Documents Show Law Enforcement Agencies Are Still Throwing Tax Dollars At Junk Science
from the made-from-the-finest-snakes dept
Recently, 269 gigabytes of internal law enforcement documents were liberated by hacker collective Anonymous -- and released by transparency activists Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets). The trove contained plenty of sensitive law enforcement data, but also a lot of stuff law enforcement considers "sensitive" just because it doesn't want to let the public know what it's been spending their tax dollars on.
The documents highlighted in this report by Jordan Smith of The Intercept show law enforcement agencies are spending thousands of dollars to maximize the Dunning-Kruger effect. People are still peddling junk science and discredited techniques to law enforcement agencies and We the People are picking up the tab.
The training session was billed as “cutting edge,” and dozens of law enforcement professionals signed up to learn about “New Tools for Detecting Deception” from a human lie detector who calls herself “Eyes for Lies.” Her real name is Renee Ellory, and she claims that she’s one of just 50 people identified by scientists as having the ability to spot deception “with exceptional accuracy.”
[...]
Training participants would learn how to “identify anger, contempt, and disgust before words are even spoken.” Course objectives were broad: Learn to differentiate between “real” and “fake emotional displays”; “recognize hidden emotions”; identify the “ways our subconscious brain leaks information when we lie”; “analyze body language that indicates deception”; gain tips to use when interviewing a psychopath; “identify the key features of expressions that reveal danger for you!”
Big if true. But it isn't. And Renee Ellory herself would probably recognize that fact if her career didn't depend on her remaining ignorant of scientific studies directly contradicting the claims made in her courses. But she's been able to do a lot of damage to a lot of law enforcement officers, who now believe -- with zero facts in evidence -- they can detect lies just looking for "universal facial expressions" and fleeting "microexpressions" on subjects' faces.
Ellory proudly touts her selection as one of only 50 "truth wizards" who can "spot deception with exceptional accuracy" in her marketing materials [PDF]. This is based on the Wizards Project (I am not making this up) run by Paul Ekman and researchers at the University of California. This "wizard" designation is as worthless as the pseudoscience behind it.
While the theory of universal expressions dates back to Charles Darwin, research has been mixed, and Ekman’s work in this area has been repeatedly challenged by scientists in recent years as unreliable, in part because of methodological issues.
Where microexpressions are concerned — also an area of Ekman’s studies — subsequent research has found them “rare and nondiagnostic,” Kukucka said, and that training individuals to see them doesn’t actually work.
It's still just a coin toss, no matter how much training officers receive. This is the same junk science the TSA thinks will help it catch terrorists. The problem here is trainees believe they're actually better at detecting lies after having their heads filled with unproven assertions all day long by someone who fervently believes they can detect lies better than 99.9999999% of the population. Years of training can't make these results replicable. A day or two of training does nothing more than make officers believe they can do something they actually can't: detect lies just by looking at facial expressions.
When reached for comment, Ellory offered several -- most of them defensive But this one's remarkable in its level of self-regard:
“I find at times with my gift, it’s akin to seeing color in a world where other people live in a colorblind world. Seeing color is ‘real’ but trying to convince a color blind person color exists is nearly impossible,” she wrote. “I tell people in my classes what I teach will be common knowledge in 100 years, but we are still in the dark ages when it comes to understanding human behavior and deception,” she continued. “At a point, I learned, I can’t change the world alone. But I can educate those who are open to learning and they have thanked me endlessly."
Renee Ellory isn't the only "expert" telling cops they can detect lies using techniques never proven to detect lies. Steven Rhoads, former police chief and, um, "retired Christian rodeo clown," heads the very sketchy-sounding "Subconscious Communication Training Institute." Documents [PDF] contained in the DDoSecrets stash show Rhoads and his acolytes have been infecting everyone from local cops to ICE agents with his proprietary brand of pseudoscience bullshit.
The trainings feature lessons in how body language — including “facial gestures and human emotions,” “eye movement and gaze behavior,” and “gestures involving the torso” — can be used in interrogations and reveals not only deception but danger for officers. “As a very general rule of thumb the left side of the body is more apt to reveal known deception than is the right side of the body,” reads material for a 2018 training called “Subconscious Communication for Detecting Danger,” found in files connected to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center.
Rhoads says his system is scientific because, unlike Ellory's, it relies on a baseline. Cops can't just walk up to a perp and stare down the left side of the detainee's body until it starts confessing. Cops have to establish a baseline for emotions, expressions, and responses. But that takes only about 20 questions. You know, like a polygraph machine -- that other "science" that has repeatedly proven to be highly inaccurate.
It's sadly unsurprising pseudoscience purveyors are still finding willing buyers of their bullshit in the law enforcement community. Cops are just as susceptible to cognitive biases as the people they police. They believe they're smarter than the people they deal with. Training like this only increases their self-deception. Even if the trainers and their methods were legit, it would still be a problem. You can't crank out experts in human behavior over the course of a couple of 8-hour sessions. But the Dunning-Kruger effect also affects those doing the training and selling this junk science: they appear to believe they can.
All of this adds up to worse policing. When reasonable suspicion involves judgment calls based on secondhand bad science, peoples' rights are being violated by officers who now believe they're capable of detecting lies just by looking at a person.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: blue leaks, junk science, law enforcement
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Sooo
If that course is truth, then should have a defense attorney pull it.
"I took this course that law enforcement says works. And on my training and experience, he's lying. I have this certificate to prove it. "
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well... this explains one thing really well: why so many police officers believe they are in immediate danger from people whose only fault lies in a twitchy muscle on their left arm.
Now we just need to convince the courts that this belief isn't "credible".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: nah
Pull the same with an expert.
"I had an expert anaylze the officers movements. This one is a threat analyst from own government. I did. Not say was a cop but he did say was a terrorist threat."
And see what much it lasts that same training.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Oversight?
When I worked for the government, I couldn't buy anything without it going all the way up through my manager, his manager, her manager, his manager, director-level, then procurement.
When I worked for corporations, I couldn't buy anything without it going all the way up through my manager [rinse; repeat], then purchasing.
When I ran my own companies, I couldn't buy anything without meeting with the group (CTO to determine if this was the right thing to buy, CFO to determine how to purchase whether through outright, lease, credit, etc., and accountant to determine when to purchase for best tax treatment.)
In every one of these cases the people involved were highly skilled and trained professionals, and we all worked together.
Why is it that beat cops and their donut-eating cop-shop-seat-fattening black-people-shooting friends can buy whatever they want... give money (that would be OUR tax money) to these charlatans, then tell us they need more funding because there aren't enough cops to serve, protect, tase innocent women, kill deaf people, or abuse them in jail??
Maybe this is rhetorical... but if someone can suggest how this one is solved... that would be a good first step.
Ehud
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Oversight?
Law enforcement agencies, from the smallest to the grandest, are all their own sovereign fiefdoms. That's why.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Oversight?
Because think of the children. And it's a war on drugs and.terroe. if not with us, you are the enemy.
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." Sort of thinking.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Oversight?
It is just as likely to be asset forfeiture money, rather than tax money, which may or may not have the same kind of approval scheme (not a part of the budget approval process). Still wrong, not only that it was spent, but also the crapola it was spent upon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Civil Asset Forfeiture
Ah, I love this rabbit hole.
Civil asset forfeiture is an addictive rotting disease that should never have been unleashed and now its addicts are running the "rehabilitation program."
The monies "recovered" should never be taken without a fair trial. Full stop. In addition, no matter how legal these addicts have made their theft, the funds should ALWAYS go into the general fund -- NOT LEO funds, and be available for governmental use such as roads, parks, schools (think of the children indeed, while they GET OFF MY LAWN!) etc.
Civil forfeiture is anathema to our entire "justice" system. Giving the proceeds to the thief addicts is like giving cash to meth burglars. Maybe we'll see some change in politics in 69 days.
E
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Oversight?
Spending money goes a lot easier when it's not your money and the people holding the purse know that if they tell you 'no' they risk being dragged through the mud as someone 'soft on crime', and since it's not their money either well better safe than sorry.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Oversight?
"Maybe this is rhetorical... but if someone can suggest how this one is solved... that would be a good first step."
Here's a hint. Of your examples above, which jobs and DOFA chains were regularly subject to audits? In which of those careers would doing a shoddy job validating your purchases properly end with you suddenly not having a job anymore?
Meanwhile, in an entirely different world a LEO in the US more often than not has a police union-regulated contract which states that unless he gets caught and convicted by a third party stealing from the evidence locker, forging evidence, defrauding the public and murdering people in broad daylight it's likely his boss can't even send him home with a note for his parents.
To say nothing of a police department spending their emergency budget on a gang of soothsayers, all in the city's name.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Building on the shoulders of giants:
So, besides being stupid and a phony, she's also stupid.
;)
E
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
And they are all too aware that the colors they can't distinguish do, in fact, exist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wizard?
Wizard?!?
How stupid are they? I'm sorry, but it has to be one of the biggest red flags that you are being swindled if a person is calling her- or himself a "wizard."
Unless it's a magic show you are at.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Muggle!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
and expert
Experts typically do not see themselves as being an expert.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I'm an expert wizard and you shut up because shut up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Also, everyone knows that a real one
IS spelled:
WIZZARD...
< in regards to Sir Terry Pratchett, May he rest in piece, and be drinking tea with DEATH!>
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Also, everyone knows that a real one
David Duke begs to differ.
Wizard and Grand Wizard are neither magical nor with two Zs :)
E
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Also, everyone knows that a real one
"David Duke begs to differ."
Fortunately Duke is not counted among Sir Pratchett's literary accomplishments. :)
...although...come to think of it, do we know this "Wizards Project" isn't just a Klan boss gathering?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I guess we should be grateful that they are just teaching cops to detect lies rather than cast fireball (do you have to be a 5th level cop to cast that?)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
"I guess we should be grateful that they are just teaching cops to detect lies rather than cast fireball (do you have to be a 5th level cop to cast that?)"
Fireball isn't on the Blackguard spell list, fortunately.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Handed to news orgs all over, this story goes nowhere
Once Tim clicks whatever-button-publishes-this, it's available to be re-covered by by hundreds of US news outlets. Instead editors will fixate on the same stories, that every other editor is fixating on today.
Reasonably, this is absolutely news. Journalists covering this would be performing their minimal duty -and- a news ecosystem that wasn't earning it's weakened state would be covering this in every US market.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Handed to news orgs all over, this story goes nowhere
Disclaimer: My descent into oldmanhood will be endlessly marked by fist shaking at news systems. I fixate on them because as I calculate how we got to some awful place, I far too often find a coverage hole where journalism ought to have been.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So my question is...
How long before this technique is used to justify incarcerating, interrogating, drugging or downright murdering someone, because a trained officer detects a lie where there is none?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So my question is...
You and I both know that the answer is not going to be a positive number, regardless of the units used.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]