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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (March 8, 1978)
No law has been able to prevent it, no court has been able to stop it and probably no human has been able to avoid it. Not that people don’t know bet ter. From the Ninth Commandment to the whipping post, we have been drilled in the evils of deceit— in the meantime, we have per fected the practice. But recent technology may be bringing us up to 1984 before we re ready. The standard lie detector has been used routinely by business and police for at least 20 years and is regulated in most states. Since its use demands coopera tion from the subject, lie detection has generally gone unchallenged as an invasion of privacy — until now. More recently marKetea instru ments, called voice-analyzers or psychological stress evaluators (PSEs), are advertised as being capable of spotting lies in state ments made over the telephone or recorded on tape. Hagoth Corporation, based near Seattle, plans to sell 8,000 of its voice analyzers (called Hagoths) this year after starting in the truth business only two years ago. Hagoths cost $1,500 each. Richard Bennett, president and founder of the corporation, says most of his machines are sold to businessmen who want to test employees, customers or col leagues. The original prototype for the Hagoth and similar instruments was a psychological stress evaluator developed in 1970 by two retired Army intelligence of ficers. According to the developers, inaudible frequency modulations in speech reflect internal stresses in a person’s voice caused by at tempted deception. These inaudi ble variations are automatic and can be measured by PSEs, they claim. Few states regulate sale and use of voice analyzers, but since the devices can be used covertly, any regulation short of banning would be difficult to enforce any way. * Oregon has outlawed use of PSEs within the state, but Washington, California and 36 other states have left them unreg ulated. Alan Carlisle of Portland got around the Oregon law by testing tapes with his Mark II Voice Analyzer in a small Vancouver, Wash. Office he main tained across the river. “I gave it up last year when the opposition (from polygraphy as sociations) got to be too much.” Carlisle is now retired. The reliability of voice analysis Voice analyzer use rises, yet controversy remains Stories by TOM WOLFE Of the Emerald Drawing by Margaret Munger has been repeatedly challenged by polygraphy associations and government tests. Both Air Force and National Security Agency research found PSEs "insufficiently reliable” for lie detection. Army tests in 1973 found voice analysis "less effective” than sim ple observation. Regardless of such findings, PSE sales are mushrooming in the private sector, especially by U.S. businessmen — business men willing to try anything to curb employee theft, dishonesty and espionage now costing them $50 billion annually. Makers of the machines offi cially admit voice-analyzers only measure psychological stress in the human voice — not deception itself. Literature advertising voice analyzers is more boastful. “Both Air Force and National Security Agency research found PSEs ‘insufficiently reliable...’ " A pamphlet circulated by Car lisle in Portland explained PSE; this way: “Since stress is present unde deceitful conditions, the examina tion, when completed by a compe tent examiner, is extremely accu rate.” ! Suggested uses for voice analysis by Carlisle included ver ifying the truthfulness of employee applications, determining the applicant’s permanency inten tions and identifying thieves. Business have been eager, sometimes too eager, to follow through on such suggestions. Larry Gustafson, a security chief for Church’s Fried Chicken Restaurants in Houston, Texas, was recently charged with violat ing the state's licensing law after testing a cashier to see if she was telling the truth about some mis 1 sing chicken. Had Gustafson sim ply tested over the phone with a » Hagoth, the cashier would prob ably have never known she was tested, r More sensational uses of voice-analyzers have been dramatized in Penthouse Magazine and National Enquirer. “Lee Harvey Oswald Was Inno cent,” declared a story in Pent house, April, 1975. The author claimed to have not only deter mined Oswald’s innocence (based on PSE analysis from tape recordings of his denials) but also several other details of Kennedy’s assassination. National Enquirer used the same approach in its article ex onerating Patty Hearst of wrong doing by analyzing tapes of her voice released to the press while Hearst was a fugitive. Another suggestion is to analyze press conferences tapes to see if the president or other pub lic figures are lying — no one has committed himself on this one yet. Ideas and stories like these have “probably been the most ef fective publicity for voice analysis,” Frederick Link, PSE critic and military polygrapher, says. But the major reason for tre mendous growth in PSE sales is rampant business theft. With estimates of employee pil ferage ranging from four percent to six percent of gross earnings, about one in five large U.S. com panies now uses lie-detection in hiring or investigation, according to February’s Personnel Journal, a trade magazine for employers. In a survey of 400 firms, the magazine found 20.3 percent re ported some use of polygraphy in their personnel programs. Fifty percent of major banks and retail ers surveyed said they use poly graphy. Traditionally, this work has been done with the same poly graphy techniques and machines used by police. Those machines measure three or four indepen dent physiological functions to de termine the veracity of a state ment. When used properly they are considered to be 80-90 per cent accurate. But use of voice analysis is cheaper, easier. In addition, it is largely unregulated or unregulat able. No federal law currently applies to voice analysis, but a commis sion set up under the Privacy Act of 1974 has recommended its prohibition. The Equal Employ ment Opportunity Commission has also studied the machines and could recommend lie detector restrictions. Congress too, may step in. Birch Bayh, D-Indiana, intro duced a bill to limit lie-detector testing that was recently discus sed in a Senate subcommittee he chairs. More hearings are scheduled this spring. If restrictions are considered, strong opposition can be ex pected from big business, now firmly committed to mechanized lie detection. Polygrapher takes hard line with would-be liars Eugene’s resident truth-teller has moved from makeshift quarters in his home to an executive suite downtown. Not only has commercial lie-detection grown respectable — It’s profitable. Lt. Paul Dueber was making $10 to $25 an hour in Eugene as a private investigator until he found a bigger market in truth-telling than fact-finding. He’s an innovative businessman, 35 years old, his own boss. He sits behind an oversized executive desk explaining his work in serious tones, an eager grin betray ing delight in his new-found opulence. “My Eugene business hasn’t grown that Dn<VA Q A much since last year, but I’ve started work ing in Portland two days a week. It looks like I might move up there if things keep picking up." At $40 to $75 per test, Dueber examines 25-30 people each month, usually to verify employee applications or investigate thefts. His counterpart in the Eugene Police De partment, Sgt. Gordon Mitchell, only made four evaluations this month. The mechanics of giving a polygraph ex amination are relatively simple. Dueber’s polygraph is a portable electric machine the size of a large attache case with four built-in measuring devices. One piece of black rubber tubing circles the upper-chest and measures breathing there, while a second identical tube meas ures abdomen respiration. A blood pressure cup follows pulse rate and intensity. Finger-tip structures meas ure perspiration changes. All four indicators monitor continuously and scribble out their findings onto graph paper — four needles sweeping and skipping, recording every breath and heart beat. “During the actual testing, extreme nerv ousness or the slightest movement can make it look like a person is lying, even when he’s telling the truth,” warns Dueber. As the test continues, the polygraphy tracers are in constant motion, recording data by the second, all in synchronization. A stimulus as slight as a hand-dap will cause involuntary physical responses from the subject. “Hardly anyone (less than five percent of the population, according to Dueber) can tell a lie without registering some physiological response, Dueber says. We re trained from early on to distinguish from right and wrong, and by the time you’re an adult you simply can’t help reacting to that. (Continued on Page 9A)
