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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As Drew Richardson points out in his affidavit, someone who knows more about the process is more likely to fail. Fear of being caught in a lie and fear of being caught in a false positive are indistinguishable as far as the polygraph is concerned. Knowing that the false positive rate is absurdly high makes it worse for you.
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Sigh.
Polygraphs are bunkum. No other civilised country in the world admits them as evidence in court. They are akin to reading star-signs, "getting a bad feeling" or divining for water. Seriously.
My objection - were I ever to be approached for such a thing - would not be medical. It would be that they are LIES in themselves. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for them, and they can be deceived quite easily (which is why the one country that does use them has to have a law about trying to circumvent them, or even disseminating information about how to circumvent them).
They are false, inaccurate, unreliable, machines interpreted by a biased and inexpert human being (who cannot demonstrate their effectiveness beyond statistical error) which you aren't allowed to disagree with.
As such, not having wiped your bottom properly might "skew" the results, let alone conditions of the skin, blood, stress, mental conditions, etc.
Just hope that if you ever have to take one (I won't because I only visit civilised countries), that the guy taking the test likes you. That's literally as "scientific" as they get.
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
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.
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