Indiana Man Gets 8 Months For Teaching How To Beat Polygraph Tests 356
A week ago, we posted news that federal prosecutors were seeking jail time for Chad Dixon, an Indiana man who made money teaching others how to pass polygraph examinations. Now, reader Frosty Piss writes that Dixon "was sentenced Friday to eight months in prison. Prosecutors described Chad Dixon as a 'master of deceit.' Prosecutors, who had asked for almost two years in prison, said Dixon crossed the line between free speech protected under the First Amendment and criminal conduct when he told some clients to conceal what he taught them while undergoing government polygraphs. Although Dixon appears to be the first charged publicly, others offering similar instruction say they fear they might be next. 'I've been worried about that, and the more this comes about, the more worried I am,' said Doug Williams, a former police polygraphist in Oklahoma who claims to be able to teach people to beat what he now considers a 'scam' test."
Re:Some FA (Score:5, Interesting)
“There’s nothing unlawful about maybe 95 percent of the business he conducted,” the judge said. However, O’Grady added that “a sentence of incarceration is absolutely necessary to deter others.”
^^^ Even more worrisome. Or perhaps to be expected?
Covered in my Psyc 101 class (Score:4, Interesting)
My intro level psychology class covered beating the polygraph. It was a class at University of Washington, which gets a good deal of money from the federal government in question here. It was a perfectly good example of applying the principals studied in the class, and included some scientific study of polygraph tests.
Really, it looks like all you need to beat the test is a good fear that it will classify your truth as lies, which is reasonable given the ~50% false positive rate. They can subjectively interpret the results however they want though, so no matter what you do, it can be used as an excuse to refuse people.
Joke laws (Score:5, Interesting)
You are part of the cattle (and get years or decades of jail for things that are crimes, affects noone or make your rights prevail), or you are above the law, getting more money and support if you violate constitution amendments [policymic.com], get promoted [arstechnica.com] if found that you intentionally lied to the congress [slate.com], or get a small fine if is found that you you knowingly launder money for terrorist and drug cartels [rollingstone.com].
There are countries where law and justice seem to be antonyms.