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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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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
Other popular countermeasures (or ordinary calming techniques) like deep cleansing breaths, etc. are also going to result in the examiner flunking you.
So someone who is uncomfortable with the process is going to fail every 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.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
'"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.
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.
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.
Yes, there are arbitrary clearances that are required for whole categories of work. They do that because they have an excess of applicants, and it is a lot smoother to over-qualify than to wait and go through a lengthy process to get clearances when you realize the work will touch some thing. Clearances are generally not gotten "when you need one," but as a prerequisite to a job that might require that level of access. In other words, yes, there are standard clearances that are required for any agent.
Guess again next time, cowherd.
These aren't for people being processed for new clearances, either. These are standard things these guys have to go through over and over and over, on a continuous basis. It isn't that you don't get the clearance and then don't get the promotion, it is that the required clearance to even do the basic part of the job is removed because you failed a test that wasn't connected to the screening at all.
Homicide: Life on the Street - the book from which the series was made.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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
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.)
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.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
+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)