> U.S. Judge Orders “Immediate Removal” of Website Critical of Voice Lie Detector
It was a default judgement, the judge didn't "order" anything. If the other side fails to answer the case at all ("Dektor has not timely responded to either motion."[0]), the judge simply grants the claimant what they asked for.
You can apply to vacate a default judgement and get your day in court, but that requires you to take part in proceedings. It should also be noted that "Arthur Herring III" of Dektor has an interest history (just google it, I see multiple unrelated news articles/lawsuits), and that both sides are selling voice "lie detectors."
The title is misleading but after reading the court order you posted, this still seems odd. I'm not defending anyone involved in this, honestly both Dektor and NITV seem sketchy but this is a civil judgement against a company in a different state. Maybe some HN legal wonks can weigh in on this and explain it but I don't see how a state civil court has the authority to remove a website that's clearly outside of state jurisdiction and not involved in a criminal proceeding. If it were a violation of the law it would fall under federal jurisdiction. If the civil judge determined that the website itself was in violation of the law then it should be referred to the relevant federal agencies for a criminal investigation.
Default judgements are not as simple as you disingenuously claim.
"Answering the case" = paying a lawyer at least a low five figure USD retainer to write a ~20 page document, 15 of which is a template, and then show up in court on your behalf.
No money, no justice, unless you successfully beg for probono work (ie: find a lawyer willing to volunteer).
You didn't refute anything I posted, just posted an unrelated point while calling my post "disingenuous" for no clear reason.
One of the sides didn't turn up at all, nor write a response, after having been served. Lawsuits being expensive is a valid point, but it is an separate point than what I posted about above.
The sad truth is that medium and large enterprises can use the crushing burden of legal costs to impose their will upon the little guy. Said little guy has to make a decision when they get sued: a.) get a second mortgage to pay the lawyers; b.) grovel: "please sir, let me go, I'll stop saying mean things about you, even if they are true"; or c.) pretend it doesn't exist. Default judgements are generally people irrationally opting for option c.
This is just like an engineer saying "I could replicate this product in in a weekend", knowing full well that it would take a team of 10 a year to do so at a fully-loaded cost of a few million dollars.
IMHO this is a spat between two quacks (you devoted the last sentence of your comment to this), one with slightly more money than the other (you failed to mention this, and it's significance, which is why I brought it up). Guess which quack will prevail.
My whole point is that they are apples to apples. It is not possible, and dare I repeat, disingenuous, to divorce legal outcomes from their monetary costs.
Update: IMHO, every legal case should publish, at every document submitted to court, their billable costs to date so as to color the historical public record.
> This is just like an engineer saying "I could replicate this product in in a weekend"
It takes a year to prepare for doing something in a weekend. But if you already have the right experience for free because you did adjacent tasks, some seemingly complicated tasks can be done real quick.
> On March 12, 2019, a Clerk’s default was entered against Dektor based upon its failure to
appear, answer, or otherwise plead to NITV’s Complaint, despite having been duly served [1]
Yeah..... if you publish allegedly defamatory claims against a competitor, are ordered to appear in court and don't even show up to defend yourself, then not exactly surprising.
Not sure what's newsworthy about this. At a glance, the title almost suggests the government is trying to suppress information critical of polygraphs, which doesn't appear to be even remotely the case?
The reason I think this is newsworthy is that the website whose "immediate removal" has been ordered includes voluminous unflattering but apparently true information about the "National Institute for Truth Verification," information that is of public interest that is at risk of being suppressed.
Not clear there's any intent to censor here by the courts, so much as mediate a dispute between two equally disreputable vendors of bogus lie detection systems.
More concerning is the fact that so many large law enforcement institutions continue to use these systems even after the fact of their ineffectiveness has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. If such institutions cannot weigh and respond to evidence correctly as it relates to their own investigatory methods, why should we have any faith in their ability to handle evidence correctly in the course of those investigations themselves?
Looks like a link collection and a video (which doesn't play). That video may hold the key to the judge's decision because ordering a takedown of a link collection seems like overreach.
On the current version of the site it's just an ABC clip from YouTube:
ABC: "Has there been a single scientific study that shows that this works?"
"Dr." Charles Humble: "I don't believe that there has been an independent scientific study that shows that this works."
Yet it's been used by police around the country to elicit confessions and convictions, according to ABC.
This case is more complicated than the article lets on:
> This case involves two competing businesses that sell truth verification technology. NITV is a Florida limited liability company based in Palm Beach County whose members are all Florida citizens [DE 1 ¶ 1]. Dektor is a Pennsylvania corporation headquartered in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania [Id. ¶ 2]. Dektor’s President and sole shareholder is Defendant Arthur Herring III, who is a citizen and resident of Pennsylvania [Id. ¶¶ 3, 22].
Edit: Charles Humble was in fact lying, as the ABC clip shows. The Pentagon conducted an independent investigation and found the device to be no more accurate than flipping a coin.
> This character has all the hallmarks of a quack. The judge's decision is questionable at best.
This is an adversarial system, not an inquisitorial one. It's not the judge's job to decide the truth of the matter without briefing from both sides. If one side doesn't show up, that side loses by default because otherwise it would be advantageous for a party being sued to just not show up to court.
"Yet it's been used by police around the country to elicit confessions and convictions, according to ABC."
Well, getting somebody to confess by lying to them is legitimate in the US. In this case, the police tell you you're hooked up to an accurate lie detector, and the accused decides to tell (what the court will accept as) the truth. This seems reasonable.
As others have pointed out, a default judgement implies the defendant basically doing nothing, which is the worst possible "defense".
This is what a lot of litigators bank on - send threatening letters (perhaps en-masse) to rake in the default judgements but then only proceed on appeal if it's worth the hassle.
I'm a huge fan of true crime, listening to thousands of hours of podcasts, endless TV shows and documentaries, I own at least 30 true crime nonfiction books, etc. But I don't have any formal credentials in criminology.
After all my listening, I believe that if I was law enforcement I would appreciate the lie detector. It doesn't actually detect lies, and a trained person or a sociopath 100% in control of their emotions and heart rate can beat it. And many people have.
However, the power in the lie detector comes from its name - "The Lie Detector" - and the common belief that it actually works.
The interesting result of a lie detector isn't that it actually detects lies. No matter what the result is, if I was an investigator, I would tell the suspect that it said they lied and it is 100% accurate. The reaction to telling the suspect this, and what they do next, could very well result in a confession, or at least meaningful information. It's a psychological trick that is quite useful. The lie detector is such an absurd piece of theater, and most people have never seen one before let alone had one taken, that they cannot prepare for the result. If you interrogate 100 suspects, you can use their reaction to further your opinion of whether they are truly guilty by comparing to your past interrogations.
Now, would I ever agree to take a lie detector test? Hell no! And they are also not admissible in court, as the law understands that they don't actually work.
But in an interrogation process, where cops are lying and deceiving and tactically revealing information, it is a good arrow in the quiver.
Firstly, who has more reason to research lie detectors and realise they don't work, a criminal or an innocent person? Clearly, it's the former, so you're using a "trick" that is weighted against innocent people.
Secondly, most criminal justice systems reward early confession with reduced sentences and plea bargaining. In such systems, presenting a suspect with fabricated evidence—which is what a "positive" lie detection report is—seems just as likely to induce a false confession as a real one.
If we allowed cops to plant evidence and falsify statements, we could probably get a lot more confessions. If we eliminated the "innocent" verdict at trial, or reintroduced trial by ordeal, we could do the same. But we don't do this because these are fundamentally unjust, and so is allowing law enforcement to claim they know people are guilty due to magic.
The media believes it works, so not agreeing to take one can be used in the court of public opinion to ruin a reputation.
For example there's currently a women missing in Hawaii this week called Amanda Eller, her boyfriend was given a lie detector (which he "passed"), the police announced he wasn't a suspect and his test pass. Imagine if he had said "hell no!" as you yourself would.
That's the problem. Police keep using something that doesn't work, but if you refuse they will take the refusal itself as suspicious and the media will find out. It may not hold up in a court of law, but good luck ever getting another job with google returning articles about how you MAY have killed someone.
> However, the power in the lie detector comes from its name - "The Lie Detector" - and the common belief that it actually works.
Ha. It reminds me of this hilarious video clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgrO_rAaiq0) from The Wire, S5E01, which Detective William "Bunk" Moreland interrogated DeShawn and made him believe the office copy machine was a lie detector. This plot itself was based on an false urban legend.
> [...] they are also not admissible in court, as the law understands that they don't actually work. But in an interrogation process [...] it is a good arrow in the quiver.
I think the first things come to my mind is: what types of psychological tricks are and aren't allowed in an interrogation process? Is it permissible to use a nonworking "lie detector" as an interrogation technique? What are the potential abuses of this trick, etc? These are some interesting things that can be argued and debated.
I don't have background knowledge any of these subjects I mentioned so I won't start a debate, other interesting may want to do so.
Anyway, interesting perspective. I appreciate your comment, which moved the question from the first layer: "does a polygraph work and whether we should use it", to the next layer: "a polygraph doesn't work, but should we use it anyway?"
> However, the power in the lie detector comes from its name - "The Lie Detector" - and the common belief that it actually works.
In this case no need develop and pruchase a non fuctioning product that may or may not be abused by the legal system, just make up a story: that little box in the corner is a "100% accurate voice lie detector" and be done with it.
"The reaction to telling the suspect this, and what they do next, could very well result in a confession"
... sure, you can extract "confessions" using all manner of lies and pressure tactics like this. A person who is persuaded that the machine is 100% accurate might just decide there's no way out and play along with confessing in the moment because they have no other alternative and it's a very stressful and unusual situation to be in. These are not what I'd call reliable confessions or meaningful information though.
that puts too much power in the hands of the police... like a drug dog that doesn't smell drugs, but alerts when the handler "has a feeling" and gives the dog a surreptitious clue.
nothing like that belongs in the legal system.
we need facts and evidence; not suspicions, inuendo, "hunches", and witch hunts.
> U.S. Judge Orders “Immediate Removal” of Website Critical of Voice Lie Detector
It was a default judgement, the judge didn't "order" anything. If the other side fails to answer the case at all ("Dektor has not timely responded to either motion."[0]), the judge simply grants the claimant what they asked for.
You can apply to vacate a default judgement and get your day in court, but that requires you to take part in proceedings. It should also be noted that "Arthur Herring III" of Dektor has an interest history (just google it, I see multiple unrelated news articles/lawsuits), and that both sides are selling voice "lie detectors."
[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.532237...