In the practice of law and in the enforcement of law one thing is a constant; lies and the lying liars who tell them. Its bad enough that most people don’t even know the truth, but there are situations where you feel that you cannot just trust someone to tell the truth about themselves on their word alone. Recently, a retired Hoboken Police Office, Michael D. Costello, who is now a Licensed New Jersey Private Investigator, told me all about a machine that he learned to operate while at the police department that analyses the stress in a person’s voice to determine if they are telling the truth. As part of his PI Business he has purchased what is call the VIPRE machine and is certified in its use. Check out his website.
There is debate over the effectiveness of the process in dealing with confessions of crimes, making the results of a session inadmissible at court. However, its usefulness is in setting up a scenario where the person is being asked questions about their background before they are hired in some personally sensitive job.
The machine and process is legal as long as you tell the person you will be testing them for the truth. In real life, the very fact that you put someone on the spot will weed out most people who have something to lie about. Obviously, some people are just pathological and make no distinction between the truth and lies, but in today’s world, where you really don’t know the background of most people in your life it is better to be safe than sorry.