Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
In a blog entry titled “Leakscape,” retired CIA officer Melissa Mahle discusses, among other things, the unreliability of the polygraph: The polygraph is a very blunt instrument and not accurate. If an officer registers any discomfort on a question, the polygrapher will hone in on the issue. After being asked the same question 100 times, …
Today’s lead story in the Washington Post by staff writers Dan Eggen and Shankar Vedantam takes a critical look at expanding governmental reliance on lie detectors. The article is cited here in full, interspersed with commentary. A discussion of this article is also available on the AntiPolygraph.org message board here. Polygraph Results Often in Question …
In an editorial titled, “Don’t accuse rape victims,” The Tennesean voices it support for legislation that would outlaw the wrongheaded police practice of requiring those who report having been the victims of rape to submit to a lie detector “test” before investigating the complaint: Monday, 05/01/06 Don’t accuse rape victims A rape victim shouldn’t be …
PleadTheFirst lampoons the Greensboro, North Carolina City Council‘s decision to administer lie detector tests to itself with two scathing cartoons and City Council member Sandy Carmany defends the council’s polygraph decision in a post on her blog titled, The Power to Pull the Plug.
Former CIA and State Department analyst and frequent news commentator Larry Johnson raises the question and forwards a letter from AntiPolygraph.org’s George Maschke. This article is also posted on Johnson’s blog, No Quarter.
Polygraph “testing” of eight of nine Greensboro City Council members appears set to begin this week in an ostensible attempt to discover who amongst them provided an investigative report on the city’s former police chief to the local News & Record newspaper. To date, none of the city council members have responded to George Maschke’s …
Andrew Zajac of the Chicago Tribune reports on the CIA’s reliance on the polygraph in its efforts to detect and deter unauthorized truth-telling. This feature article is cited in its entirety: Polygraphs target leak cases U.S. intelligence, FBI use tool to police their ranks, but some say it is vulnerable to abuse By Andrew Zajac …
Dana Priest, the Washington Post intelligence reporter whose Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé on the CIA’s secret prison network set up to evade U.S. and international law led to a polygraph hunt for leakers at CIA, answered, among others, a question about polygraphs in an on-line chat session held on Thursday, 27 April 2006: Gaithersburg, Md.: With …
So warns National Public Radio senior news editor Daniel Schorr in this commentary published in The Christian Science Monitor, noting that “often leaks are acts of whistle-blowing done in the public’s interest.”
The latest issue of the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board publication, Integrity Bulletin (Vol. No. 25) includes mention of a cadet who beat the polygraph: CASE NO. 18 FALSE INTO [sic] TO OBTAIN CERT Cadet R informed his fellow cadets that he beat the polygraph test and had passed it even though he …