NY- Judge Approves New Voice Technology to Monitor Sex Offenders

11-13-2009 New York:

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Sex offenders can be required to submit to a Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA) examination as part of their post-release supervision to determine if they are telling the truth, a federal court has ruled. Northern District of New York Chief Judge Norman A. Mordue ruled that the technique is analogous to polygraph examinations, which have been accepted by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a way to monitor the activities of those under post-release supervision.

The 2nd Circuit in United States v. Johnson, 446 F.2d 272 (2006), held that both the CVSA and polygraphs were reliable, that they could be validly related to the post-release supervision of an offender, and that they did not deprive a defendant of his rights under the Fifth Amendment.

Advocates of voice stress analysis technology state that research has conclusively demonstrated the devices can detect otherwise inaudible voice inflections in responses to questions that can indicate whether a speaker is being truthful. Testimony before Judge Mordue indicated that some 1,800 law enforcement agencies in the United States have the devices available.

Although more than 1,800 law enforcement agencies utilize the system, including most major metropolitan agencies and the U.S. Military; the CVSA is not well known outside of the law enforcement community. As with the polygraph, results of the CVSA are not normally used in court, but rather serve as a guide to help eliminate individuals as suspects. A recent Department of Defense survey of law enforcement users of the CVSA reported that 86% found the CVSA to be either “very” or “extremely” accurate. The DoD survey also found that 75% of deceptive results were validated by obtaining a confession with “a very small error rate” (less than .5%) utilizing the CVSA.

The U.S. Patent Office recently awarded Charles Humble, the founder of the National Institute for Truth Verification (NITV), a second patent on an automated scoring algorithm for use on the CVSA. Humble was the first to quantify voice patterns and also discovered delayed stress reaction in voice stress analysis. The CVSA's current scoring algorithm, known as the Final Analysis Confirmation Tool (FACT), uses advanced mathematical algorithms and a built-in learning feature to recognize, evaluate, categorize, and quantify the output from the CVSA. The widely acclaimed CVSA II accurately scores each voice pattern for stress levels and then evaluates the entire examination to render a “No Deception Indicated” or “Deception Indicated” result, eliminating possible bias from the exam. Since the release of the CVSA II in early 2007, over 800 CVSA II’s have been delivered. “From the Atlanta P.D. to the Nashville P.D. to the California Highway Patrol, this is an investigative tool that has proven itself as invaluable in the field” stated Alan Hall, a retired officer of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, and the current Operations Administrator of the NITV.

For more information and to view recent case studies of cases using CVSA. ..Source..