Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 03:29 AM 10/9/96 -0400, Vin McLellan wrote:
>        Jim Bell queried the List about potential AP decision-support tools
>like voice-stress detectors which could identify truth-tellers among
>politicians and other possible candidates for Mr. Bell's much-debated
>proposal to cleanse the body politic. 

Uh, well, while I don't doubt the potential use there, my bringing up the 
subject of the voice stress analyzers had nothing to do with AP.  (Remember 
that once AP starts operating, ALL politicians, "honest" and "dishonest" 
will likely be considered fair game.  The way I see it, for each politician 
there will be enough people who will want him out, REGARDLESS of whether 
he's honest.  This makes a lie-detector only marginally useful.)

Rather, I just wanted to point out that the traditional news media is likely 
to be intentionally ignoring the existence of a technology which could 
reveal much about a debate, precisely because such a practice would be 
embarrassing to the politicians.  

(On the other hand it's possible, I suppose, that the inherent stress of 
standing up in front of a crowd, knowing that a few tens of millions of 
citizens were watching, might induce stress having little to do with lying, 
so it wouldn't surprise me if I later heard that this stress-detector really 
doesn't work in such situations.  Even so, I think it would at least have 
been tried before and the "flop" publicized if it had failed.  I don't 
recall if any such attempt has been made, or at least the results weren't 
publicized.  What should we conclude from this?)


>        Dektor's PSE came into some prominence after Col. Bell, then a
>civilian,  showed up with his black box to assist Italian police during
>their huge investigation of the kidnapping of US Army General James Dozier
>by the Red Brigades in '82.  The fact that Dozier was located and rescued
>by the Carabinieri commandos after five weeks in captivity -- while Prime
>Minister Aldo Moro had been murdered by the Red Brigades, eight weeks after
>his kidnapping in '78 -- led inevitably to stories, probably mythical, that
>Bell's PSE was a significant factor in the investigation.  As Clarke or
>someone said, any technology sufficiently advanced will be considered magic
>-- and it is doubtless true that, for many Italians interviewed during the
>Drozier inquiry, the quiet presence of the diminutive American civilian,
>with his utterly mysterious "truth-detector," inspired fear and awe.
>
>        The Legend that came out of Italy was doubtless a factor in
>Dektor's subsequent success selling the $5K PSE into the corporate and
>security market.  (There was a period where corporate negotiations were
>sometimes held in a hotel chosen only just before the start of the talks,
>for fear that one party or the other might have pre-installed a PSE.)   In
>the mid and late '80s, dozens, perhaps hundreds of PIs -- and maybe a few
>journalists -- were actually running around using tape recorders to
>interview people, then running back to their hotel rooms to spin the tape
>for their PSE.


Reminds me...Some states have laws against secretly recording conversations 
in person, even when a telephone line is not involved.  (as I understand it, 
these laws tend to date from the late 1960's, when electronics had shrunk to 
sizes sufficiently small to make body wires/recorders really practical and 
inexpensive.)  This appears highly inconsistent to the "bugging mentality" 
of the police.   My theory is that this apparent contradiction is explained 
when you realize that politicians would be the first, best targets of 
widespread, legal bugging.

After all, even honest lobbyists might want to keep records to show that 
they hadn't violated the law, and to ensure that their recollection of the 
conversation is correct, and to forward these talks to their employers.   
Either "honest" or "dishonest" lobbyists might want to record a politician's 
willingness to accept a bribe, even if one is not offered.  Other 
politicians might want to record negotiations, possibly for later use on the 
campaign trail.  This would be highly unlike most other, ordinary citizens, 
who are rarely going to be in any kind of conversation that is considered 
worth recording!  Add it all up, and you'd probably discover that the 
average Senator or Representative would be recorded in dozens of 
conversations each day, any one of which could pop up at any time on the 
news or, now, the Internet. 

Remember the old saying, "One advantage of telling the truth is that you 
don't have to remember what you said."  Well, for politicians the modern 
corollary is, "One advantage of being an honest politician is that you don't 
have to worry about what the other guy's recording."   But I'll propose that 
by this standard, there are few if any "honest politicians" in Washington!   

Imagine how different a typical (read: typically crooked) politician's life 
would be if everybody had the legal right to record every conversation!





Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com