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Feds Seek Prison For Man Who Taught How To Beat a Polygraph
George Maschke writes "In a case with serious First Amendment implications, McClatchy reports that federal prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence for Chad Dixon of Indiana, who committed the crime of teaching people how to pass or beat a lie detector test. Some of his students passed polygraphs and went on to be hired by federal agencies. A pleading filed by prosecutors all but admits that polygraph tests can be beaten. The feds have also raided and seized business records from Doug Williams, who has taught many more people how to pass or beat a polygraph over the past 30 years. Williams has not been criminally charged. I'm a co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org (we suggest using Tor to access the site) a non-profit, public interest website dedicated to exposing and ending waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the use of lie detectors. We offer a free e-book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 mb PDF) that explains how to pass a polygraph (whether or not one is telling the truth). We make this information available not to help liars beat the system, but to provide truthful people with a means of protecting themselves against the high risk of a false positive outcome. As McClatchy reported last week, I received suspicious e-mails earlier this year that seemed like an attempted entrapment. Rather than trying to criminalize teaching people how to pass a polygraph, isn't it time our government re-evaluated its reliance on the pseudoscience of polygraphy?"
That's like going to jail for teaching people where to hit their head to pass a phrenology test...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The purpose of the First Amendment is to give people the freedom to say as many things as they want as long as nobody listens.
i wonder if they will polygraph him?
If it is illegal to teach people to avoid a polygraph, what about teaching other skills that can evade police detection. Is teaching encryption illegal? Is discussing mobile phone tracking illegal? Costuming and disguise?
I think that it only makes sense to criminalize aiding a SPECIFIC crime, not providing tools that could be used to commit a crime
This is really surprising and depressing to me. I don't even see the crime. Since when is it generally illegal to lie, or to lie well? What's next - imprison people who teach martial arts? Or shooting? Or driving (think getaway cars)? Or better, people who teach writing (which can be used for teaching nearly anything)! Down with knowledge! Bring back trial by fire!
Stephan
... that there's no such thing as a working lie detector.
Surely you're not trying to tell us that there's some government somewhere that believes otherwise and actually uses the things??
All lies!
"Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft." --Senator Sam Ervin
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Is this the same guy that was on /. a few weeks ago because he taught undercover agents who *told* him they were planning to commit a crime with the information he gave them? A /. lawyer indicated that helping someone who told you they were going to commit a crime, is a crime. That makes sense to me. If I'm driving my taxi and some pleasant old lady gets in and asks to be driven to the bank so she can rob it, I'm going to get out of the car and call the police, not drive her to the bank. Does that count as a car analogy?
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/polygraphs_and_the_national_labs_dangerous_ruse_undermines_national_securit/
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Good question - what good is Tor?
Well, one interesting thing we learned lately is that some element of what can only be US law enforcement felt the need to exploit a Firefox bug in order to deanonymize some Tor users. Given that we know (thanks to Reuters) that the NSA works with other LE agencies, it therefore stands to reason that they are at this time NOT capable of entirely deanonymizing Tor via network traffic analysis, either because they don't have a global view of traffic, or their tools aren't capable of it, or the problem is a lot harder than it sounds (it's all encrypted so you have to rely on correlation attacks).
So for now at least it's the best that is available.
What is the point?
Number 1 is fear. Stopping people form putting anti-polygraph information out on the street because of the risk of being detained or harassed by the government.
Number 2 is also fear. Polygraphs aren't a lie detector, they are a psychological operation against the person taking the test, if you know the test is bullshit it's magic fails to work as good.
Study the history on the FBI with polygraphs, they worship them.
Polygraphs are one reason I left classified work for greener pastures. I believe they are nearly worthless, used just as much to harass as anything else.
In my last classified job, my employer hired a new security officer. After several months on the job she was sent for her polygraph. She returned the same day, the test unadministered because she had a heart problem. The problem was manageable, but it made it impossible for an "accurate" test. Despite this she remained in her job. With access to far more material than myself and others--sensitive material covering many programs--she was excused. Obviously the intelligence community doesn't believe in polygraphs either. I'm glad to be out of that world.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
As has been discussed earlier, a polygraph test is a tool in the same toolkit as the War o(n|f) Terror and the TSA security theatre. Its effectiveness comes from nothing but the intimidation factor - if the belief that your lies will be "scientifically" detected persists, you can get the victim to blurt out all his secrets by simply telling them that you "know" they're lying. They will feel like they've lost even the privacy of their own thoughts, and with that predicament it can seem pretty futile to resist giving in.
That psychological end state is pretty much what torturing during interrogations used to accomplish, until they realized that people will say anything they think their captors want to hear. With this technique that issue is solved, since the victim believes their captors will know whether he's telling the truth.
Obviously, this means that the actual effectiveness of lie detectors must be made, and kept, a widely-believed "fact", and people who express doubts (or provide proof) must be discredited. After all, they were trying to cheat the Establishment, so they must be evil, immoral, scheming criminals who just lie for personal gain.
[SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS
That's what this really is.
Before the Internet, information was whatever was decided the they'd would give to the public to appease us. It was all carefully planned, controlled and manipulated to advance their agenda. Now, we're able to seek out and share information for ourselves at speeds never before possible.
The will of the people is quite demonstrably dissemination. It's not that they ever gave two shits about the will of the public, but they're no longer able to manipulate the flow of information to make it look like they do.
The scientific community needs to rally to his cause. Polygraphs are junk science and haven't been admissible to a court of law in many years. Teaching someone how to beat a Polygraph is no more morally wrong than teaching someone how to beat any other form of junk science. Science should be revered for what it is, and attempts to pass junk off should be demonized. What's next, jailing someone for teaching you how to fool an Astrologist?
I have no problem with the government conducting proper background checks (ala Snowden etc), but relying on junk science like the polygraph hasn't helped them on actual real spies like Ames etc..
I don't remember which program PRISM is, specifically, but Tor is very weak against an attacker that can watch all network traffic over time. Or even very much of the traffic. This is what the specialists call a "global passive attack", and it's very hard to beat.
Think of the whole Tor network as a single entity, ignoring what goes on inside. Imagine you can watch its inputs and outputs. If every time Jane Smith connects to Tor, an outgoing connection is made to Joe Jones, then it becomes pretty obvious who Jane talks to. The network could make it a little harder by mixing up the order of Jane's traffic with other people's traffic, but to get any real gain out of that the relays to wait so long and mix so much traffic that the network is unusable for Jane. Even then, the gain is basically only linear in the amount of delay the network adds.
It only gets worse if you can watch the traffic between individual Tor relays (which you can in reality). And it gets even worse if you can mess with the traffic in any way. Just by using the network yourself, for example, you can load up the path you think Jane is using and look at the results, or you can even play games to cause Jane to use a path you can observe.
You don't need to be completely global to do any of this stuff, especially because Jane chooses new paths from time to time. If she uses the network very much, she's eventually going to choose a path you can observe. And generally you only have to see the input and output points to do timing correlation; the middle isn't so important.
The only countermeasure to a lot of this is to send dummy traffic all the time. But for real resistance over the long term, the traffic has to never vary, which means that the amount of dummy data you need to send goes as the square of the number of possible real sources/destinations (times the maximum bandwidth of any connection). If you send less dummy data than that, you'll end up having to adjust what you send in response to the real traffic. If the enemy can watch you for long enough, they can use statistics to figure out which traffic is real. You might get away with doing something once, but not with doing it very many times.
AND if the attacker actually puts up her own Tor node, she can mostly detect dummy data.
... or because they don't think those targets have enough value to make it worth bringing what they can do with traffic analysis out in open court. They give some things to LE. That doesn't mean they give LE everything they have.
But it's true that Tor is the best available for a lot of applications. And I do personally doubt that the NSA can reliably deanonymize Tor for low volumes of non-repeating traffic. I wouldn't bet on it, though. And I wouldn't bet on it lasting if it's true today.
Translation: please don't arrest us for exercising our First Amendment rights.
One sure fire way to fail a federal polygraph is to admit up front that you've researched polygraphy, you know that it has no scientific basis, and that it's vulnerable to simple countermeasures that you have read about and understood (but promise not to use them). When the "test" is done, you'll be accused of deception, attempted countermeasures, or both.
George W. Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org
"Number 2 is also fear. Polygraphs aren't a lie detector, they are a psychological operation against the person taking the test, if you know the test is bullshit it's magic fails to work as good."
It' the Homeopathy of the Homeland Security.
Seriously, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. I have told everyone who will listen over the years that America is systematically removing our rights..
The fact is, most people just do not care. They have an iPhone and the rest is icing on the iCake.
You hear it all the time from the young crowd. I don't care, I have nothing to hide.
Not to mentions the "they hate our freedom" morons who say, if you don't like, leave.
Well, I did leave. 6 years ago to a country that is, ironically much more free than America. Germany. Sure, it is hard to have a gun. But, on the other hand, the murder rate is really low and it doesn't have more than 6% of the population in jail.
Of course, I still have hope for America. It just gets lower as time passes. Hey, when the revolution starts, I will be on the first boat over. (Dear NSA, I don't mean that at all, I am on your side, you are best!)
It's the one-way mirror in the room where the test is being administered.
I've been through a polygraph for something *very* serious. Some of our crypto just went "*poof*", and everyone was quite concerned. Understandably, so, too! Crypto is *not* supposed to just go "*poof*".
We were all asked if we wanted to take a polygraph, and I gladly volunteered, since it really did just vanish. (We later determined that the tape in question had been included in the daily destruction by mistake.) But even volunteering for it, a polygraph is a scary thing if you know nothing about it.
So I did my research. And yes, those websites were all visited and read, in detail. During the test, I tried some of the techniques that were taught, and sure enough, they work! You can make that machine sing "Bad Romance" as good as Lady Gaga. I thought it was kinda fun, actually?
But see, the machine was just to butter you up. If you were up to no good, the machine would make you nervous, even if you DO know how to manipulate it. And in the end, it doesn't matter.
There's a one-way mirror, and behind that mirror is a team of 3-4 people who are all very good at reading human beings. And they have thermographic cameras that measure your facial temperature to help them in reading those who are good at controlling their body language.
At the end of the day, a polygraph is just a tool that makes someone's job that much easier. It's just one tool in a chest of many, because no single tool alone is enough to get to the truth of the matter.
My own investigation was with NIS, who are very good at what they do, and very professional. They were after the truth, not a conviction. So I have no complaints about how *I* was treated. But if someone is looking for a victim, then having this information just might save your life.
[End Of Line]
I wish more people understood how deep this rabbit hole goes. They can see the entire net. If you use public infrastructure, they can see it.
Good-bye
He's not going to jail for teaching people how to beat polygraph; he's going to jail for conspiring to defraud. There are any number of entirely legal actions you can take that become illegal when you use them to commit crimes. Want to do sleight of hand? Lovely. Want to use sleight of hand to defraud someone? A crime. And yes, teaching someone sleight of hand for the _specific purpose of defrauding people_ becomes conspiracy to commit fraud.
Lie detectors have the inherent problem in that they can be duped by one who has been schooled to do so. But there is one science that is 100% accurate and relies solely on something that the subject cannot hide: Their skull! Using the science of Phrenology, a trained scientist, a scientist, mind you, not simply some quack wearing a tie, can measure the subject's skull in detail and provide a 100% accurate assessment of the subject's reliability, honesty, intelligence, and propensity to commit crimes or to engage in perverse behaviours, as well as many more important traits that one must consider when entrusting an employee or government official charged with protecting our families and making our nation safe!
Be safe! Rely on Phrenology!
So, they did two things: in phase one, they identified the guy running Freedom Hosting. In phase two, they identified the people connecting to it.
We don't really know how they did phase one. Speculation is that they hacked in over the Tor channel, using a software exploit against the Web server. If you have a giant database of exploits and a nice framework for using them, that's not really much harder than traffic analysis, even if you do have the data to do traffic analysis too. And, if you're going to do the hack ANYWAY to cover up your ability to do traffic analysis, you might as well just start with the hack.
Also, if it was the NSA who did it, maybe they did it that way so they wouldn't have to explain traffic analysis to certain investigators in the FBI. Or maybe they just did the hack because it was easier. None of those means the NSA couldn't have done it with traffic analysis if the hack hadn't been available.
Or maybe they really did identify Freedom Hosting using traffic analysis, and then use a hack as a cover story.
Or maybe the NSA wasn't in on this one and the FBI just did its own hacking.
For phase two, if you want to get ALL the users, quickly, the hack is really probably better than the traffic analysis. But again they could be using it as a cover story, or they could have done it for the same sorts of reasons they might have done it in phase one.
Anybody with enough money to hire a sophisticated hacker? We're talking about basic exploitation, not Stuxnet.
In phase one, if Freedom Hosting was taken using, say, an SQL injection vulnerability in some Web forum software or something, that's not very hard. You don't have to be the NSA to do that. Freelancers do that.
And didn't they start phase two after they'd physically grabbed the Freedom Hosting servers? That means their phase one exploit didn't even have to give total control; it just had to be enough to give them an IP address for Freedom Hosting so they could go grab it by force.
Once you have control of Freedom Hosting, then it's not very hard to plant a browser exploit on it to collect the users for phase two. As I recall, it wasn't even some kind of uber-magical zero-day multi-browser exploit; I seem to remember it being relatively mundane.
I'm pretty sure I could personally have done all the necessary hacking, for both phases, and I'm not an exploitation specialist. Surely the FBI can hire one or two people that good.
The man isn't being prosecuted for teaching somebody to beat the lie detector test. The man is being prosecuted for ENCOURAGING a person to lie to the person giving the government job lie detector test.
Lying in an application for employment with the government is a crime. Encouraging that lying makes the person doing the encouraging an accomplice.
If you want to stay on the right side of the law, teach people the theory and practice of beating the lie detector test, but throw them right out of your office the very second they start to talk about any particular lie detector test. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Learn from the hydroponic gardening stores!
My high school friend Ricky Ames never thought much of polygraph tests. In 1986 and '91, he passed two of them while spying for the Russians.
I once learned to self-regulate my brain waves (EEG), or at least to produce alpha waves at will. The autonomic nervous system responses measured in polygraph tests (chiefly GSR, pulse rate and breathing rhythm) would be easier to self-regulate than brainwaves. Try it at home.
Instead of 10 years of yoga (see, for example, Delmonte, M. M. (1984). Electrocortical activity and related phenomena associated with meditation practice: A literature review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 24, pp. 217-231), instead search on "GSR biofeedback and relaxation" and check out the GSR2 Biofeedback Relaxation System for $70 on Amazon.
Think of something you forgot to do, get a genuine pang of guilt, and watch the response. Now you know where you don't want your mind to go. If you can't convince yourself in your heart that you are a good little girl/boy (good that you forgot), and you can't zen out on pleasant scenes, then do mental arithmetic.
A lot of people in physiology have measured all these responses. I have no experience with polygraph testing per se. As the CIA found out with Ricky Ames, the tests are hard to do well. Still, I bet that if I had all the time in the world -- and some experience as an actor and toastmaster -- I could surprise and trick out most test evaders. But, in routine use with routine false positives, where's any justice for the victims of fallible technology and foolish policy?
Many are destined 2reason wrongly; others, not 2reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason. Voltaire
One who can read, one who can count, one to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.
With people like this in power, the US's scientific and engineering dominance will remain unstoppable!
http://rocknerd.co.uk