Queen's Speech: Lie detector tests to catch benefit cheats

Wow. Also disturbing is:

So far, 25 local councils administering housing benefit to 500,000 claimants are using "voice risk analysis technology" to test whether a claimant is providing false information.
Click to expand...

Not only is this messed up from an accuracy/reliability standpoint. But it also seems very lazy. Housing benefits in the US are "tested" by authorities verifying income via bank statements or by verifying occupancy by calling the landlords.

Maybe the government shouldn't bother with trials and witnesses anymore either, just use lie detectors and voice-risk analysis to save costs and hard work...
 
I dunno, isn't it like the TV Detector vans? So long as people think they can be caught by the devices there might be some value to it. Although I'd like to hear whether it costs more to implement than it saves.
 
Another uncritical report of the same thing (even seems to be based on the same press release), from the Telegraph:

Currently 25 local councils use voice risk analysis technology to test if a claimant is providing false information but now the scheme will be roled out nationwide.

In Harrow, north-west London, where the technology was first introduced, officials estimate they have saved £300,000 in three months by rejecting fraudulent claims.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they have seen a drop in the outgoings, but how do they know the claims are fraudulent?
 
Last edited:
I'm no engineer (Bob would probably be able to tell us if I have the faintest clue here), but I'd guess it has to do with whether a signal receiver is active.
 
I know this is a derail, but I remember discussing this on another thread. The theory was that the whole thing is (or perhaps was) an elaborate spoof, designed to get people to buy the TV licence for fear of being caught by such vans, even though they couldn't actually do what was claimed.

I'm still a little hazy about it all.

Rolfe.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
How do the vans tell the difference between watching stations and watching recordings?
Click to expand...


As the article says, they keep the technology that they use very secret. My guess would be that they cannot make that distinction. A receiver is a passive device; I don't think there'd be any reliable way to tell where a receiver might be operating.

A CRT-based display, however, would produce some distinct, detectable signals that could be detected from some distance away. I understand that in certain high-security applications, CRT displays have to be heavily shielded to keep these signals from being detected and analyzed by an enemy, because it is possible (at least in theory) in many cases to reconstruct what is being displayed by analyzing these signals.

Perhaps these detector vans employ that degree of sophistication, and are able to compare reconstructed displays to what is currently being transmitted by the TV broadcasters; otherwise, I do not think it would be possible for them to distinguish between a television that is being used to watch a broadcast signal, and one that is being used to watch a DVD or a videotape. If that's the case, then perhaps you can evade them by always taping any programming, and watching it at a later time when it doesn't match the current broadcast transmissions.

I would bet, also, that they cannot detect modern non-CRT-based televisions; at least not nearly as easily as they can detect CRT-based units.

It had briefly occurred to me to mention that perhaps they can't distinguish televisions from other displays, such as computer displays, but it didn't take much thinking for me to realize that most computer displays operate at different frequencies than most television systems, so that should be a very easy distinction to make.
 
Well, since we're on this rail, does anyone know of anyone who was ever actually detected by a detector van?

If these vans have such capability, why do the TV licensing people go to such extraordinary lengths to persecute anyone who doesn't have a TV at all? I mean, anyone would think they were simply hounding every address that doesn't have a TV licence, and had no way to tell whether or not there was a TV in there....

Tolfe.
 
It was sex offenders last time, IIRC. In this instance, if the suggestion is to scare people into compliance, efficacy be damned, I think that's as sad as the idea that the gov might actually believe in lie detection. I really don't see how misleading the populace with pseudoscience can ever be a good thing.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
How do the vans tell the difference between watching stations and watching recordings?
Click to expand...

As far as I understand the law, they don't need to; the TV license is required for any equipment capable of receiving television transmissions, whether it's actually doing so or not. And, presumably, the van isn't used to secure a conviction, but to establish reasonable grounds for suspicion. A search of the premises would still be required to establish that there's a TV tuner present.

Dave
 
Couple of electrical engineer acquiantances of mine claimed there was 'no way' they worked and one further claimed inside knowledge to this effect.

From some of the articles / discussions linked to it would appear theoretically possible but I'm still dubious.

If they did work as claimed, why do they need big advertising campaigns to tell you they are in the area and why do they seem to exclusively (this is mostly anecdotal but backed up by some press stories) target homes that their records show as having no license. There was a widely reported case some years back about a family who decided to ditch the tv and they got hounded by the BBC who initially claimed they'd detected a tv in their house (later proven impossible as it was finally accepted, in court, that there was no tv) and then fell back on 'Our records show you used to have a license but didn't renew and you must have a tv 'cos every family does'. If I remember correctly their later explanation for detecting a tv when there wasn't one was that they must have picked up a 'signal' from some other electrical equipment eg the microwave, a food mixer or some other kitchen equipment.

Their vans may well have sophisticated equipment in but I suspect it's more likely to be links to their database of license holders cross-referenced by houses that don't appear to have one.
 
My suspicions also. I know a number of people who choose not to have a TV, and they all report inordinate trouble getting through to the licensing geeks that they do not, in fact, harbour a goggle-box. They report continual harassment with threatening letters. If it was so easy to detect a TV, then one suspects such people would be easily ticked off the database.

And remember, we're not really talking about today's technology - we're talking to a large extent about whether the detector vans of the late 20th century were anything more than "lie detectors" with big aerials on top.

Rolfe.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom