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Douglas Williams Pleads Guilty To Training Customers To Beat Polygraph
For quite a while, we've been following the case of Douglas Gene Williams, accused of and indicted for teaching people to pass polygraph tests that they might otherwise have been unable to, and for the claims he made in advertising this training -- and specifically for showing his techniques to some undercover Federal agents. Now, reports Ars Technica, Williams has pleaded guilty to five charges of obstruction of justice and mail fraud. From the article: Williams isn't the first person prosecuted for these type of allegations. An Indiana man was accused of offering similar services and was sentenced in 2013 to eight months in prison. The judge presiding over the case said the case blended a "gray area" of First Amendment speech and the unlawful act of instructing people to lie on polygraph tests issued by the federal government.
Williams' site, Polygraph.com, is now defunct.
The indictment says Williams told an undercover agent that "I haven't lived this long and fucked the government this long, and done such a controversial thing that I do for this long, and got away with it without any trouble whatsoever, by being a dumb ass." The authorities said he told another undercover agent that "I've taught a lot of those guys. In fact, there's a lot of government agents—FBI, Secret Service, NSA, all of those alphabet agencies—that have already retired, that I taught, years ago. And I know what I'm doing, and you will pass with no problem."
That's called "puffery" in the law or marketing to the rest of us.
Polygraph machines were invented in 1921 and their results are usually not admissible as evidence in court.
And why was law enforement - the Fucked up Bureau of Idiocy - FBI wasting millions of taxpayer dollars going after this guy?! Hmmm?!
The government wore this guy down, buried him in legal fees, stress, harassment, and just plain assholishness over a man that has shown polygraphs to be pseudo scientific bullshit.
Douglas Williams is actually innocent but just made a plea to get the grunts with the badges and guns off his back.
I'm saying this before I RTFA so I'll revisit this statement if it makes me rethink but...why the fuck is it unlawful to teach people to "defeat" a method that doesn't even hold water within the very same legal system he is forced to plead guilt?
I can't believe people take these seriously. A polygraph is supposed to be a lie detector test, but all it does is tests vital signs. There is absolutely no way to prove if it's correct or not, so what is the point? If a polygraph was worth anything whatsoever, they wouldn't be worried about somebody being trained to beat it.