new but the way it is being marketed to us certainly is. In the US, one company calls its system a "truth verifier," designed not to catch out liars but to help people exonerate themselves.
Similarly, in Harrow, the technology is being promoted with pragmatic claims that it will speed up the benefits system for the innocent majority. Harrow, Capita and the government argue that the new system is bureaucracy-busting: It removes the need for time-consuming, paper-based checks for many claimants.
But they also seek to reassure those anxious about the technology by insisting that no paper-based checking of claims has been removed -- that is, no layer of bureaucracy has been stripped away. It is left to Esposito, who as a hands-on benefits worker is probably best placed to judge whether the technology increases efficiency (rather than adding another layer of complexity) to assert that it saves time for claimants, as well as money for Harrow Council (?110,000 in the first three months).
"Knowing in advance whether these people are deceiving us or not helps speed it up," he said. "We develop gut feelings, but with the help of this technology you can prevent fraud and speed up the process, which also saves administration costs."
Voice stress-analysis systems have been used for more than five years in the British insurance industry but have yet to really catch on, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI).
There was an initial flurry of publicity when motor insurance companies introduced the technology in 2001, but it is still "the exception rather than the norm," said Malcolm Tarling of the ABI.
"Not many companies use it and those that do use it in very controlled circumstances. They never use the results of a voice risk analysis alone because the technology is not infallible," he said.
The ABI estimates that fraud costs the industry ?1.7 billion per year; it is believed that the voice stress analysis acts as a deterrent to those who regard a few lies down the telephone as a victimless crime.
British businesses have not leapt on the technology, so it is curious that the government is so keen on expanding its use.
It appears that one man has played a big part in the ruling Labour party's eagerness to deploy the technology on benefit claimants and criminals. David Blunkett was home secretary (interior minister) when polygraph tests for pedophiles were first mooted and trialed. And he was reinstated in former British prime minister Tony Blair's government as work and pensions secretary when the department announced in 2005 that it was looking at voice stress analysis as a way to combat fraud (it is perhaps ironic that he resigned from both posts amid allegations he had not been as forthcoming with information as he should have).
Next year, in a pilot study, the government will introduce a mandatory polygraph for convicted sex offenders in three regions. Polygraph tests as part of offender management are well established in the US. In Britain, Don Grubin, a forensic psychiatrist at Newcastle University, undertook the first, three-year government scheme in which 480 sex offenders were voluntarily monitored with polygraph tests.
They weren't asked whether they had reoffended but were quizzed on risky behavior and sexual history. Grubin found about 40 percent had "deceptive indicated tests." He admits he was initially skeptical but argues that polygraphs are a useful tool.
"We were less concerned about accuracy per se than with the disclosures and the changes in behavior it encourages these guys to make," he said. "It should not be seen as a lie detector but as a truth facilitator. What you find is you get markedly increased disclosures. You don't get the full story, but you get more than you had."
While the polygraph is old, its accuracy and limitations have at least been thoroughly tested. Skilful liars can mimic physiological responses and fool polygraphs, and anyone can read up on how to "beat" the machine. Most research puts polygraph accuracy at between 80 percent and 90 percent -- far from infallible (although it is agreed that the widespread belief in its infallibility in the US at least can act as a deterrent and elicit confessions).
LAB TESTS
More generally, critics argue that most kinds of lie-detector studies are lab tests, which can never replicate the high stakes of real lies and tend to test technology on healthy individuals (usually students) of above-average intelligence. Children, criminals, the psychotic, the stupid and even those not speaking in their first language (a common issue with benefit claimants) are rarely involved in studies.
Grubin, however, is more skeptical of newer technology: fMRI is expensive and has not yet been sufficiently tested, he says, while research puts the success of voice stress analysis at little more than 50 percent.
Aldert Vrij, professor of social psychology at the University of Portsmouth, says that voice stress analysis is of no practical use at all.
"We know from research that this kind of stuff is chance. It's not any better," he said. "It's not measuring lying; it's measuring stress. The assumption is that liars are more stressed than truth-tellers and that's not always the case. A skilled liar will not be stressed."
According to Vrij, a lie "does not do anything." There is no measurable physiological response that unfailingly reveals every kind of lie. Lying is a hugely complex response for which we only have one word.
Lying about murder, for example, is a vastly different thing from telling a friend that her bottom doesn't look big in that dress. There are white lies, elaborate rationalizations and unthinking self-deceptions we don't even consciously register as lies.
Vrij, whose book Detecting Lies and Deceit: Pitfalls and Opportunities is published next year, is not a lie-detector denier. One type of polygraph test, he says, has been proven to work.
Invented in 1959, the "guilty knowledge" test measures sweat on the fingers to assess one reaction we cannot fake -- a "familiarity" or orientating reflex. Just as you can be unaware of surrounding conversations at a cocktail party but notice when your name is mentioned, if something is familiar then the body responds in a certain, uncontrollable way.
A suspect can therefore be tested if, for example, investigators know details about a murder that would not be known by anyone else other than the killer.
Less flexible than other technologies -- and unusable if crucial crime details are leaked to the media, for instance, today the test is only routinely used by police in Japan, where its evidence is accepted in court.
Other critics might wonder about the implications for trust and good faith in a society where people increasingly believe that only technology can reveal whether a person is being truthful or not. This bid to expose liars seems a logical extension of our concern to eliminate all risk, and head off all crime at its source -- in the mind.
So why are we increasingly obsessed with nailing liars?
"Because they can do a lot of harm," was Vrij's simple answer.
But then again, lying is a vital social glue, without which we would struggle to function.
"Life would be very weird if everyone told the truth all the time," he said. "Socially life would be impossible if we didn't tell lies, and it would be very bad for your self-esteem if people told you the truth all the time. Everybody lies a few times each day."
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