Veteran FBI Employee Accused of Trying To Beat Polygraph, Suspended Without Pay 262
George Maschke writes: A mid-career veteran of the FBI has been suspended without pay and faces revocation of his/her security clearance (which would inevitably lead to termination) because the Bureau's polygraph operators allege he/she tried to beat the polygraph. The case is currently the subject of an unpublicized Congressional inquiry. Retired FBI scientist, supervisory special agent, and polygraph critic Dr. Drew Richardson has publicly shared a memorandum he wrote in support of the accused in this case, which has heretofore been shrouded in secrecy. It should be borne in mind that polygraphy is vulnerable to simple countermeasures (PDF, see Ch. 4) that polygraph operators cannot detect. This case is yet another example of how the pseudoscience of polygraphy endangers virtually everyone with a high-level security clearance.
But but muh trooth defector! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's essential to the way the world works, we must believe in it!
Re: But but muh trooth defector! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, yes. The government-security world works that way.
It's a matter of trust. The government will only trust you with its secrets if you play the game and follow the rules, including the silly ones that everybody knows are silly. The polygraph isn't really meant to magically find spies. It's meant to find the people who think they're above the rules or are adversarial to the government and its security.
If it actually catches any liars, that's a bonus, but it's not really the goal.
Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcraft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcr (Score:2)
Re: Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcr (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcra (Score:5, Insightful)
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hooking someone up to a machine with wires is a good way to scare the crap out of them, the "polygraph" machine could be an empty box.
Re:Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcra (Score:4, Interesting)
There’s a possibly anecdotal story that floats around about some cops who put a suspect’s hand on a photocopier as a “lie detector,” claiming to him that the copies of his handprint proved he was lying, thus inducing him to confess. Pretty sure that bit has made it into at least one TV show, but the story has been around for a while.
Re: Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcr (Score:2)
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In the version I heard, they place a colander on his head, with some wires attaching it to the copier. The copier had an original saying "Lie" on it, and they'd push the copy button whenever they thought he was lying. Probably an urban legend, but I'm sure plenty of such tricks have been used throughout the history of law enforcement.
Computers have proven again and again that you can take an otherwise smart person, put them in front of a machine, and suddenly they become drooling stupidass dumb fuckin' idiots incapable of the most basic observation and reasoning. Anyone who has ever worked tech support knows this.
Re: Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcr (Score:4, Interesting)
Tech support workers often fancy themselves as knowledgeable, but I say ask the IT staff supporting them!
And they're idiots too, just ask the infrastructure development team.
And I have inside word from a product engineer that the infrastructure team doesn't even know what the product is, or why they company they work at exists.
And even the marketing team knows that the product engineers never build the product that was actually promised and sold.
We had some moron who claimed that polygraphs don't detect lies, but luckily there was an experienced operator to explain, "no, it doesn't detect general lies, but sometimes it detects people trying to cheat on the test, which is a category of lie." So they don't work in the way they were originally intended, or in the way the public believes, but they do indeed detect a certain type of dishonesty. It works better than a photocopier, because it is a real machine that does real stuff, so even an educated schemer can fall into the trap of trying to "trick" it.
Polygraph is a load of shit, as a technology. No question. But that fact gives me no sympathy at all for people who lie to try to get around it. Obviously, the polygraph operators don't deserve very much "benefit of the doubt," but if there is solid evidence of cheating, then it doesn't matter if the test can't detect any other type of lie. Cheating is cheating, and if they want credit for not playing the lame game, they don't have to agree to it in the first place. There are lots of legal jobs, recognized as upstanding by the community, which I would never accept because they violate my principles. If you agree to the test, take it straight; if you change your mind, change your job. The high road is always the easier path in the end, because it is self-consistent.
Re: Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcr (Score:5, Insightful)
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'"Commander Turner, would you show Mr Ramsey the gadget your boys found?"
The lieutenant-commander pushed a black cylinder about the size of a lead pencil down the table... With an ostentatious gesture, Ramsey put his black box on the table. He placed the cylinder beside it, managing to convey the impression that he had plumbed the mysteries of the device and found them, somehow, inferior.
"What the devil is that thing?" he wondered.
"You've probably recognized that as a tight-beam broadcaster", said Belland.
R
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Right, I’d misremembered the exact methodology. It was on The Wire, as the AC notes, but I’m sure I heard it before that.
Re:Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcra (Score:4, Informative)
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"hooking someone up to a machine with wires is a good way to scare the crap out of them, the "polygraph" machine could be an empty box."
Even if that "someone" is a veteran FBI agent? Don't think so.
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Even if that "someone" is a veteran FBI agent? Don't think so.
I said "could" for a reason, instead of "will"
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Even if that "someone" is a veteran FBI agent? Don't think so.
I said "could" for a reason, instead of "will"
Yes but for the small-minded, the chance to hassle you and cash in that apparent decisive, instant, effortless slam-dunk "victory" is much more important than realizing that you may have said what you said the way that you said it for a reason. Actually arguing against you and navigating all the shades of grey would be too much work for the instant-gratification types.
Re:Why does the FBI continue to engage in witchcra (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually - yes. If you research the pseudoscience, you can find a number of former government agents who describe the stress involved in taking yet another polygraph test. Of special interest to the females among us, are the women's accounts. It seems that polygraph operators often linger over sexually oriented questions, searching for the most intimate details of a woman's life. What else would you expect of some geeky sumbitch who probably doesn't even have a life of his own?
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Yes, you could easily fool a veteran FBI agent with a fake polygraph machine. You'd need a veteran operator to run the box, of course. And another one under the table to wiggle the needles at the right times. But very do-able. The machine doesn't do anything, except flush out the scared, people who react strongly to scary questions, and people cheating on the test. The scared are probably not great FBI agents, long term. Those might not be false positives at all, just another thing they test for. People who
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control questions like "what is your name?"
Common control questions are things like "Have you ever cheated on a test?" and "Have you ever underpaid your taxes?". These are things that nearly everyone has done.
clenching the anus, driving the blood pressure up and skewing the readings
No. This does NOT work. There is a sensor in the seat that will detect that. Likewise, the old "thumb tack in the shoe" does NOT work, because you have to remove your shoes when taking a polygraph. Neither of these "tricks" has worked for at least 20 years.
The only reliable way to beat a polygraph is by using another polygraph, and practic
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Since most people don't have access to a polygraph, this means that polygraphs actually work pretty well most of the time, on most people.
How exactly do you sort out the people who have trained from those who have not? Do you hook them up to a polygraph to get the answer?
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How exactly do you sort out the people who have trained from those who have not?
How do you drive a nail with a screwdriver? Answer: You don't. That is not what a screwdriver is for. But it is still a useful tool.
Likewise, a polygraph is not going to catch a highly trained agent. But it will filter out some of the more common situations, leaving more time to use other tools, such as background checks, financial audits, etc.
Most security breaches are not by "highly trained agents". They are caused by some stressed out insecure alcoholic taking bribes so he can live beyond his means.
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It may be that organizations who use this as an employment tool don't care what the cause of stress is, they feel it is dangerous. For better or worse. I'm not advocating for such an attitude; just advocating the idea that the attitude exists, and is the cause of the use of polygraphs.
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Ask if they're Scientologists.
Not kidding: Look up "E-meter", and see how long-term Scientiologiests train for thousands of hours on entering a hypnotic state in which they learn to control their responses to a polygraph state, and to convince themselves under polygraph testing that they are reliving past lives.
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Emphasis on "nearly". What this device does, then, if it works at all, is to proclaim the most honest amongst us as liars. Because, yes, there are people who could answer "no" to both of those questions.
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Common control questions are things like "Have you ever cheated on a test?" and "Have you ever underpaid your taxes?". These are things that nearly everyone has done.
Hahahah, nice! I have never found it necessary to cheat on any test, preparation was always a better investment. And where I live, you cannot underpay your taxes. Sounds like they would have some trouble "calibrating" on me.
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True. Question is, would that be good or bad? With all the illegal and criminal stuff the FBI is doing, they may need good liars.
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And where I live, you cannot underpay your taxes. Sounds like they would have some trouble "calibrating" on me.
As soon as they found out you're a foreign national and lied on your application, you'd be calibrated all right!
Is there really a place with no taxes? For you to understand the point of that calibration question, you're supposed to report all income in the US. So if you do somebody a small favor and they give you $5, you're supposed to report that. Nobody does, because it would be a total pain; for the taxpayer but also for the government. They want the rule to be that you have to report everything, but the
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The thing with the taxes here is that you can either pay them in full or not pay them at all (very difficult). You cannot "underpay", as they get all the data from employer, bank and insurance sides as well. As to "service by a friend", there are very generous limits here below which you do not pay taxes on them. So, yes, to the best of my knowledge (and that is what counts), I have never underpaid taxes.
As to tests, well, anything I regards as a test, I was honest on. Again, that is what counts. Their defi
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You missed the point entirely, genius. There are places where the government will compute your income taxes for you and send you a bill or debit your account. I know it's hard to understand for an American, but not every place extorts the citizen's time (which is money) to make them individually figure out a tax code seven times the length of the bible. US Rep. Rob Portman (R-OH) says the income tax racket extorts 5.4 billion hours a year from US taxpayers.
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In fact, it is kind of ironic as what the polygraph does best is detect if someone is trying to beat the polygraph.
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" but they are "good enough" for preliminary security screening."
Bullshit. They aren't even good enough for preliminary screening. Voice stress analysis has more going for it than polygraghy does, and even that is pseudoscience. Body language has always been a fair indicator, along with voice analysis. Old men and women can detect liars at least as reliably as polygraphy, using nothing more than those. Unless and until you can read other people's minds, you can't say definitively whether that person is l
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Tarot works very well in the hands of a skilled operator.
The technique is a type of counseling, where each card can have a wide variety of "meanings" (almost anything) but are constrained by subject. The operator observes which subjects the patient shows interest in and concern about, and says general things about that subject. Ideally, they say things that sound specific, but are actually very general and can mean anything. Then the patient will explain how that is very interesting, because it relates to t
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You probably haven't thought it through well enough. Are those the only types of tests? What about more playful tests? The question isn't constrained to "important or academic tests."
The taxes one is more obvious. Everybody has underpaid their taxes, because everybody has received small amounts of money for casual things, and then not reported the income. If you helped somebody jump start their car, and they handed you $10 afterwards, are you really going to write that down on your taxes? No, instead what "
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The problem for you is that you think it matters that *you* never cheated on a test or taxes. What matters is if the powers that be *think* everyone has.
For example, if you answer negative to the following:
1) have you ever drunk alcohol
2) have you ever smoked tobacco
3) have you ever smoked marijuana
You are not going to be believed (the fact that the first two are legal above a certain age is irrelevant, it is "well known" that every adult drinks either beer or wine). My own clearance had issues because I wa
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What if practicing the visualization accidentally trains you not to be afraid of it, to be ready for it?
It is like they say; the more you know about the test, the more likely you are to get a false-positive. Thinking about this type of crap would increase your chance of failure even if the technique wasn't self-defeating over time, as yours is.
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You know that they will not be coming for you, right?
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Other popular countermeasures (or ordinary calming techniques) like deep cleansing breaths, etc. are also going to result in the examiner flunking you.
So someone who is uncomfortable with the process is going to fail every time.
Re:modern poly has sensors for countermeasures (Score:5, Insightful)
As Drew Richardson points out in his affidavit, someone who knows more about the process is more likely to fail. Fear of being caught in a lie and fear of being caught in a false positive are indistinguishable as far as the polygraph is concerned. Knowing that the false positive rate is absurdly high makes it worse for you.
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What if you simply believe that the device is utter fucking bullshit and that anyone who advocates its use is either a fucking retard or unspeakably evil and should be taken out and beaten until their brains come out their nostrils?
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Tortoise? What's that?
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You sit on a pressure sensor and have your feet on pressure sensors in modern voodoo and witchcraft techniques.
FTFY
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It definitely does not work at all for at least some people, like me. If anyone needs an example subject or someone with standing who's career was affected, let me know. Additionally, important medical information was withheld from me for 4 years, drastically increasing my risk of a catastrophic event.
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In other words, its primary use is to intimidate people.
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The FBI has an awful lot of previous form when it comes to pretending to have scientific evidence that doesn't really exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol... [theatlantic.com]
https://www.wsws.org/en/articl... [wsws.org]
etc., etc. ad nauseam.
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which would make one believe he had a reason for attempting to evade it.
Did you see the word "alleged" up there? You can say anything you want in a press release. For reference read the copious police reports of "resisting arrest" that end up as bullshit. Nobody but the parties involved has any clue about what actually happened.
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You don't know what you don't know. I don't know if there is video of his arrest, and neither do you. It is only knowable if it exists and information about it is released. We have no information about who, other than the parties, might already have conclusive evidence about contested details of events.
If nobody other than the parties knows what happened... we'll never know. So the claim is always false. You'd have to know the entire Universe and everything in it to know that nobody else knows what happened
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I doubt they believe he "had a reason," other than in the general sense that everything has some sort of reason. These are professional investigators; they know they don't have that. What they have is evidence that he's willing to evade the test, which is all they care about. They're not trying to distinguish between "hiding something" and "willing to cheat to foil a test they believe is bullshit" or "willing to cheat when their circumstances alter their level of fear about the test." That willingness to ch
The test for Witches is MUCH more accurate. (Score:2)
One can plainly tell a witch by throwing them in water. Everyone knows witches float and swim, the innocent drown.
You would figure the FBI would know better?
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Don't muck with powerful magic, heathen.
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Now there's an idea, a little Veritaserum will solve all this.
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The polygraph only works if the targeted person believes it works - and even then there's a high degree of failures.
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What's next? A dowsing rod [wikipedia.org] to help searching for explosives?
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The FBI does not believe in pesky Science. It does believe in the Law! (... well, it does believe the law applies to others, but not itself....)
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They simply haven't read the memo yet. None of the "science" was new when this article was published: http://www.science20.com/gerha... [science20.com] A simple search for "polygraph pseudoscience" turns up 35,800 results. There should be millions of results, but I'll settle for ~36,000.
If you're subjected to a polygraph, the guy running the machinery decides whether you're trustworthy or not. You use the word "witchcraft", and it's very appropriate. Voodoo, magic, shaman, witch doctor, polygraph operator - it all am
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if someone is nervous that their lies are going to be detected they will potentially show other visible signs in behavior or answering of questions
or it could be a nervous system disorder
or they could be freaking out because their 14 year old daughter has discovered sex
or any one of a hundred other things that make people worry or get nervous
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what is more concerning though is that they may rely to much on them and hence the educated person can get past them.
I thought that the "more concerning" part is that the more educated people don't "get past them," but actually have a higher false-positive rate. If they worked on a few idiots and just didn't work on everybody else, I don't think that most people on slashdot would even care. That isn't the point of concern.
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if someone is nervous that their lies are going to be detected they will potentially show other visible signs in behavior or answering of questions, someone that goes out of their way to beat a polygraph in such an arena is also someone that needs some serious looking at.
Oh, I see. If you don't pass a polygraph test you are guilty and if you do pass a polygraph test you are also guilty. Burn them!
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This isn't for guilt or burning, just a type of performance evaluation for employees, by an employer with a huge backlog of applicants to fill limited positions.
There is no such thing as Birthright FBI Employment, so there is no need to phrase it as a "guilt" or "burn[ing]" situation. No rights are being violated, it is just a shitty employer with a shitty evaluation process that fails to inspire confidence.
You imply you're damned if you do, or damned if you don't, but it isn't so; you can also just not eve
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No. They don't work. At all. People are naturally nervous when bein
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No shit. I once was interrogated by a shop's security, accused of shoplifting. I had an audio cassette in my jacket that I had bought the day before, along with its wrapper that had a piece of metal for detectors to, well, detect (I don't think it was actually RF chips, but it was their ancestor, at least functionally). And unfortunately I didn't have the ticket, I had put it in my pants and I had changed pants in the mean time.
So here I was, knowing perfectly well that I was in the right. I kept a cool fac
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Or the completely innocent person gives a false confession, just so the interrogation will end.
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The fact of the matter is false positives and false negatives happen for no good reason so there is no reason to trust this machine.
Right, the only known accurate results are when they catch people trying to cheat the test. ;) Don't trust the machine, trust whatever evidence of cheating you have.
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telling the truth can be misread as a lie when the subject is nervous and reacting as such.
Lets remember to consider that this might be a desired result; maybe they don't want that employee who tells the truth and is worried people think they're lying?
they should give him a raise instead (Score:3)
He found vulnerabilities in our intelligence-gathering.
How many other people have tricked the FBI? There is no way to tell. With his data they can try to figure out if other polygraph interviews have been "tainted" by a skillful victim.
It is nothing but a stage prop in an interrogation (Score:5, Informative)
Penn & Teller "Bullshit!"
http://www.220.ro/emisiuni-tv/... [220.ro]
"60 Minutes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I had a personal friend who has a PhD in Engineering who worked for an US govt agency with a 3-letter abbreviation. He got so fed up with the idiocy of periodically put put on a polygraph, that he quit. It seems every time it happened, they would come up with yet another bogus accusation, and try their damnedest to get a confession.
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And thereby this piece of junk-science decreases the quality of the people working for them. Fits. May actually be beneficial in the long run.
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And thereby this piece of junk-science decreases the quality of the people working for them. Fits. May actually be beneficial in the long run.
They are obviously using different values of "quality" than you are, but I find it amusing that you agree there are benefits.
This isn't about science this is about money (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that if you go to the FBI they have whole divisions that have been build upon the foundation of polygraph technology. They not only would suddenly have to actually be FBI agents but they all would have just spent the bulk of their careers basically interpreting goose livers. But even worse they would not be able to go out on consulting gigs where they can be the "FBI Polygraph Expert" this would be a total disaster.
Lastly I suspect there is a bit of powertripping among their numbers. You can point to some squiggles on a line and say, "His answers were weak, here, here and here." and you have just ruined a career or sent a person to jail.
So it doesn't really matter how many times the FBI is shown to be using science at the level of a cave man witchdoctor they have a massive PR machine plus their argument trumps your argument because they carry guns and can lock you in a cage for disagreeing.
Obligatory Seinfeld (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, come on now. (Score:5, Funny)
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As for what he did, it could actually be something slightly interesting(possibly even beyond mere office politics); but my understanding is that the FBI really does get this worked up about polygraphs. It's a weird sort of article of faith: you must both believe that they are a useful, valid, empirical technique to detecting falsehoods(despite any evidence to the contrary); but
Family Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a family member who applied to the Border Patrol. They are now giving polygraphs to all applicants. After failing 4 polygraphs for stuff like "did you kill somebody and bury them in a shallow grave" to "are you part of a criminal organization" and "are you providing materiel support to terrorists" he was dismissed from consideration. I assure you, they none of those were true, but this person is a very bad liar and gets nervous when accused. Border patrol currently have something like an 80% failure rate on pre-employment screenings. What should be particularly frightening is that we are actually selecting for liars who don't get nervous. The polygraph proponents will vehemently argue it can't be beat, which is technically true. It detects what it detects, pulse, respiration, blood pressure, skin galvanometer. But of course it's the meaning that makes the difference isn't it? It's not a lie detector, it's a nervousness detector. Do you really want people who don't get nervous when questioned?
Also, the polygraph is an excellent example of "base rate fallacy", and almost certainly the vast majority of people caught by the polygraph are completely innocent of anything. Even if the polygraph is 80% accurate (wildly generous) that means that if you test 10,000 national security employees you are going to fail 2000. How many spies do you have? A reasonable reasonable estimate would be in the single digit range, but let's just say it's 20. That means you are going to "catch" 2000 good employees and only 8 spies. 0.4%, which is going to make prosecution virtually impossible. You are not even going to be able to devote much investigative effort since 99.6% of the time it is going to end up being a waste of time.
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They should hire only the 80% who fail the tests, as the remaining 20% obviously can beat the polygraph with ease and are not trustworthy.
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Wowzers, this is the first time the slashdot fortune cookie has matched perfectly with the story as I was reading it! Cookie at time of reading is:
There is one way to find out if a man is honest -- ask him. If he says "Yes" you know he is crooked. -- Groucho Marx
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Of course, these tests are an excellent way to increase the number of psychos that can lie without physical signs on the force. On wonders whether that is intentional...
No sympathy here (Score:4, Interesting)
you work for a fascist enterprise that's focused on prosecuting political crimes, don't cry when that enterprise turns on you.
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you work for a fascist enterprise that's focused on prosecuting political crimes.
I like living in a country where political crimes are prosecuted. Why don't you?
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Not really surprising.... (Score:2)
In most states, an employer can pretty much fire any employee for almost any goddamn reason they want to, with perhaps only about half a dozen or so extremely specific exceptions. Failing a polygraph is not one of those few listed exceptions, and if firing a person allowed, I'm pretty sure that suspending an employee without pay is no less permissible as well.
The only recourse for the wrongly terminated employee, of course, is to sue the employer, involving expensive litigation that is rarely worth the
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Yes, there are arbitrary clearances that are required for whole categories of work. They do that because they have an excess of applicants, and it is a lot smoother to over-qualify than to wait and go through a lengthy process to get clearances when you realize the work will touch some thing. Clearances are generally not gotten "when you need one," but as a prerequisite to a job that might require that level of access. In other words, yes, there are standard clearances that are required for any agent.
Guess
The Prophet Carlin (Score:2)
I paraphrase St. George:
People, in general fall into one of three categories:
Stupid
Crazy
Full of Shit
All three can defeat a polygraph, any day of the week. So it really doesn't matter what or why or how the results fail to express the truth. If you're stupid, crazy, or full of shit, the truth is not a matter of objectivity. It is ludicrous to assert that subjective phenomenon could quantify any measure of truth or objectivity. This might be why the FBI's reaction demonstrates the immaturity of bed wetti
Some people can't take a polygraph (Score:2)
I recall reading something probably years ago about someone that avoided having to take a polygraph because she (pretty sure it was a she) had a medical condition that prevented getting an accurate reading from a polygraph test. Does this sound plausible?
Also, if true then what would these medical conditions be? I'd assume some pretty major stuff affecting heart rate and pressure, such as a mechanical heart, pacemaker, or perhaps a heart transplant. Maybe even more common things like being on a blood thi
Re:Some people can't take a polygraph (Score:4, Insightful)
Sigh.
Polygraphs are bunkum. No other civilised country in the world admits them as evidence in court. They are akin to reading star-signs, "getting a bad feeling" or divining for water. Seriously.
My objection - were I ever to be approached for such a thing - would not be medical. It would be that they are LIES in themselves. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for them, and they can be deceived quite easily (which is why the one country that does use them has to have a law about trying to circumvent them, or even disseminating information about how to circumvent them).
They are false, inaccurate, unreliable, machines interpreted by a biased and inexpert human being (who cannot demonstrate their effectiveness beyond statistical error) which you aren't allowed to disagree with.
As such, not having wiped your bottom properly might "skew" the results, let alone conditions of the skin, blood, stress, mental conditions, etc.
Just hope that if you ever have to take one (I won't because I only visit civilised countries), that the guy taking the test likes you. That's literally as "scientific" as they get.
Not so fast (Score:2)
Wait a minute. If he's taking obvious steps to beat the test, no matter what you think of the general usefulness this is still a problem. There's a reason cops will come over and talk to someone who's acting suspicious.
This is bad for us if it's true (Score:2)
We need a better way to detect lying if polygraphs can be beaten.
Actually, on a personal note, I had an interest in this at school; it was one of the things I was zeroing in on as a career path. Unfortunately, universities being the places they are now, a liar made it difficult for me to pursue this research interest. It's not as ironic as it seems, since people who are willing to lie about another person's actions and easy to come by. Our university was rife with people undermining each other through what
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You'll never scientifically be able to detect lies as long as the symptoms of lying are indistinguishable from those of a variety of other psychological states. It's just not possible. On the other hand intelligent interrogation techniques are proving more and more effective.
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It might be facial expression analysis.
There was a New Yorker article about Paul Ekman (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/08/05/the-naked-face) that made the claim that reading facial expressions could provide a very difficult to beat method of detecting dishonesty. The full article is paywalled, but if I remember he had a technique he claimed was teachable and had a very high rate of success.
Ekman spent years creating an entire taxonomy of human faces and apparently there have been studies involving
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This sort of "presumed guilt" bullshit has a long history of prejudicial application via the implicit biases of the glorified chimps doing the evaluation
It's the Salem witch trials all over again, with a different kind of "witchcraft"
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They don't even need anything serious, he may have been unnecessary and just a good scapegoat for someone that's the real culprit.
Never underestimate the evil within - they can go to any length to divert the attention from their workings.