It could change forever the relationships between husbands and wives, witnesses and juries, political leaders and voters, businessmen and customers. It could sharply reduce the output of talk all over by making everyone think twice before speaking. It could also bring closer the Orwellian society of 1984. The remarkable but ominous device that might cause these changes is the P.S.E. (for Psychological Stress Evaluator) which, its inventors believe, can use voice recordings to detect lies without the cooperation or even the presence of the speaker.
The new lie detector is a creation of Dektor Counterintelligence and Security, Inc. of Springfield, Va. It...