Placebo Effect in Security Solutions?
May 15 2008 | 0 comment(s)
The Economist reported about a council in London that uses voice-risk analysis (VRA) as a way of identifying fraudulent claims for social-security benefits. "VRA is not new. The version used in this test at Harrow was developed by an Israeli company, Nemesysco, for use by the country's intelligence services to identify potential terrorists."
In the reported results, the council claims that VRA saved £420,000 so far, which resulted in the British government now planning to roll out this lie-detector technology to more councils.
"However, the way it works is not necessarily obvious. If anything, a detector seems to act more like a placebo in medicine--inducing an effect in the mind of the recipient just by being there. Of the nearly 1,500 claimants who had taken part in the Harrow trial, nearly a third changed their mind about needing benefit when they were told they were being subject to VRA. The benefit that they decided not to claim made up the lion's share of the council's saving."
The deterrence factor might be a crucial part of this VRA. However, we disagree with the speech specialist who said in the Economist that VRA "is not particularly good at detecting liars, but that it does act as an excellent deterrent." While the deterrence factor is useful, it only exists when there is a belief that its backed up by solid technology. Her claim that " "These things do not work any better than chance," disqualifies the capabilities and also will negatively impact the deterrence factor, or not?
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