Lane County, Oregon Adopts CVSA

[George W. Maschke]

The Lane County (Oregon) Sheriff's Office has enthusiastically adopted the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA) for investigative purposes. This was reported on 13 December 2004 by Bill Bishop of the Eugene Register-Post in an article titled, "Voice technology has a say when the truth counts."

The Lane County Sheriff's Office also touts CVSA in its Fall 2004 newsletter, which may be downloaded here:

http://www.co.lane.or.us/Sheriff_PoliceServices/documents/NzltrFall2004pdf.pdf

It would appear that Lane County Sheriff believes that CVSA can actually detect deception -- a dangerous delusion that will predictably lead to investigatorial misdirection.

[Jeffery]

Touted as the next generation lie detector, the device measures inaudible changes in the frequency of a person's voice caused by the body's involuntary response to stress. Theoretically, people can't hide a big lie.

No.  People can't hide stress.

"It cleared the husband right away," he said.

The guy's wife had just been killed and he WASN'T stressed?

Polygraph experts, and government agencies that are heavily invested in the older technology, churn out studies to discredit voice stress analysis.

That statement stands on its own.  One brand of witch doctor saying the other witch doctor is evil!  Too funny.  Too sad.