In “Lie detectors to be left out of the spy game,” Simon Kearney reports for The Australian on the decision by that country’s intelligence service to reject polygraph screening:
Lie detectors to be left out of the spy game
Simon Kearney
October 20, 2006AUSTRALIAN spy agencies have abandoned plans to introduce lie-detector tests after a three-year trial found them to be unreliable and likely to cause low morale among intelligence officers.
Lie-detector tests are routinely used by US agencies such as the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency to weed out traitors.
ASIO‘s annual report reveals staff at the domestic spy agency submitted to polygraph tests on a voluntary basis in a trial carried out between 2000 and 2003.
ASIO found polygraphs were not compatible with the professional culture in Canberra’s intelligence community and also raised several “technical difficulties” thought to be related to the notorious unreliability of polygraphs.
A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said that, as a result of the trial’s findings, using polygraph machines to test the integrity of Australian spies was no longer on the agenda.
“We have no intention of adopting polygraphs,” he said.
The trial was ordered by former attorney-general Daryl Williams in 2000 after a review of internal security carried out by former inspector-general of intelligence and security Bill Blick recommnded staff be subject to psychological testing.
Mr Blick reviewed security across Australia’s six intelligence and security agencies after the arrest in Washington of Defence Intelligence Organisation officer Jean-Philippe Wispelaere, who had attempted to sell secret satellite images to Singapore in 1999.
The recommendations of the ASIO trial – that the tests not become an internal security policy – were put to federal cabinet, which agreed.
To discuss this article, see the AntiPolygraph.org message board thread, Aussies Throw Out Polygraph.