Sick “Voice lie detectors” in her majesty’s service

Photo: ph0t0 (sees the picture) on Flickr.

This is old news but I just heard about it, and it’s just sick. Haven’t UK politicians ever read 1984 (by George Orwell)?

They might as well call this system “Automatic Crimethought Detector”. It’s not efficient and has a lot of false positives/negatives that will lead to unnecessary spending on investigating innocent people. My guess is that the system itself is not very cheap and the ROI is probably extremely low.

I agree with the criticism put forth in the article:

For the Conservatives, shadow work and pensions secretary Philip Hammond said Gordon Brown’s obsession with a complex welfare regime was the real reason why so much was lost to fraudsters and cheats.

He said: “This government’s reaction to every problem is yet more Big Brother technology. Given that £2.6bn worth of benefits were overpaid last year alone, it’s disappointing that this re-heated lie detector initiative is the best it can come up with.”

Why do the western communities keep implementing systems that do not belong in an open society? Why? Haven’t we learnt shit from our history and great thinkers? Obviously not.