Going undercover as a sex worker

Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by minthd on Monday June 22, 2015 @04:23AM (#9756907)

While i'm not sure whether legalization or the Swedish approach works best(criminalization of purchase), but if we want to prevent trafficking, maybe it's possible to use some sort of lie detector(standard, fmri, P300), etc - and ask girls whether they work for themselves, or are forced , or trafficked - and only let girls who work for themselves work in legal brothels ?

It won't be perfect, but maybe it can reduce trafficking ?

EDIT: please down just downvote, explain what's wrong with my line of reasoning ?

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by roel_v on Monday June 22, 2015 @07:02AM (#9757446)

Lie detectors are nonsense. It's dangerous to promote their use. The US is the only Western country where it's routinely used.

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by minthd on Monday June 22, 2015 @07:51AM (#9757613)

While regular polygraphs are not reliable, I think usage for P300(i.e. brain fingerprinting) is more reliable, and even used in some courts.

for some numbers ,see[1]- "With both P300 and P300-MERMER, error rate was 0 %: determinations were 100 % accurate, no false negatives or false positives; also no indeterminates. Countermeasures had no effect. Median statistical confidence for determinations was 99.9 % with P300-MERMER and 99.6 % with P300"

So maybe this could be a good starting point for something useful for trafficking prevention ?

[1]http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11571-012-9230-0

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by eru on Monday June 22, 2015 @05:45AM (#9757223)

Alas, lie detectors don't work.

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by minthd on Monday June 22, 2015 @06:25AM (#9757339)

They have an error rate - which makes them in admissable as a tool for deciding whether someone should go to jail. That's reasonable.

On the other hand, their are routinely used in classified agencies for some tasks.

So maybe ,even with this error rate, we could see reduction at trafficking , at some risk of loss for freedom of profession. Maybe the benefits are big and the disadvantages are quite small(depending on error rates, etc) ? Maybe it's a worthwhile tradeoff ?

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by roel_v on Monday June 22, 2015 @07:08AM (#9757457)

You make it seem as if lie detectors somewhat work, except that they have a stochastic failure rate of x%. They don't, they're snake oil. Whole libraries have been written about it, one can start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph and follow the literature from there. No civilized country allows lie detectors to be used for any 'real' purposes except the US.

So no, it's not a worthwhile tradeoff, because it's hardly better than rolling dice.

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by laichzeit0 on Monday June 22, 2015 @06:59AM (#9757432)

> EDIT: please down just downvote, explain what's wrong with my line of reasoning ?

Nothing wrong with your reasoning, many people on HN stupidly enough think that the downvote button is for when you disagree with a comment.

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by vacri on Monday June 22, 2015 @07:37AM (#9757569)

Downvoting for disagreement has been explicitly stated as a proper use of the downvote button by the site founder.

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Re:Going undercover as a sex worker by icebraining on Monday June 22, 2015 @07:31AM (#9757551)

Yeah, people like HN's founder, pg.

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