Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
Noah Schachtman reports for Wired News. Excerpt: The military may have ways — gruesome ways — of making people talk, as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has shown. But it still doesn’t have a reliable method for figuring out whether those people are telling the truth or not. Nearly 75 years since the introduction of …
Lisa Fernandez reports for the San Jose Mercury News. Excerpt: The man accused of but never charged with being the prime suspect in a string of Feb. 23 shootings along Interstate 580 in the East Bay has agreed to take a polygraph test, hoping to show he wasn’t responsible, his public defender said. Matt Bockmon, …
This short news article from NewsOK.com is cited here in full: A law requiring people to be U.S. citizens before they can be licensed to give lie detector tests is unconstitutional, Attorney General Drew Edmondson said in an opinion issued Friday. Under the Polygraph Examiners Act, an individual applying for licensing must be a citizen …
This article by Hartford Courant staff writer Tracy Gordon Fox is cited here in full. BRIDGEPORT — In what her attorney called “a victory for the rights of whistleblowers,” a jury awarded a former state trooper $225,000 Thursday for being punished after she raised concerns about the accuracy of the state police polygraph unit. Adrienne …
Union Leader staff writer Kathryn Marchocki reports. Excerpt: MANCHESTER — The boyfriend of Amie Lynn Riley, whose decomposed body was found in a swamp Saturday, voluntarily submitted to nearly three hours of questioning by Manchester police detectives yesterday and took a polygraph, which he was told he failed, he said. “I got nothing to hide. …
This short BBC News article is cited here in full: A lie detector test carried out on employees at Colombia’s Prosecutor General’s office has produced an embarrassing 20% failure rate. The FBI-administered test was designed to root out corruption, including involvement in drugs trafficking or guerrilla and paramilitary groups. Employees have complained that the test …
USA Today technology writer Andrew Kantor comments on polygraphs in his weekly CyberTalk column. Excerpt: I learn a lot watching television. That is, I learn a lot by watching television and thinking, “That can’t be right!” then doing the research to find the full story. Television butchers technology. It has to. There’s no time in …
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy comments in his Secrecy News e-mail publication: A REJOINDER ON POLYGRAPH It is not correct to say that no spy has ever been caught as a result of polygraph testing. John F. Sullivan, who served as a CIA polygrapher for 31 years, wrote …
Jonathan Knight reports in the news section of the journal Nature, Vol. 428, p. 243. This short article is cited here in full: A national security expert says he was forced to resign last year because of his vocal opposition to the use of lie detectors at his nuclear weapons lab. Alan Zelicoff, formerly a …
Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy comments in his Secrecy News e-mail publication: THE POLYGRAPH VS. NATIONAL SECURITY As a technology for counterintelligence security screening, the polygraph has been a spectacular failure. It is hard to recall the last time that polygraph screening uncovered an actual spy, and easy …