Anti-Polygraph Instructor Who Was Targeted By Feds Goes Public 197
George Maschke writes "Last year, the McClatchy newspaper group reported on a federal criminal investigation into individuals offering instruction on how to pass polygraph tests. The ongoing investigation, dubbed 'Operation Lie Busters,' has serious free speech implications, and one of the two men known to have been targeted is presently serving an 8-month prison term. The other, Doug Williams, himself a former police polygrapher, has this week for the first time gone public with the story of federal agents' February 2013 raid on his office and home (video). Williams, who has not been charged with a crime but remains in legal jeopardy, is selling his story in an e-book. Public interest website AntiPolygraph.org (which I co-founded) has published a synopsis."
Show me ... (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Lavrentiy Beria, Stalinâ(TM)s head of the secret police
Passing is easy (Score:4, Interesting)
To pass a lie detector test, you must 'believe' the lie is true. This uses the same form of imagination that actors use to give a performance. For the Human mind, both reality and memories of reality are but an illusion. We have no direct contact to the 'real world'. Our 'senses' are physical mechanisms of our body that are minds cannot directly perceive. An internal 'reality' is created using different types of memory, heavily processed versions of the data provided by our sense systems, and 'thought'.
So, creating false realities through practice is child's play for most people. 'False' or alternate memories are trivially implanted if a person has pre-awareness of the lies they will need to tell. Training the imagination even allows for spontaneous false realities to be created in real-time.
And then you have bio-feedback training, which means learning to consciously adjust breathing rates, heart rate, and sweat response. I recall this kind of thing was popular in the 60s, 70s and early 80s as a method for improving meditation and relaxation. It is not unexpected that when bio-feedback was a technique commonly known by the average sheeple, lie-detectors fell into disrepute, but now the term is probably unknown to most of you, the pseudo-science of lie detection has made a comeback.The 'usefulness' of lie-detectors is EXACTLY the same as the usefulness of those phony bomb detectors (made from novelty golf-ball detectors) that were in the news recently.
Lie detectors are NOT used because they are accurate, but as tools of oppression when security theatre is used as an excuse to target 'enemies' of the State. Team Obama and Team Blair push such disgusting nonsense, so the incredibly evil abusive regimes that the UK and USA support can deploy the same pseudo-scientific equipment in their constant war against democracy activists, and use 'positive' results as an excuse for torture, imprisonment and execution. How many people do you think suffered the most horrifying ill-treatment because of the 'positive' results given by the fake bomb-detectors that MI6 distributed in Tony Blair's various war-zones?
Re:if you know how a polygraph works... (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea is to create a concept of a "lie detector." Then you tell your suspect, "If you didn't do it, just take a 'lie detector' test. If that comes out clean, then you'll be off the hook. You can go home right away. No need to spend a few more hours sitting here with us going over this stuff over and over and over again."
Plug him into the "lie detector." Ask him some questions. Then have the police come in and say, "The lie detector says you were lying. Why don't you tell us what really happened? We can be here all night until you decide to tell us the truth..."
Some words of advice: THINK BEFORE YOU POST (Score:0, Interesting)
Consider one thing:
If they can put away a man for TALKING about how easiy it is to bullshit your way through a polygraph ... how many smart-alec remarks do you think YOU have left before they come and kick your ASS??
I'm sure most of you will want to post something negative here but before you do.. consider this:
IF YOU DO and the more you do it, the more likely iit gets It's going to be your ASS that's going to get arrested and get disappeared into a FEDERAL DETENTION CENTER. There, you can be DETAINED FOR YEARS without even seeing a judge, without your family knowing where you are and NO WAY to make a phone call.
Nobody will care about you and you will not be mentioned on slashdot nor will there be human rights campaigners whining for your release.. you're just not that famous.
THINK.. and THEN POST. America is over, now you need to get over it as well.
Re:Presently means 'soon' (Score:4, Interesting)
As in it will happen presently.
Grrr.
Merriam-webster.com states this in usage notes:
Both senses ["without undue delay"] and ["at the present time"] are flourishing in current English, but many commentators have objected to sense 2 ["at the present time"]. Since this sense has been in continuous use since the 15th century, it is not clear why it is objectionable. Perhaps a note in the Oxford English Dictionary (1909) that the sense has been obsolete since the 17th century in literary English is to blame, but the note goes on to observe that the sense is in regular use in most English dialects. The last citation in that dictionary is from a 1901 Leeds newspaper, written in Standard English. Sense 2 is most common in contexts relating to business and politics (the fastest-rising welfare cost is Medicaid, presently paid by the states and cities — William Safire)
The American Heritage Dictionary's note:
Usage Note: An original meaning of presently was "at the present time; currently." That sense is said to have disappeared from the literary language in the 17th century, but it has survived in popular usage and is widely found nowadays in literate speech and writing. Still, there is a lingering prejudice against this use. The sentence General Walters is ... presently the United States Ambassador to the United Nations was acceptable to only 48 percent of the Usage Panel in the 1999 survey.
And Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary:
The meaning “now” of presently dates back to the 15th century; it is currently in standard use in all varieties of speech and writing. The sense “soon” arose gradually during the 16th century. Strangely, it is the older sense “now” that usage guides sometimes object to. The two senses are rarely if ever confused. presently meaning “now” is most often used with the present tense (The professor is presently on sabbatical leave) and presently meaning “soon” often with the future tense (The supervisor will be back presently).
In other words, there exists a small cadre of Grammar Nazis that are presently objecting to the original usage of "presently" for the sake of objecting. Because for an "obsolete" word, it's still getting pretty good mileage.
Re:Total Obedience is Required ! (Score:2, Interesting)
Just FYI, from past posts taco is clearly a chinese refugee that obtained US citizenship. So he's more qualified than most to say whether or not this is becoming People's Republic of America or whatever. Possibly even moreso than me as a lifelong US citizen. They're only worse in that there is no shame in what they do, but otherwise we are the worse ones. By building an illusion of "land of the free". But then again at least we have shame in that.
You're of course assuming... (Score:5, Interesting)
That he wasn't working for the 'family business' all along, and that Bush's family hadn't been colluding with bin Laden's in order to bring exactly this about.
With the WTC knocked down 3/5 of the tallest skyscrapers in the world are now Muslim, at least 1 of them was build by bin Laden construction firms, and between 'preferential access to oil' and Halliburton's recent relocation to Dubai, the whole situation begins seeming overly suspect. Nevermind the fact that 9/11 happened just in time to keep Bush from getting impeached (does anybody remember what his approval rating were looking like pre-9/11? Clinton had a high approval rating AFTER lying to congress about getting his dick sucked and spooging all over an intern's dress.)
Combined with the fact that the majority of the terrorists were Saudis and none of them were Iraqi (were any Afghan?), it begs the question of why exactly our targets were chosen as such if not due to conspiracy.
The power that be has no shame ! (Score:5, Interesting)
They're only worse in that there is no shame in what they do, but otherwise we are the worse ones. By building an illusion of "land of the free". But then again at least we have shame in that.
Tell you a secret ...
We, the people, at least _some_ of us, are feeling shameful of the situation our country is marching towards.
However, those who rule us, the ones in the Washington D.C. and _their_,/i> masters, not only do not feel any shame whatsoever, they actually are feeling so damn proud of their so-called accomplishment !
Amongst the hundreds of Senators and Congressmen/women, how many of them actually feel that they have wronged the country, by voting in all these draconian laws, and by allowing the White House (no matter who's the POTUS), the NSA (and all the spooks) to violate the Constitution the way they have ?
When I wrote to my representatives (state and federal) exclaiming my exasperation of what is happening in America and to the Americans, do you know what they told me ?
The same old "We are doing that to fight terrorist" bullshit !
You may be surprised to know who's the REAL BOSS (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know who financed the invasion of Iraq ?
The Saudis.
Yes, our boys and girls who serve in the Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force of the United States of America, went to fight a war in Iraq, because the Saudis are paying for it.
In other words, our military became a mercenary force, at least in the Desert Shied / Desert Storm era.
Re:Total Obedience is Required ! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, what about yourself? Have you ever been in Russia, for example? Doesn't seem to be the case, to be honest.
Re:You're of course assuming... (Score:5, Interesting)
Iraq was in the neocon's crosshairs well before 9/11. See PNAC [wikipedia.org], which published manifestos to the effect that "if only there was some kind of crisis we could exploit to further the American hegemony, by force if need be". Signatories include folks like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Armitage, and so on.
Then 9/11 happened, with no Iraqi connection whatsoever, the manifestos were unpublished and lo and behold, the US administration -- now composed of pretty much the same people -- conned their country and the UN to start (another) illegal war. People were hanged for this kind of thing in the past.
Please notice I am not arguing these people were somehow behind the attack, as some seem to think, or allowed it to happen despite intelligence that something was afoot.
You might also like to read up on Carlyle Group [wikipedia.org] which had a meeting on the morning of 9/11 which included folks like Bush Sr, James Baker, and apparently a member of the Bin Laden clan.
Do you know what the price ***WE*** paid ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Saudis financed the war against Saddam Hussein with cash (actually, cash they got when they sold their oil to us).
And do you know what we paid with ?
We paid with the LIVES of our American boys and girls.
We paid with THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of ruined lives (those who were killed in the war, and those who came back with bodily and/or psychologically injuries)
And most importantly, we paid with the REPUTATION of the United States of America by telling ***BOLD FACE LIE*** to the world that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear bomb.
The people in Syria today suffered unnecessarily because of that fucking lie which has made the world suspicious of America.
Nobody would believe the US anymore !!
Re:You're of course assuming... (Score:4, Interesting)
it begs the question of why exactly our targets were chosen as such if not due to conspiracy
Not to mention, you've summed up only a mere ten percent or so of all the "inconvenient aspects" of the official version... but good luck reaching those with their heads stubbornly and desperately buried in the sand; their thoughts and beliefs on the subject (all having been well-vetted by the media for comfort-inducing consumption, of course) are profoundly resistant to common sense, the nature of cause and effect, physics/engineering knowledge... not to mention brutally-obvious lessons of history *cough* Reichstag fire [wikipedia.org] *cough.