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Veteran FBI Employee Accused of Trying To Beat Polygraph, Suspended Without Pay
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.
It's essential to the way the world works, we must believe in it!
When there is overwhelming evidence that polygraphs don't work?
Because phrenology is a proven science in criminal profiling!
You probably already know this, but for those who may not, the polygraph is mostly an interrogative tool used in eliciting confessions or telltale behavior regardless of its real ability to gauge honesty. As for "beating" a polygraph, the charge is as spurious as the basic claim that it can gauge honesty. If it can't, and it's largely been demonstrated that it can't, there's no reason to hold anyone to the results it presents regardless of what the operator may believe they indicate.
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.
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.
Penn & Teller "Bullshit!"
http://www.220.ro/emisiuni-tv/...
"60 Minutes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
Also, for anyone curious, polygraph reading involves reviewing physiological responses from control questions like "what is your name?" against the readings after questions like "did you kill your wife?" and the most widely accepted means of "beating" these tests is to fake the physiological response during control questions by clenching the anus, driving the blood pressure up and skewing the readings when compared against the actual questions. Now you know!
Thank goodness they haven't heard of retrophrenology
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.
"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.
If the polygraph is a black and the FBI is a white
I the city that I left (due to government corruption, a failing economy, and did I mention a collapsing economy) hired the brother of the premier to run the polygraphs for the fire and police departments. But it wasn't corruption at that level of simplicity, police chiefs and what not all had their fingers in the pie. I don't think if any of them care if the things work all they care about is getting their contracts and feathering their beds.
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.
RED MENACE!
If US don't get THEM first we can't win. How can we win if you don't get them first!
They're not, they're holding attempted evasion against him... which would make one believe he had a reason for attempting to evade it.
You're right that the machine itself does not detect lies, but we all know that's never really been the point of it.
I'm an Engineer in the US who refuses to apply for a position with a 3-letter agency for exactly this reason. I go to work to get paid money, not harassed by witch doctors.
George: Jerry, just remember. It's not a lie... if you believe it.
Why is everyone making such a big fuss about this? In accordance with established appeals procedure we have already put out an RFP for a comically large wooden balance scale and duck. Once the bid is complete, the agent's weight will be compared with that of the duck and the truth will be established by incontrovertible scientific means. There is no need for alarm.
Even if that "someone" is a veteran FBI agent? Don't think so.
I said "could" for a reason, instead of "will"
Allegations of countermeasures are meaningless without a confession from the suspect. Polygraph examiners are professional brow-beaters hunting for confessions. They're no more credible than a psychic witness gazing in to a crystal ball. Their allegations should carry no weight at all.
Even their ability to "read" body language presumes that body language is a universal one which crosses cultural borders and has no basis in physiology/childhood experiences.
I have Aspergers and spent most of my early childhood being vilified by adults who confused my body language for "devious" behavior or a guilty conscience. I was accused of looking "impish" for having been born premature such that the cartilage in my ears makes them stick out more to the side than they should.
This sort of "presumed guilt" bullshit has a long history of prejudicial application via the implicit biases of the glorified chimps doing the evaluation, with little more training on mind-reading than a CPR class!
You sit on a pressure sensor and have your feet on pressure sensors in modern polygraph technique. Both are specifically designed to detect the "clench buttocks" and "curl toes" countermeasures.
Other popular countermeasures (or ordinary calming techniques) like deep cleansing breaths, etc. are also going to result in the examiner flunking you.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umc9ezAyJv0
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?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
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
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 practicing until you can control the physiological response using biofeedback. But that is not so easy, and requires quite a bit of time and effort for most people.
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. They certainly don't meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level of legal evidence, but they are "good enough" for preliminary security screening.
lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf, pages 42-43:
Career CIA employee Larry Wu-tai Chin was arrested on 22 November 1985 .... Convicted by a federal jury on all counts, Chin committed suicide in his prison cell on 21 February 1985.
Ha-ha! IF these DENIERS OF THE TRUTH MACHINE cannot get that right what can they?
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?
Now that you know that breathing a certain way will get you fired, every FBI employee should read up on the countermeasures to make sure they're not breathing that way. You can't not think about your breathing when someone tells you not to think about your breathing!
So this FBI agent, probably just read an article pointing out the pseudo science nature of this test, realized that its the examiner who really makes an arbitrary choice and that he could lose his job and livelihood and ruin his life based on a random mood of a single man.
Which is pathetic. They can't even admit they're wrong, because they'd have to admit Polygraphs don't work and its all a psych. The Psych out means they need to pretend they work!
But then at least he wasn't 14 and made a clock. That's like a sure indicator of terrorism!
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.
A polygraph measures things like blood pressure, pulse, respiration, skin conductivity, etc.
By looking at a time-stamped polygraph log you can reliably say that at a given time, the subject had a given blood pressure, pulse, etc.
If the environment - such as what questions the subject is being asked - is also recorded, you can also reliably say "at the time, these other things were happening."
By inspection, you can also say "when these things were happening in the environment, the subject's blood pressure, etc. was such-and-so."
As far as drawing inferences of cause and effect, etc., well....
you work for a fascist enterprise that's focused on prosecuting political crimes, don't cry when that enterprise turns on you.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
To elaborate: polygraphs catch people who have been extorted by spies, COULD be extorted by spies, or have otherwise violated procedure in some way.
They DO NOT catch people who are trained foreign agents.
Information Collection is risky so it is rarely done by intelligence agency employees themselves/directly.
They use people(empty promises/blackmail) and then throw them away when they are done with them.
The argument about "beating" a polygraph is a matter of semantics. Some argue it can't be "beat" because it measures what it measures, pulse, skin galvanometer, blood pressure are all objective. But what is being "beat" is of course the interpretation of honesty/dishonesty, which is highly subjective. So if it can not reliably be used to measure honesty it is certainly plausible (likely) that results can be manipulated to give the impression of honesty. Among the polygraphs many faults is it only works on a limited subset of cultural backgrounds.
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The Polygraph works just like Tarot cards work. Meaning that it does not work, and anyone believing so should seek psychological counseling. Here is how easy it is to prove it does not work. Drink a Reb Bull and take the test. Take the test after a fight with your spouse or kids. Take the test right before a midterm or final. Take the test after a long night of drinking and you can't quite remember if there was a condom involved or not.
There is a damn good reason that former lead polygraph investigators are telling people it does not work (and the tyrants are trying to prevent the word from spreading). There is a good reason that in many States polygraphs are not admissible as evidence, only whether or not you refused to take the test.
Polygraphs are as accurate as astrology and phrenology. You have just been bamboozled by the catchy phrase "it's science" and "all the smart people believe it so it must be true".
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.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
In an interrogation if someone is nervous that their lies are going to be detected
And for the same reason, telling the truth can be misread as a lie when the subject is nervous and reacting as such.
Polygraph operators attempt to determine the difference between truth and lies by asking baseline questions to get baseline readings of "truth" and "lie". But the baseline questions are obvious softballs. When the real questions come, the subject can easily be so nervous that the responses are all in the "lie" category even when telling the truth.
How do I know this? Been there, done that, had that happen. Told the absolute truth and got branded a liar.
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!
The point is not that they are just nervous the whole time, like the examples you named would cause, but that there is a correlation with certain questions.
The correct ratio would be 4 spies (20% of 20) if the spies were are cool and calm as the others (i.e,. 20% of them stress when accused, 80% do not).
However spies are more likely to be pre-screened to make sure they don't stress under accusation, so its likely there would be *zero* spies in your 2000 failures because they would be chosen that way.
This is not science. Its a lie that some FBI managers have bought into.
It reminds me of the dousing rod bomb detectors. The people who bought them could not admit they were fake because it would be such a hit to their careers. They would have to admit to being wrong, so they kept using them pretending they worked instead! Even though they were total mumbo jumbo empty plastic boxes and childrens telephone spiral cords connecting it to a dousing rod!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GT200
They waved these things around at people, then accused them of being terrorists based on non-existent bombs detected, then locked them up. Thankfully Britain stepped in and arrested the con-man selling them. If he had been allowed to continue selling them, then the people who bought into the lie, would have kept on buying them, rather than admit they'd been scammed!
No. They don't work. At all. People are naturally nervous when being interrogated or otherwise threatened by "authority figures". Just ask the guy who was medially raped for hours on suspicion of carrying drugs in his colon, because he was "tense" and "clenched his buttocks", when he of course was innocent the entire time.
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.
That strikes me as a guilty confession. IOW, the "everyone" is actually you.
I didn't go to school for very long, so I didn't take many formal tests in my life. Also, I'm conceded when it comes to my ability at solving problems. I solve math puzzles and (so-called) brain teasers for fun. I wouldn't think I would need to cheat on a test. That all said, I never cheated on a test in my life. I believe lots of people have the same history.
Now, maybe if you consider "cheating" to be looking at the back of the book when you are working out the solution, then maybe. But I don't think that's what you meant.
(||) Nehmo (||)
You can make your blood pressure spike by visualizing a rattlesnake, riding in a plummeting airplane, catching your spouse cheating, or being forced onto stage in front of a huge audience... whatever you happen to fear most. Come to think of it, just knowing your career rests in the hands of a techno-witchdoctor must be pretty stressful in itself, and it's not like you have to use any imagination to summon that thought.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Or the completely innocent person gives a false confession, just so the interrogation will end.
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.
Don't muck with powerful magic, heathen.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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 time or effort to pursue, particularly when they may not even win even though they may be entirely in the right.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Can anyone else say 'Parallel Construction"?
They've got something on this guy, something serious, but they can't say how they got it, because it would be a shocking violation of civil liberties, and all that's classified.
So they ask him random questions on his polygraph, not entirely unrelated to the matter, and since his responses appear honest, they accuse him of fooling the system and he gets canned either way.
Movie Plot Threat:
NSA high mucky-muck goes to FBI high mucky-muck and says, "You've got a big problem with this guy. Get rid of him." "How do you know?" "Can't tell you that. Just trust me."
What they've got is he being recorded screwing the (underage) immigrant babysitter, and yes, his phone was turned off at the time, but the NSA has ways of turning the phone microphone back on without anything else appearing, and has been spying on pretty much every Federal employee, from the President down to the Peoria office's cleaning staff for years, without any oversight at all.
Or, equally likely, some analyst just doesn't like the guy because he was in a different fraternity at school and swiped his date one evening and just wanted a bit of revenge, so this analyst just made up some plausible garbage and sent it off up the line.
If there's no oversight, who knows...
AC
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.
sigh, and you think people doing these interviews for the FBI aren't used to people generally being nervous? you think police still aren't going to abuse their power just because they don't have a polygraph?
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.
yep it could be, given the area they are working the questions can get very personal. stress and nervousness and normal and they are grounds for the interviewers to further explore the line of questioning to check if the nervousness is just nervousness or something more sinister. Why do people think everything has to be so black and white or that the interviewers can't possibly be used to dealing with people that are nervous for reasons beyond lieing. note I don't support polygraph's, they do work for psychological reasons against some people, what is more concerning though is that they may rely to much on them and hence the educated person can get past them.
The show was The Wire on HBO, and supposedly that scene was based on actual experiences of one of the writers, who used to be a Baltimore cop.
Now there's an idea, a little Veritaserum will solve all this.
The polygraph only works if the targeted person believes it works - and even then there's a high degree of failures.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
Stephen D. Williams
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 wetting or a toddler's tantrum.
Truth and Lie Detection fill diapers. The is no point in eating shit to understand it really tastes bad. Truthfully Quantifiable, nuggets of truth are turds. Bubble gum may be shallow, superficial, and candy coated, but eating shit is not insightful contemplation or a very wise taste of truth detection
Yeah except that the polygraph should say you are lying during a false confession. If it doesn't, which it won't because you will be calming down, it can't actually tell the difference between truth and lie.
The damn thing can't even tell if you spoke or not.
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, I’d misremembered the exact methodology. It was on The Wire, as the AC notes, but I’m sure I heard it before that.
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 thinner, blood pressure medications, sedatives/analgesics, maybe even a potent antihistamine.
If it's a drug that can excuse someone from having to take a polygraph test then I'm going to find a way to be on that drug should I have to take a polygraph. I didn't have to take a polygraph for my security clearance in the Army. I also got beaten, bruised, and broken enough in the Army that I'm on a variety of medications to treat my resulting medical issues. I suspect I can lead my treatment down a path to get on something that make a polygraph unusable should I choose to return to government work.
Why would I do this? Because I know a polygraph is pseudoscience and I'd rather not be subject to it. One means to this end is, of course, not to take a job that requires it. However, as someone with a disability and a skill set like I have can make employment choices limited.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Actually, a polygraph will do nothing of the above. All it does is enforcing the prejudices of the people involved. If you are under stress, you are under stress. May it be because of the situation, the nature of the questions, the fear of the outcome or the need to lie. The polygraph will not tell anyone what the reasons for the stress are, and it's purely guesswork of the operator to attribute it to any of the possible reasons.
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.
Veteran FBI employee accused of using voodoo to foil witchcraft! Details at 11!
Youtube: Bunk's interrogation techniques
(The Wire, Season 4, Episode 1)
Spoiler: They duct tape a suspects hand to a photocopy machine, ask him questions & hit the copy button. They show him pages printed with the words "TRUE" and "FALSE" as if the machine is analyzing if he's lying or not. When confronted with a page that reads "FALSE", he confesses.
Sound cultish.
What's next? A dowsing rod to help searching for explosives?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Why don't they just compare answers against the OPM hack data dump?
You have to wonder if it's actually about detecting treachery, or to foster mindless docility.
There's nothing like $HOME
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....)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And here we have a powerful interest group strongly invested in low education standards. Because otherwise those shenanigans wouldn't work half as well.
Those fucking goons are ruining society to be able to keep their petty power. How I hate their guts.
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 facade, I methodically countered their arguments, including the classic bluff "you've been seen on the cameras", but internally I was very stressed. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what's more stressful between being rightly accused or wrongly so. I suppose it may depend on your personality and values, but I don't really know.
Ultimately, I convinced them that I hadn't stolen the cassette and they let me go. But I still remember it vividly, twenty-seven years later.
There's nothing like $HOME
In other words, its primary use is to intimidate people.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You know that they will not be coming for you, right?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Hello, FBI. Nice beating you are getting, eh?
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Because phrenology is a proven science in criminal profiling!
Of course it's proven! Almost all their studies were not double blind studies
it says so in the name: blind. It's worse than that because it's not only blind but it's double blind. ... I wouldn't be so depressed if the majority of population weren't convinced by this argument.
They simply haven't read the memo yet. None of the "science" was new when this article was published: http://www.science20.com/gerha... 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 amounts to the same thing. Subjective judgement, in each and every case.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
In fact, it is kind of ironic as what the polygraph does best is detect if someone is trying to beat the polygraph.
" 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 lying.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
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 react strongly to scary questions actually might be great potential agents, especially if they appear to "keep their cool" at the same time. The empty box would not create this false positive. And people ready to cheat the test, you might catch the same number. The net effect might be to reduce false positives, and still catch the same number of cheaters trying to hide something; mainly, trying to hide that they're willing to cheat and lie on paperwork to make their job easier.
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 whatever means they could think of. Lying was the least of it. But that's another story, and besides, you probably have your own.
The reason I had that interest at all was because my life has been strongly effected again and again by people who think it's OK to just fabricate things to hurt people they don't like for one reason or another. It's basically a pandemic attitude, at least here in the states. I think I missed out on the part of growing up that said absolutely anything goes if you don't like person X. Certainly everyone around me got that message. I mean, WTF?
People in positions of security who try to beat lie detectors are Bad People. The ability to detect when someone is lying is essential to stopping Very Bad People from doing Very Bad Things to us.
I still think there's got to be a way to detect lying using information coming from the brain. A lie is volitional by definition; that's gotta lead to something usable in this context. Perhaps with DIY EEGs and such like coming onto the marketplace, amateurs tinkerers will make a breakthrough. I would love to have the time to pursue this myself.
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.
No trouble at all; if you have any response, that becomes the new "lying" baseline. Suddenly you're lying score goes up 90%
Urban Legends revealed had a version where cops used a colander, a ton of wires and a photocopier and they simply pressed copy when they considered him lying, copying a sheet that says "hey's lying"
Stupid phone. I typed your and got you're.
And what is the difference between a polygrapher and an chief human resource officer ?
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 "honest" people do is they claim everything that has paperwork attached to it, along with anything large that for some reason didn't have paperwork. If you're such an incredible work-class pedant that you file your taxes with pages and pages of small transaction reports covering every time anybody handed you money, or you found a $20 on the sidewalk, they're probably going to happy to not hire you because you "failed" the test. And you can go home believing you're just too honest for their test.
The polygraph can't detect lies, but it can detect certain types of behavior patterns, like believing you're totally innocent, even though you're not and didn't really think about the boundaries of the question.
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.
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.
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 they don't actually want you to report small transactions that are not a significant source of income.
If you're from a place without income tax, you probably have sales or value tax of some sort. Did you ever have a friend perform a service that was technically taxable, but you didn't pay the tax because your friend isn't an official [person who does whatever thing] and you just paid cash or trade? That is the type of situation that the question gets at. They don't ask, "did you ever underpay your taxes in a scandalous way that might anger a tax collector," they just ask if you ever underpaid, in general.
It is the same with tests. Not all tests are important, academic, or memorable. They're not really asking about tests that are things you would prepare for; those types of tests many people don't cheat on. But why don't they cheat on those tests? Did they ever cheat as a child, feel regret, and develop a personality opposed to cheating? It is not very believable that a person is honest, always, and also remembers everything in their life that could be considered a "test," even the silly or inconsequential things. Did somebody ever try to quiz you, and you lied and said you didn't know the answer, because you didn't want to answer it, or say why? If you look up the word "test" in a dictionary, you'll find that I'm only grabbing the obvious ones; there are many types of "test."
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 cheat is all they need to worry about, and then they know they don't want the employee.
They also don't want employees who "think too much" about the test, or worry about false positives because it is a bullshit test. They probably have all sorts of worse bullshit that they expect employees to ignore.
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. You just can't get there, from here or from anywhere.
Your argument seems to be that "cops lie, therefore nobody knows anything," and that is rather sloppy. Cops lie, so don't believe them, but that doesn't mean nobody ever knows what happened. As a general rule, "it is possible for evidence to exist."
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.
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?
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.
'"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.
Ramsey glanced at the featureless surface of the black cylinder. "What would those people do if I claimed X-ray vision?" he asked himself. "Obe must have hypnotized them"'.
Frank Herbert, "The Dragon in the Sea" (aka "Under Pressure"), published 1956
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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 even apply to be an FBI agent! There are lots of other industries if "Federal Law Enforcement" has too much horseshit for your tastes.
stress and nervousness and normal and they are grounds for the interviewers to further explore the line of questioning to check if the nervousness is just nervousness or something more sinister. Why do people think everything has to be so black and white or that the interviewers can't possibly be used to dealing with people that are nervous for reasons beyond lieing.
You're describing a polygraph as being a crutch for an interrogator who can not personally identify the signs of unease and evasion in a subject. That is, that the implements and ritual of the polygraph makes it easier for the interrogator to follow procedures, not that they reveal anything about the subject. Unfortunately, polygraph is presented as an objective, clinical test of the subject.
This is stunningly similar to the discussion of homeopathic "cures," where you have one set of people saying they "work" because the placebo effect is a real thing, and another set saying that the placebo effect is the very definition of not "working."
âoeWe (officers) are like used car salesman. But instead of selling a junky car to someone, we have to sell the idea that confessing is the best thing to do.â Polygraph is like a special deal for today only because the salesman is under deadline to make his quota.
The polygraph only works if you feel guilty about the questions being asked. If I were to be asked if I murdered a chicken to eat it, and I say NO, I would pass because I see it as a piece of meat. If some crazy psychotic person kills a person and sees it the same way, they would pass a polygraph. I have taken one before, they are a joke.
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/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
https://www.wsws.org/en/articl...
etc., etc. ad nauseam.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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 definition is irrelevant.
So sure, they may think I cheated and lied, but as long as I do not think so, I am honest in saying I did not. I could of course screw their calibration up even more by saying I did underpay taxes and I did cheat on tests, thereby lying on both according to my own view of things.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
The HELL you are. Imagine they show their appreciation by giving you a doll for your daughter instead of a five dollar bill, and try to tell me THAT would be "income". It's the same thing. That is nothing more than a double instance of personal favors or gifts. Gifts are not taxable to the recipient; they are payable by the giver, and only if they give more than $14,000 to any individual per year.
God help us the day your wet dream becomes a reality and doing your neighbor a favor like fixing his front steps is tried to be made out as work for hire.
Stop making apologies for lunacy, and stop being a doormat.
Thank goodness they haven't heard of retrophrenology
Fortunately percussive interrogation is largely frowned outside of the CIA and FOXCON
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Oh, and this:
https://ccrjustice.org/home/pr...
Not exactly a case of falsifying physical evidence, but very analogous. The FBI placed four law-abiding US citizens (who happened to be Muslim) on the "No Fly List", preventing them from travelling outside the USA to visit family and friends, and making it seriously inconvenient to travel inside the USA. This action was taken in 2010, after all four men had refused repeated requests by the FBI to act as spies or provocateurs against fellow Muslims. This year, after five years of being banned from flying, the FBI took them off the list shortly before the lawsuit they had brought was due to be heard. The court then ruled that the FBI agents had done nothing illegal.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Homicide: Life on the Street - the book from which the series was made.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
OK, I'm not saying that all this is not true, but every single link in the summary is to the same site, called "antipolygraph.org". So I suspect that every link would be to someone writing who is, well, anti-polygraph. I generally try to explore all sides of an issue, so it would be useful if someone researched this a bit more.
You know, what, never mind I'll do it.
APA thinks they're bunk: http://www.apa.org/research/ac...
ABC news sort of thinks so, too.http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92847&page=1
Interestingly, the ABC news article says that polygraphs are starting to be ruled inadmissible in the US. Not 100%, but in some courts.
The stupidness here, in my opinion, is that the FBI is ruining someone's career over this. Now, I suspect there's more to the story (there always is). Maybe the higher-ups wanted to get rid of this guy anyways and this was an excuse? Maybe its an inane policy that even the higher-ups hate but they are too timid to stand up to the system?
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
This isn't the only time the FBI has been heavily invested in false science
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
You could ask a lot of rhetorical questions. Why, for instance, is it required that you surgically graft a large dildo into your anus in order to get a job at the FBI?
Those who pass the test usually survive the paranoia test, mentioned in periodic polygraph testing. However, seems to me, that it leaves an indelible imprint on a personality: Every time you listen to the willing survivors, every time you seem to hear fear mongering predicting that something bad can happen, or the bad guys will win. Treating everybody else as a criminal, and mistrust of the general public too.
That's what the manufacturers claim. But there's no evidence that they can detect sphincter clenching. The pads are a bluff, much like the rest of the machine
I know it's hard to understand for an American, but not every place extorts the citizen's time (which is money)
But Americans love to have their time extorted. That's why they'd rather have everything self-service instead of delegating to someone who does the job often enough to to it more professionally for the amount of time involved.
All interrogation is percussive interrogation at COWBELL.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My employer (a defense contractor) has pushed me in the past to work on the govt side. I explicitly refused by saying I know about all of the polygraph bullshit and that I'd tell the polygrapher as much and would be refused. Also it means I don't get pimped out to the govt and I can keep doing my thing doing internal corporate support.
When there is overwhelming evidence that polygraphs don't work?
Because polygraphs are great to scare the innocent into admitting guilt and do nothing to disprove guilt. Most people aren't criminal masterminds and easily fall prey to scare tactics used by the law. For example, look at so-called public service messages that say things like "Click it or ticket" or "You drink, you drive, you lose." All have that ominous music in the background with the official baritone voice threatening (yes, threatening) you.
In the US, law enforcement has become adversarial and not just for African-Americans.
"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.
What about an honest veteran FBI agent whose job is on the line?
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. They certainly don't meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" level of legal evidence, but they are "good enough" for preliminary security screening.
Polygraphs never did good in independent accuracy tests. It is essentially faith based pseudo-science - it sells as long as people believe in it and some institutions have vested interests in keeping the faith up. It is modern equivalent of reading tea leaves. That is all there is to it and how many peoples lives/careers gets unfairly hurt does not matter.
Or they're nervous that they are connected to a contraption that is just for theatre and their livelihood depends on the results of said contraption.
Doesn't it concern you that a lot of very powerful agencies have a policy that you can only be allowed in if you believe in a certain type of magick? It's one thing if a job has requirements that don't make them a good fit for you, but quite another that our government is run by a dangerous religious cult.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'd be interested in investigating your claim that "polygraphs actually work pretty well most of the time, on most people". Can you point me towards any scientific results that support your view?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Yep, "beating a polygraph" is about as significant as "stacking the tarot deck".
Or the completely innocent person gives a false confession, just so the interrogation will end.
Ah, another armchair torture master who doesn't understand how this works.
You very rarely, if ever, torture someone to get unknown information. The majority of the time, you're torturing them in order to confirm/deny the information you already have.
Victim A doesn't know that you know his real name, and the real name of his partner. So you torture him, and he starts giving up other names. You smile, and torture him more while letting him know that you already KNOW the answer, you just want him to say it. Repeat that for a long time, and maybe during the process you slide in one or two questions which you don't know the answer to. You also slide in questions which you know for sure he does NOT know the answer to.
Torture is an artform, and if done properly is extremely effective. But if done by someone who isn't skilled/experienced enough, the results are absolute rubbish.
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.
I think that sentiment is colored by the fact that your primary investigative technique has a selection bias...
Translation: the police are totally willing to lie to you and bully you into signing a confession. They may or may not care if you're innocent. They probably don't.
Conclusion: Don't ever trust the police -- they care neither about your innocence or your rights.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Keeping skilled engineers in the private sector is definitely a benefit.
"Have you ever underpaid your taxes?"
Honest answer:
The tax code is so damn complicated I cannot say with absolute certainty. I accidentally overpaid by six cents once, and after the audit, the treasury sent me a check for that amount.
It is just used for intimidation tactics and to correlate with data already known in advanced. At best it is just a slightly better guessing game.
I have ALL the truthful answers and they are all "Fuck You". I can prove it too.
Which is probably fine to the FBI - I doubt sincerely that they are interested in hiring perfect people if they do exist. Which is something Drew Richardson has apparently never figured out regarding his own personal story. They Don't Care if you are honest, and They Do Care whether or not you fit the mold.
Might as well use witchcraft for the witch hunts
+1
Never have done anything a polygraph could uncover that would disqualify me, but I know myself well enough to know that being accused of lying stresses me out. I'm not signing up for possible false positives. No thanks.
Exactly.
The polygraph as a lie detector (two separate, independent objects) have been thoroughly debunked.
There are, though, lie detectors that are much more reliable - one based on fMRI, for example, is almost completely accurate. (fMRI, or functional MRI, detects which parts of the brain are being actively utilized, which is completely different from telling the truth (a memory recall activity), to telling a lie (which involves logic and creativity).
I sure hope that other countries view certain TLAs' love of polygraphs with the same incredulity that we look at fan death in South Korea or at homeopathy's acceptance in the UK. Talk about a national embarrassment.
The only way to beat a polygraph is to understand that they don't work.
Just BS the operator into submission.
Answer his questions in a way he didn't intend.
If they say you're lying ask them to explain how exactly they can tell.
Take a bunch of studies with you showing that polygraphs are BS.
Generally just waste their time.
Also, redefine normal words to something else beforehand.
This way you're not lying at all. As Bill Clinton said: " that depends on what the meaning of is is."
This probably won't work if you're trying to get a job there, but why would anyone want to work somewhere where you are subjected to "if she floats she's a witch" level of interrogation.
If it were a REAL lie detector, the operator would need to only ask one question and then dismiss the subject.
The polygraph is not that. It's instead an interrogation device.
Fixed headline:
"FBI suspends employee who responded suspiciously during routine periodic interrogation."
Congress told not to worry -- suspect likely to confess during routine waterboarding.
The IRS tax code is so complex, that in 1972 the director of the IRS stated that it was a felony to pay taxes, it was a felony to not pay taxes, and any dollar amount that an agent thought you shpuld pay, could be justified under _current rules and regulations.
In the 40+ years since then,the US tax code has gotten far more complex to the pint that each 1040 form is an admission of multiple felonies.
You don't even need an actual device to give a polygraph test. You can hook up a to a waffle iron. It is only important that the subject believes the machine is accurate. The test administrator asks you a bunch of questions and then tells you you failed the polygraph test and asks you if there is anything you want to come clean about. Often people (who desperately want to be regarded as honest) will admit to other things they may have done in order to explain why they might have failed the polygraph test.
The problem with disciplining people for trying to beat a bullshit technology to detect lies is that their evidence of the person trying to beat the machine is also based upon the same bullshit technology. If you can't trust the machine to reliably deliver on its primary function, you sure as hell can't prove anything for results derived from it.
...and passed, for various security clearances (including my current one).
I've lied about having smoked marijuana. I lied and said I had knowingly stolen items because my truthful answer came up as deceptive on a previous test. I lied and said I had never visited certain countries. I lied and said I had never been under the influence of alcohol at work (we used to grab a beer every friday at lunch at one place I worked).
All this while, I worked in R&D at military and civilian test facilities on plenty of interesting things over the decades.
Polygraphs are for suckers. Take away the power they have in your mind, and they become silly.
Because the government needs a security blanket and the poly offers that.
When you have intelligence operatives at all levels selling secrets it can get pretty scary. You want some form of certainty that you can trust all of the thousands (tens of thousands at least, if not hundreds of thousands) of operatives. The polygraphy provides a distinct procedure for doing this. It is bureaucratic.
Consider: why does management put things as contractual requirements with no provisions for auditing or enforcement? Many times all they really want is a security blanket that the third party is contractually liable in the event of malfeasance without any concern for enforceability. Its the same thing, really.
When you do a government poly it is independently "read" by two experts. If their findings (which are limited to an overall yes/no assessment) differ then a third expert is brought in and his finding is used. Polys are more about rolling dice to see if you pass or fail than anything else.
For the folks who talk about the stress of taking a poly... I suppose it depends a lot about the circumstances under which the polygraph is being given. I know two people who have fallen asleep during their polys [1]. I've never talked with anyone who was stressed by it. Duped? Sure, its part of the psychology of operating them and some people are suckers.[2]
1) despite portrayal in movies and TV, polygraphs are boring, tedious affairs. You are wired up, told not to move, and occasionally asked questions over a long period of time. Question, response, lag (for the needles to settle out), repeat ad nauseum.
2) to establish the infallibility of the polygraph, operators will use different tricks on their subjects. For example, the operator may ask you to pick a number between one and ten, then slowly go through the numbers, after which the operator tells you the number. There's a natural tension build up as the selected number is approached, followed by release when the number is passed. Its a simple parlor trick.
Your comment isn't even clear, so there is utility in going into hand-waving. One what? I can think of lots of reasons that idiots would want to use it, not just one. So I can't even parse your comment down to some sort of meaning. There is no link at all between FBI employment practices and broader government. The FBI not hiring you does not cause dangerous cult activity in government; that either exists separately, or doesn't exist. Level of concern over unclear, unconnected things: very low. For example, I'm a lot more worried about local police being staffed by assholes. Or voters voting for assholes. Those are both much bigger concerns than dangerous cultists. In fact, if you look at the professed religious views of most politicians, treating machines as magic, or even some sort of branded thing spelled similarly, would be no less strange. But I don't judge people's religion. People's religions are supposed to be crazy, this is America; it proves they're making use of their rights. Good for them.
Likewise, the old "thumb tack in the shoe" does NOT work, because you have to remove your shoes when taking a polygraph.Likewise, the old "thumb tack in the shoe" does NOT work, because you have to remove your shoes when taking a polygraph.
Not when I took one at a 3 letter agency a few years ago. Maybe they don't all do it the same way.
Just another day in Paradise
other than your rather naive notion that a polygraph has anything other than random accuracy, your post is fairly informative. It is common belief that asking your name and such are control questions. They are not.
Another common belief is that a polygraph is used to tell *when* someone is lying. It is not. At the end of the day you answer a lot of questions, which are matched to your physiological responses, and two "experts" review them in order deliver an overall "pass" or "fail". There is no individual scoring, no fine tuning of the grade. You pass or fail, nothing else.
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 was *too* clean. "No one is that good" was the reaction. In the end I got a clearance because no matter how far they dug there was never any dirt. But it didn't mean the agents liked it and the final personal interview was grueling complete with another pseudoscience (neuro-linguistic programming).
(On the flip side, people often think that you have to be clean to get a clearance. On the contrary, mostly you just have to not lie to them about what you have done.)
Surely the correct answer is to sue the shit out of anybody that claims you lied based on polygraph results.
In the UK it's probably going to be the easiest libel case you'll ever win.
False, false, and false, and worse, you didn't even read what I wrote. I'll give you a hint, I covered why it goes beyond employment records. By "here" you obviously mean, outside the USA; and so no, that doesn't count. Guess what, you just failed their test and getting investigated as to why you lied about your country of origin to get that far into the hiring process.
If you're not willing to talk about American taxes, don't talk about taxes in the restricted context of asking questions of American government employees in jobs that require classified security. It is just nonsense. In your country they would use different calibration questions. Duh.
As to tests, yeah, I already know you didn't open a dictionary and read about the word "test." Do it, find out if your claim holds up. Spoiler, nobody can meet that standard; the best you can do is to say, "gosh, I don't ever remember cheating, even as a child." Nobody gets through childhood smelling that pretty, sorry. Real dictionary, look up "test." Their definition isn't "irrelevant," it is English. And no, you weren't honest on every test, it is complete horseshit. You just don't remember, because you didn't seriously think about the question; you just recited the answer that matches your self-narrative. They would easily winnow you out. The test would successfully out your inability to answer honestly, without even looking at the machine. The machine wouldn't have to work at all, or even be plugged in, for them to call bullshit on your holier-than-thou claims. Simply believing in different meanings of English words than everybody else doesn't make you an honesty superman. For obvious reasons. ;)
If you really don't understand, I'll add; they don't care about "according to your own view." That attitude actually shows pervasive willingness to lie by omission; to mislead.
Millennials are leaving the federal workforce in droves.
Hmm, I wonder if there's a connection....
Even in an exceptionally litigious place like the UK there would be no libel case, it is a confidential test conducted by the government. If you don't like what it says about you, don't tell anybody. Easy as pie.
Here in the US, where things are much less litigious and we have Freedom of Speech to prevent most of the "libel case" horsecrap, you'd fail for numerous reasons. You can only sue the government where the law allows for the suit; generally, where the government is violating your civil rights. There is no civil right to work for the FBI, and "people who fail polygraph tests but insist they're great people" aren't a protected group. But lets not toss this out yet, just because you would have no standing in this situation. We don't have general libel nonsense here. They would not only have to publish the results before you get into that territory, they would also have to be factually wrong, and know it. They would need to telling a provable lie, and to not actually believe it. You just can't get there by saying that factually it is a lie. So what? Did they reasonably believe it? They would be able to show employment documents, employee handbooks and the like, that say use of the machine is an important part of their process. You would have to convince a jury that their private test somehow defamed you, and also that the negative part was a lie, and also that they probably knew it was a lie. There is no way to get to a libel suit in the US over contested facts. You need a clear statement of fact that against you, in public, that received attention, and where the person writing it knew that it was false, or at a minimum knew they didn't know if it was true.
No, there are not such places in the US. We have not yet achieved the level of surveillance to tax you for the $5 you received. Shouting "the hell you are" doesn't negate that you're supposed to claim all income not specifically excepted. Gifts are not taxable, but calling something a gift where it was given in return for some consideration is not a gift. They don't ask, "did you ever underpay your taxes in a provable way?" they just ask if you ever did it, at all, even a little bit. Not every $5 that trades hands is a gift to your daughter.
The funny part is that you confuse my ability to analyze their claims, with actually being a supporter of what they do. It is hilarious.
And then we have the gem where you claim that "double instance of personal favors" are not taxable income, even where one of the "favors" is an item of value. In your example scenario, the answer afterwards, "did you ever underpay your taxes?" "Yes."
Thinking is not an apology. Duh. And refusal to think does not stop or work against the things you refused to think about. And to take it a step further, them asking a super-generalized question doesn't require you to give the deceptive answer that you practiced giving so that you can check the right box on the form; they're asking you to lower your guard, and be over-honest; honest to the point of literal speaking. They can be evil, or good, and do that. Your opinion of them and what they do should have no bearing on your ability to answer the question "honestly," or to rephrase it, to answer it literally. The literal answer is the same regardless of your opinions on the subject of the question.
Even in an exceptionally litigious place like the UK there would be no libel case, it is a confidential test conducted by the government. If you don't like what it says about you, don't tell anybody. Easy as pie.
"You're sacked."
"Why?"
"You lied on the polygraph test"
At that point you've lost your job because someone made a disparaging claim about you that they can't substantiate.
Sue the fucker.
I know it's hard to understand for an American, but not every place extorts the citizen's time (which is money)
But Americans love to have their time extorted. That's why they'd rather have everything self-service instead of delegating to someone who does the job often enough to to it more professionally for the amount of time involved.
It is funny, in my state it is against the law to pump your own gas. We only let paid professionals, well, paid workers anyways, do that. Actually you might be shocked to find that we have a largely service-based economy, with paid delegation available for everything. You confused the existence of choices with people choosing a different thing.
See the post you replied to. ;) You can't sue the government for that. Also, you're trying too hard; even a private employer would have no exposure to a suit from that. Telling somebody inside the same company isn't a public claim, and can't defame you. They have a right to say things inside the company as part of your employment, even disparaging things. You don't have even a single element of a case. Your lawyer would get smacked with a Rule 11 hearing without even having made it to discovery. The only reason the case wouldn't get thrown out right away is that the opposing counsel would oppose early dismissal, in order to keep the case alive until the Rule 11 hearing and your lawyer getting heavy punitive damages assessed.
In the UK it's unfair dismissal at the absolute minimum, quite apart from any private lawsuit.
In the US apparently you have no rights.
Wow, what a positively derpy observation. I don't have rights... because I can't sue the government as often as in the UK. Uhhhh. Yeah. You don't have Freedom of Speech, but at least they still let you say stupid shit.
I've seen people who are math challenged, but you looked at American civil rights and couldn't even count to 1. If it helps, I can probably walk down the street and find some crazy asshole to run around the street in front of his house carrying his rifle, as a demonstration of American rights. And I don't even like that right.
Heck, in the UK I don't even have the right to wear my own ancestral clan kilt pattern without permission from the government. At least have limited freedom of religion, though not to a level that would be called that in the US.
Religion shouldn't get in the way of the government doing their job, which it obviously does when it is part of the job application. In addition to being a violation of the first amendment, it isn't going to catch sociopaths and pathological liars who don't have emotional responses to lying, and it will filter out a lot of highly talented people who have atypical minds. For example, autistic people are often pathologically honest, but they will express a lot of the standard signs for identifying lying, like not making eye contact.
It's not just the FBI that uses polygraph, the CIA, NSA, and any other defense or intelligence agency use them as part of their vetting process. If these agencies are left unchecked, there is a real possibility that their incompetence could cause the death of millions, maybe even billions in a worst case scenario.
So, in summary, the reliance of polygraphs increases the chances of the most dangerous people making up more of the staff, while excluding many of the brightest applicants, on matters that could literally mean the end of the world as we know it. Using the first amendment to defend violating the first amendment is not a valid defense of such a risk.
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+100. I knew a girl - yes a girl, she was 1 16 year old intern - who quit a job at XXX agency because the polygraph operator was excessively interested in her masturbation habits. They couldn't have cared less about the male interns (rolls eyes)
You have a mental problem. Get help. I am serious.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If nobody other than the parties knows what happened... we'll never know
Have you ever heard of "testimony under oath"? This phase is when the truth comes out.
Polygraphs are exactly as accurate as that other 1950's "Truth Detector" the Scientology Thetan Meter.
Same scam, different owners.
where is the link to the story in question?
This is why you can't take LE seriously.
Lie detectors are on the same level as rolling some chicken bones.
Cops are retards.
Torture is rubbish.
Not one act of torture by our government has ever resulted in real intel.
Unless of course, you think "black muslims in Montana" is a thing.
Q.E.D.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Clearly, you aren't a software engineer.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
While in the military, I had a TS/SCI clearance and not once were we ever required to undergo a polygraph test.
NOT ONE TIME.
This on a nuclear capable weapons platform.
( Tomahawk if you must know )
So I'm curious why the three letter agencies seem to require them.
Not every state is Oregon, though. The point isn't choice, however, it's how we've become so impoverished that we really don't have a choice. Everyone "chooses" to be unpaid labor because without those Everyday Low Prices, they'd have to admit that they're not as rich as they would like to think they are.
In fact, locally, I'm not even sure if full-service gas stations exist any more.
It is just not true that there is an automatic nexus between employee selection, and the way of government doing their job. You don't convince me that you've even identified a problem, much less that you have insight into it.
If your concern was just in their hiring practice, as a hiring practice, I might agree generally with the sentiment, though if it is within their legit discretion then I won't agree it is really a problem. But you don't do that. You wave your hands and jump from bad hiring practice, all the way to "if these agencies are left unchecked" and blah blah blah. It is rather unhinged, and irrational.
As to your conclusion, we're not experts in the End Of The World As We Know It. It has never happened to us, even once. So I don't have to like the FBI to say, they have a better idea of what type of employees can do their work than you do. That's true even if they're a bunch of dangerous assholes. I've been interrogated by the FBI, and by local cops, and I have to say, the FBI guys I've met were all serious professionals of above-average intelligence, with college degrees. Not people I would get along with, sure; probably dangerous assholes, really. But you know what would be even more dangerous? Deciding they're unqualified just because I don't like them, and making policy on that basis. There would be no rights to worry about in that type of insanity.
If nobody other than the parties knows what happened... we'll never know
Have you ever heard of "testimony under oath"? This phase is when the truth comes out.
Wow. Just wow. No, that is when the testimony comes out. Truth may or may not come out at all. The purpose of testimony under oath isn't to uncover truth, it is to prepare the jury to decide what the facts are.
The facts of the case might be determined to be against you, even if Truth is on your side, and even if the guy they didn't let testify knows exactly what happened for real reasons. The Truth may or may not "come out" eventually, regardless of who does or doesn't know what happened.
You have a mental problem. Get help. I am serious.
My advice is to consult a qualified mental health professional about this subject before attempting to give "quack doctor" type of advice. If you believe a person has a mental abnormality, but it is not harming them, and you're aggressively advocating that they seek unnecessary "help," well that is anti-social and potentially harmful behavior both for yourself, and your community.
Working for these agencies or their contractors requires a security clearance, often down to the janitors, so these agencies, who you claim know more than we do about what qualifications their employees need, apparently think that it's very important to filter out potential employees that are a security threat. We know that, objectively, polygraphs don't do this, and would disproportionately select for those who can lie intuitively, as they aren't going to trigger a false positive.
Also, there are plenty of serious professional of above-average intelligence, with college degrees that have no clue what they are doing. We don't really have good metrics for evaluating their performance, especially since so much of what they do is shrouded in secrecy. That is, in fact, a very negative factor for the likelihood of their competence, because it shields them against evolutionary pressure.
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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.
That must have been a long time ago when most people didn't know what a photocopier was?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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.
I'm not an alcoholic, you insensitive clod!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Wow, what a positively derpy observation. I don't have rights... because I can't sue the government as often as in the UK
No, the point is that you can't (as easily) sue for unfair dismissal in the US compared with the UK. This is obviously true, as apparently you can be fired at will in most of the US.
In general, you have more employee rights in the UK and Europe, but fewer rights as to things like gun ownership.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Not being allowed to start a career there is just an annoyance, but taking damage to (or ending) a career you've already built there over years is a bit more of a kick in the balls.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
A polygraph measures stress reactions. Stress reactions manifest as blood pressure, respiration rate, and a skin galvanometer (skin conductivity drops when sweating) may or may not be indicative of untruthfulness of an answer to a question.
The skill of the polygraph operator in interpreting stress reactions is key to any usability of the data.
Now, if you leave a polygraph where a group of military guys on the security team can play with it on the back shift; they will come up with several ways to beat the polygraph. "Yes, I have purple skin and yellow eyes", with a little practice, can show up as an unstressed truthful answer.
The polygraph has an entrenched place in the screening process for security clearances. As long as it is used as an indicator of needing further scrutiny instead of as a cut and dried "fire the guy" indicator; a polygraph has its place.
What you wrote is not even possible in the situation at hand. In your case, I do only see ordinary stupidity though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, which is it doctor? Am I insane, and you're a bully who picks on the mentally disabled, or am I an idiot and you're a bully who picks on the stupid?
What does it say about you that you make a medical diagnosis of somebody, and then wave it off. Ooops, you were wrong, right genius? Not really very confidence-building regarding the follow-up correction. What led to your mistake, and what changed your conclusion? It seems more likely that you're just full of shit, and being a bully, than that you actually managed to diagnose "stupidity."
And, what I wrote is literally true. There is not anything I said that would be "not possible." (aka impossible) Which part is it that is impossible, Mr Genius?
(!! I ve lived it, I forget what I was planning to do in the computer as soon as I sit in front of it, and take a few minutes to some hours to recover the memory, but it is not always so; worrisome, but it does not seem to follow any pattern I can discern in my own acts or environment, only the recurrence...)
You're just blatantly lying, and I'm going to call you on it. Where did I claim special secret knowledge? Very strange to invent details like that. It is like a cross between a strawman and a red herring. A straw herring.
Start over. Toss out your faulty analysis that relied on me claiming secret knowledge. Reread what I wrote, and understand each word literally. Then you can give yourself a chance at understanding.
You claim that "we know that... polygraphs don't [filter out potential... security threats]" but that is a load of horse shit. What we know is that they aren't "lie detectors." If they filter out some classes of security threat by other means is not so clear. You can't get to a conclusion on that just by waving your hands, and you certainly can't start at an "objective" conclusion and then just wave your hands and have it be true. The FBI says it is useful for [things] and we have none of the secret knowledge you talked about. You don't have that secret knowledge, neither do I. We don't have objective information about their results using it, so we can't say either way what the net effects are. Claiming to have that knowledge guarantees being wrong. The only part we know about is that they do catch people trying to cheat on the test. And that willingness to cheat is claimed by the FBI (quite reasonably) to be correlated with a security risk.
If the only utility of the test, ever, is to catch people that would try to cheat on the test, that already would refute your absurdly over-broad claim that there is no utility as a filter of security threats.
Just because there are experts who are idiots, doesn't mean that any experts is non-expert, or an idiot, or can't be trusted to manage their own damn employees. How would a non-expert such as yourself hope to impeach their judgement? You can't, of course. As you point out, their field is shrouded in secrecy; that means you don't know, it doesn't mean they don't know. It means you can't judge what they do effectively. Now, there are lots of legitimate policy opinion responses to that situation. But it doesn't leave you in a position to impeach their judgement about things where the facts are mostly secret. And they're not bumbling morons, regardless of your or my opinion of their polices.
You can sue for unfair dismissal in the US. If it is actually "unfair" and not just, "waaaaaa I didn't like their policy." You can't sue the government except where it is allowed. There is no civil right to work in government, and when elected officials who are supposed to be in charge of an agency might be ordered by a court to keep unwanted employees, that actually presents a danger to voters and to civil liberties. I don't think you've really thought out these issues, I think you're just engaging in some really super-silly anti-Americanism.
If you think Americans lack civil rights, you're probably falling victim to credulity in American broadcast media, and mistaking our obsession with complaining loudly about any perceived threat to our rights for not having rights.
The idea that you have "more employee rights" is silly. You have a different package of employment rights. If it is more or less depends on a bunch of known contested points. Anybody claiming that it is just one way or the other, and pretending there is no debate or disagreement, is guaranteed to be wrong. Narrowly on the process of ending employment, it is more difficult to end employment in Europe than in the US. But that doesn't guarantee that the result is increased rights. It might be that other employees have less rights directly as a result of being less able to fire workers who trample the rights of their co-workers. There are numerous cases where a US employer would be required to fire somebody in order to protect the rights of the other workers, because that person had created a bigoted or hostile work environment; in Europe those other employees would very likely have to "suck it up" and tolerate years of abuse before it amounted to enough to get rid of the person. As a result, it is much more common in Europe for workplace harassment victims to change jobs, where in the same situation in the US they would have the option of fighting to protect their rights.
If you just assume you're right about things that are known to be contentious, you put yourself in the position of having the only position that is provably wrong. ;)
Not being allowed to start a career there is just an annoyance, but taking damage to (or ending) a career you've already built there over years is a bit more of a kick in the balls.
Sure! But it is part of the job. People should know that going in; there are lots of things that can happen that will end your career. As long as you don't do something really stupid like getting caught cheating the polygraph, then you can just move laterally to another agency if something happens. Even if you lose your clearance for some other innocent reason, like a polygraph false-positive, which is entirely possible, you can just switch to a different agency and still be a federal law enforcement agent, and probably even maintain a similar pay grade and benefit package. Assuming a person is aware of the realities of their choice, none of this is harmful or creates a damned/damned scenario.
The FBI is always going to have the highest security requirements, and loads of arcane and stupid-looking employment criteria, because they're the agency that is charged with investigating the other agencies. Congress has passed laws, for example, limiting the types of activities the CIA can do inside the US. Who could possibly keep the CIA under observation for that? The FBI is charged with that task. Plus, almost all the counter-intelligence work inside the US is done by the FBI. They do this because the FBI doesn't do other intelligence work; it really increases the difficulty of getting moles in, and protecting them. So the FBI has a special basket of job requirements. Prospective employees need to be aware that because of the sensitivity of much of the work they have no basis for feeling entitled to do that work forever. The work is more important than the worker.
It may even be that the polygraph has some sort of unknown purpose, like identifying anti-polygraph training techniques used by specific foreign entities. I don't know that that is true, but I do know that taking what the FBI says at face value is a bad idea, because they have a known policy (as does all law enforcement in the US) of using deception in their work.
A lot of the debate here is exceptionally naive; on the level or arguing about the Roswell "weather balloon" and if it was a weather balloon, instead of getting to the real subject: why would the Air Force tell that lie, what are the reasonable possibilities? If you start out on the wrong question, the answer could be "anything," but if you pay attention to the obvious questions then "hiding an experimental aircraft" stands out right away as the top-shelf answer. So many people are willing to just presume that FBI agents are the same sort of bumbling morons that the local police hire, without even realizing that local police exclude most college grads as over-qualified, while the FBI requires having a good education and high IQ. If the FBI is doing something that looks stupid, people should realize, it probably looks stupid on purpose. Not because they don't do stupid things, everybody does that; but because very little of what they do is even visible to the public. If we see their "stupidity," they probably intended us to.
I saw a polygraph session and I got the sense it's more of a tool to give the interrogator data to work with, rather than a truth detector. They can see how you're reacting to what's being said and use that to direct the interrogation, like if there's a signal spike on a routine question, there's probably more to follow up on. The interview lasted for hours all the answers were checked to see if they were consistent with previous answers along with fact checking to see if they were true (which I think would be the hard part to fake). It was pretty intimidating.
They can use it to bully lesser mortals.
Casteism
That is a claim that has ZERO evidence and zero reason to suspect anything other than tricking people into thinking it works. You might as well claim that polygraphs give you mental superpowers. There's just as much evidence to support it.
In regards to real world applications with some degree of actual evidence, the only thing that polygraphs could be useful for is tricking people into thinking they work. But you could substitute countless other techniques from different cultures and claim mystical powers. But if they literally used a voodoo ritual as part of getting a security clearance, people would obviously get upset because that's clearly stupid bullshit that would only let crazy jackasses in.
Secrecy is not an advantage in regards to having scientific evidence. It means that they aren't subject to external peer review, and thus have little to no forces that act against their existing biases.
According to spies themselves, they often are.
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You seem to believe that polygraph operators can tell if someone is "ready to cheat the test".
But there is no evidence that they can, so the whole thing is bullshit.
this means that polygraphs actually work pretty well most of the time, on most people.
And how do you know this?
Citations, please.
But they wouldn't say "You lied on the polygraph test".
They would say "certain things have come to light that cause us to question your trustworthiness".
That's just what a terrorist would say!
one based on fMRI, for example, is almost completely accurate
Wrong.
Use of fMRI for lie detecting is strictly a research topic.
False. It is a known fact that cheaters have been caught using physical evidence. In some cases there are even recordings of the training sessions.
The big one that I bet gets a lot of people is that you're supposed to pay sales tax on items that you buy from out of state and have shipped to you. Almost no one actually does this.
Most of the rest of the cheating I imagine has to do with claiming deductions that one is not eligible for. Or things like you can deduct expenses such as medical costs. Sure, they may audit you and you'd have to prove you actually spent $X on qualifying medical expenses by coughing up bills, receipts, etc. But chances are you won't get audited and therefore it's basically on the honor system, so one might be tempted to pad the number a bit. Or they might try to claim their son or daughter as a dependent even though their kid has grown up and moved out, etc.
People who own their own business seem to like to cheat a bit too, mostly by having their business buy something like a laptop as a "business expense" (which is then tax deductible) even though the item in question is used mostly for personal use. And so on.
Make the person in question take a polygraph test to see if they are lying about trying to beat the polygraph. If they pass, then clearly they are lying because they passed the test!