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Former Police Officer Indicted For Teaching How To Pass a Polygraph Test
George Maschke (699175) writes On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment (2.6 mb PDF) of Douglas Gene Williams, a 69-year-old former Oklahoma City police polygraphist turned anti-polygraph activist for teaching two undercover agents posing as federal law enforcement applicants how to pass (or beat) a polygraph test. Williams offers instruction on how to pass polygraph tests through his website, Polygraph.com, which remains online. Marisa Taylor of McClatchy, who has been covering polygraph policy issues for several years, has written an informative report. This appears to be a case where an individual was targeted for criminal prosecution to suppress speech that the U.S. government dislikes. AntiPolygraph.org, which may also have been the target of an attempted entrapment, has a commentary.
He screwed up.
Lesson #1, Question #1: "Are you guys cops?"
Have gnu, will travel.
knowing that the federal government is protecting the sanctity of the occult practice of using a ouija board to determine if someone should be given a security clearance.
He is in trouble not because he taught how to defeat a polygraph machine, but rather he taught people how to do it with the explicit intent to defeat government background and security checks. He explicitly said so. By saying so he enters into a conspiracy. He explicitly advised people to lie during a government investigation and agreed to help them conceal those lies. He admitted past clients have used his techniques to successfully lie to investigators for decades. And yes I know a polygraph detects stress not lies. Yet the fact remained he promoted his services as a method to conceal lies.
If he had claimed the training was for some other purpose and always told people to never employ these techniques during a real government polygraph and to always tell government investigators the truth he would not be in trouble.
In short the method he used to promote his services got him in trouble, not the services themselves.
... a former police officer has been dragged into court by the U.S. Department of Justice for teaching people how to beat a pseudoscientific method of detecting whether somebody is lying, a method that itself isn't even admissible as evidence courts in most parts of the world? What's next? Will the surgeon general drag people into court for pointing out that when consuming a homeopathic remedy with 30C dilution, one would need to swallow a volume greater than all the water present in all the oceans of our entire planet in order to stand a good chance of swallowing just one molecule of the original substance?
He entered into a conspiracy to lie to government investigators. He promoted himself as having the ability to teach people to lie to investigators. He claimed past clients have successfully lied to investigators for decades.
If he taught people to beat a polygraph and **always** said to never lie to government investigators he would not be in trouble.
Polygraph tests generally can't be used as evidence in court, so they're nothing more than very weak probable cause tools. Meanwhile, probable cause is so cheap and easy to come by in front of today's judges that polygraph is a relic that isn't even needed anymore. It's science fiction.
The whole idea behind polygraph is that when you lie, your heart rate changes and you sweat more, so the conductivity of your skin changes. But this is false in both directions. Heart rate and skin conductivity can change due to other stimuli, such as (perhaps) sitting in a chair being subjected to a deeply flawed test that will help to determine whether you to prison despite innocence. In the other direction, some people can lie without exhibiting any kind of physiological "tell".
The polygraph test is and always has been a bogus fortune-teller's tool. They might as well indict somebody for explaining why astrology doesn't work.
It doesn't matter what he said. The 1st Amendment is supposed to protect his right to say it. You can't just go around implying restrictions that are not written into the law. But that is what is happened and it's wrong.
The First Amendment protects his right to teach anti-polygraph techniques. The Bill of Rights protects him against being compelled to self incrimination. There is no protection against voluntary incrimination, which seems to be what happened. His self promotion of his services admitted a criminal conspiracy.
A logical government would take this as evidence that the polygraph itself is a bullshit test, and dump it. However, we have a bunch of petulant man-children in charge who just prefer to stamp their feet and hit somebody over the head instead of thinking.
Investigators often rely on intimidation. A polygraph is a tool of intimidation. It does not matter so much if it in fact works reliably. All that matters is that the subject fears that it will work reliably. It may lead such subjects to being more honest, to crack under pressure or to avoid circumstances where they will face a polygraph.
It doesn't matter if its a con to the gov't, as long as it tends to modify behavior in the desired direction.
Geeks have real issues with the concepts of knowledge and intent mattering in the law. They think something is either ok, or not ok, and if it is ok it is ok in all situations. Of course that's not how the law work. Intent in particular matters a hell of a lot. Something can be illegal or legal just based off of intent, or can be a different level of crime. Likewise if you know you are helping someone commit a crime, that can get you in trouble whereas doing the same thing unknowingly can be fine.
It is complex, because it varies, there are crimes that don't require intent, or crimes where even doing it unknowingly will get you in trouble, but there are others that are not. It is complex with various shades of gray, which I guess is why geeks can't understand it. Many seem to be very binary thinkers and want absolutes in rules, which the law frequently doesn't have.
The surprise is that anyone would pay money to take a "class" when all you need to do is watch some entertaining videos.
Perhaps learning a skill involves practice and feedback on your performance during that practice.
YouTube videos - The Idiot's guide to remaining an idiot.
Just last year, an Internet company near where I live had a television commercial where they were offering Internet service with speeds of "50 millibytes per second" (spoken out loud in the commercial). The promptly resulted in a face palm from myself.
It's just an alternate way to ask if he wants a donut with his coffee.
Requiem for the American Dream
But I thought the polygraph was infallible, they've been saying for years that an "well trained and experienced" polygraph technician can always spot a lie. Sounds like they aren't quite a confident as the decades of propa .... I mean "public service announcements" have portrayed.
Read your Constitution, read the Federalist papers, etc... etc.. there is not even a hint at "some" speech being disallowed.
Some of the same authors of the Constitution and Federalist papers passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Those were far more oppressive than laws against reckless endangerment (the charge you'll face for shouting fire in a crowded theater) or laws against obstructing justice.
Reckless endangerment simply says that you can't engage in conduct that carries a significant risk of causing physical injury to another person. Do you seriously take exception to such a law? What about laws against falsely reporting crimes? Can I use the First Amendment as a justification for calling 911 and telling them my neighbor assaulted me when he did no such thing?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The polygraph is just a modern version of Trial by Ordeal. Where about the only thing modernized is the type of witchcraft it detects.
It has the reliability and reputation of tealeaf-reading. Actually, more people probably believe in mysticism than lie detectors.
Under these circumstances, any organization relying on polygraph testing deserves everything it suffers. Believe Mystic Meg's advice on lottery numbers? You aren't entitled to a refund on either. Same applies here. Such devices should have been consigned to the scrap yard (and/or the museum of failed criminology) decades ago.
It's no more easy to be sympathetic to the ex-cop. The fact that he's basically correct is irrelevant. First, he's milking the market. Ten greenbacks for a digital book that's likely to be yanked by officialdom. Even Dangermouse was content with one. Besides, most of the tricks are well-known and meditation can take care of the rest.
From the looks of it, the guy also harasses negative reviewers. That's definitely strike two.
And I'm willing to bet that he has abused authority a few times himself. That's becoming par for the course.
Nonetheless, despite despising the lot, police harassment and the de-facto classification of failings within authority are absolute no-go areas and that supersedes my dislike of Doug Williams and his profiteering.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Whatever else you say, you have to face that this is what Eric Holder and Barack Obama's justice department is up to.
J. Edgar Hoover actually took a pretty dim view toward polygraphs. When the FBI relied on them for the first time in a counterintelligence investigation, polygraph results led them to relax surveillance of a Nazi spy suspect, who promised to cooperate with the FBI. But after finishing his polygraph, he got on the next ship to Germany and was gone. See Chapter 15 of Nazi Spies in America, a book by the FBI special agent who was in charge of the bungled case.
George W. Maschke
AntiPolygraph.org