Voice Stress

Nemesysco Controversy Roundup

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Israeli lie detector company Nemesysco has issued a press release responding to  Professors Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda’s article, “Charlatanry in Speech Science: A Problem to Be Taken Seriously,” which laid bare in devastating detail the pseudoscientific nature of Nemesysco’s lie detection “technology.” It should be noted that Nemesysco’s press release opens with a misleading characterization of Erksson & Lacerda’s article:

We wish to clarify our position with regard to the so-called ‘scientific research’ written by Professors Lacerda and Eriksson and published in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law in December 2007, but later withdrawn.

In fact, the article has not been withdrawn, rescinded, or otherwise disavowed by the journal that published it. Rather, the publisher (rather cravenly, in our opinion) withdrew the on-line availability of the article in response to legal threats from Nemesysco’s lawyers. For background, including part of the correspondence between Nemesysco and the publisher, see Nemesysco Founder Amir Liberman Is a Charlatan on this blog.

The “Ministry of Truth” blog, which has been following the  saga particularly as it pertains to the use of Nemesysco’s lie detection software in the United Kingdom (where it is marketed as “Voice Risk Analysis”), provides a point-by-point critique of Nemesysco’s press release.

See also Professor Lacerda’s 12 March 2009 blog entry, LVA-technology and Nemesysco’s official statement, in which he responds to an earlier released statement by Nemesysco in response to his and Professor Eriksson’s article.

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Baker DVSA Loses a Customer

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Dee J. Hall reports for the Wisconson State Journal that “Dr.” E. Gary Baker, the faux Ph.D. who markets what he styles a “Digital Voice Stress Analyzer” to law enforcement agencies, has lost the Jefferson, Wisconsin Police Department as a customer:

Jefferson police cancel training on voice-stress analyzer
By DEE J. HALL
608-2523-6132
dhall@madison.com

The city of Jefferson Police Department has cancelled a training session on how to use a controversial voice-stress analyzer after the Wisconsin State Journal raised questions about the technology and the qualifications of the business owner scheduled to conduct the training.

Voice-stress analysis is used by some law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin, including the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, to detect “microtremors” in the voice that backers of the technology say indicates speakers are stressed and therefore answering questions deceptively.

“If everything has been exhausted in investigative techniques and they have a suspect or someone they want to eliminate as a suspect, it (CVSA) has been used,” Madson said, adding that the technology has prompted confessions from suspects. “The tool works, as far as I’m concerned.”

Detective Sergeant Tim Madson is badly misinformed. The existing peer reviewed research suggests that voice stress analyzers perform at roughly chance levels of accuracy. While these devices might be useful for scaring confessions out of naive and gullible persons, they have no scientific basis and are no more to be relied upon than a colander wired to a photocopier with a sheet of paper saying “He’s Lying” on the glass paten.

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Nemesysco Founder Amir Liberman Is a Charlatan

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Nemesysco founder Amir Liberman
Nemesysco founder Amir Liberman

Amir Liberman, the founder of Nemesysco, an Israeli company that internationally markets voice based lie detectors that simply don’t work, successfully pressured an academic journal into withdrawing the Internet availability of a peer-reviewed article that exposes Liberman’s lie detection “technology” for the pseudoscientific flapdoodle that it is.

The Article

Swedish linguists Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda co-authored an article titled “Charlatanry in Speech Science: A Problem to Be Taken Seriously” that was published in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law (vol. 14, no. 2 [2007]). Eriksson & Lacerda review several voice-based lie detectors, including Nemesysco’s “Layered Voice Analysis” (LVA) which the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command has purchased and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is considering adopting. A variant of LVA customized for security checkpoints has reportedly been trialled at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport.

Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda
Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda

Eriksson & Lacerda point out that so-called “thorns” and “plateaus” — characteristics of digitized voice recordings that Nemesysco claims reflect emotional states — are merely artifacts produced by the digitization process! With regard to the LVA software, Eriksson & Lacerda note:

Contrary to the claims of sophistication — ‘The LVA software claims to be based on 8,000 mathematical algorithms applied to 129 voice frequencies’ (Damphousse et al. 2007: 15) — the LVA is a very simple program written in Visual Basic. The entire program code, published in the patent documents (Liberman 2003) comprises no more than 500 lines of code. It has to be said, though, that in order for it not to be possible to copy and run the program as is, some technical details like variable declarations are omitted, but the complete program is unlikely to comprise more than 800 or so lines. With respect to its alleged mathematical sophistication, there is really nothing in the program that requires any mathematical insights beyond very basic secondary school mathematics. To be sure, recursive filters and neural networks are also based on elementary mathematical operations but the crucial difference is that these operations are used in theoretically coherent systems, in contrast to the seemingly ad hoc implementation of LVA.

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Colorado Television News Program Investigates Computer Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA)

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Colorado television station KUSA 9News investigative reporter Jace Larson examines the use of the “Computer Voice Stress Analyzer” (CVSA) in the state: KUSA – A device used by Colorado law enforcement agencies to identify when someone is lying, may not work and may be costing taxpayers money. Computer Voice Stress Analyzers (CVSAs) claim to measure … Read more

Oklahoma Study Finds Voice Stress Analysis “Testing” No Better Than Random Chance

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The National Institute of Corrections has published a research study on voice stress analysis (VSA) conducted by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services with support from the National Institute of Justice. From the abstract (emphasis added): …The goal of this study was to test the validity and reliability of two popular … Read more

Daytona Beach News-Journal Discredits Voice Stress Analysis

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In a 28 April 2007 editorial cryptically titled, “Wired Policing Stresses Voices, More,” the Daytona Beach News-Journal skewers local law enforcement agencies’ reliance on voice stress analyzers: As the urban legend goes, police interrogating a suspect put a colander on the suspect’s head, run wires from the colander to a copy machine, make a meaningless … Read more

Department of Defense Polygraph Program Gets Makeover

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Steven Aftergood reports in the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News newsletter & blog that on 25 January 2007, the Department of Defense issued a new directive governing polygraph policy: The Department of Defense has revised and supplemented its polygraph program to include non-polygraph techniques for detecting deception. A new Pentagon directive (pdf) introduces the … Read more

Tremors of the Trade

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Retired NYPD detective Warren J. Sonne writes for Officer.com in an article titled, “Tremors of the Trade: Investigative Tool or Troublesome Black Magic?” Excerpt: Over the past decade, police departments all over this country have lined up to purchase Voice Stress Analyzers. In a country that has placed restrictive rules of law on the police … Read more