Beware the Culture of the Polygraph
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.”
A False Negative in Arizona
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 …
Alleged Hate Crime Victim Asked to Take Polygraph
WOOD TV news reporter Brad Edwards reports on the case of Jason Burns, who reports that he was punched on the campus of Hope College in Holland, Michigan by two men who taunted him because he is homosexual. After he reported the attack, Holland police asked Burns to submit to a lie detector “test.” See, …
Polygraph Didn’t Find Secret Prisons Source
It appears that CIA officer Mary McCarthy was not the source of Washington Post reporter Dana Priest’s information on the CIA’s secret prisons. In “Dismissed CIA Officer Denies Leak Role,” Post staff writers R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer report that she denies it, and the CIA is not alleging it. Excerpt: A lawyer representing …
CIA Inspector General Polygraphed
In “Moves Signal Tighter Secrecy Within C.I.A.,” New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti write that CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson is among the employees polygraphed in the Agency’s ongoing leak hunt. Excerpt: WASHINGTON, April 23 — The crackdown on leaks at the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the dismissal of …
CIA Officer Admits Media Contacts in Post-Polygraph Interrogation
While there is broad agreement amongst scientists that polygraph “testing” has no scientific basis, and the National Academy of Sciences has recently confirmed that polygraph screening is completely invalid, there is no question that the polygraph can be useful for getting admissions from those who can still be convinced that the polygrapher can see their …
Greensboro City Council Votes to Polygraph Itself
Greensboro, North Carolina News Record staff writer Eric Swensen reports in a 19 April article titled, “Council Says Yes to Polygraphs” that with a lone dissenting vote, the Greensboro City Council has voted to voluntary subject itself to lie detector testing in an effort to determine who amongst them leaked a police report to the …
LAPD Chief Bratton Says 40% of Disqualified Applicants Eliminated by Polygraph
Los Angeles Chief of Police William J. Bratton this week stated that 40% of LAPD applicants who are disqualified are eliminated because of the polygraph. Bratton spoke on the 17 April 2006 installment of 89.3 KPCC radio’s Patt Morrison show, which features a regular “Ask the Chief” session in which Chief Bratton addresses questions by …
California Judge Suggests Apple Computer Should Have Used Lie Detectors to Find Leaker
Thumbs down to California Court of Appeal Associate Justice Franklin D. Elia, who yesterday suggested that Apple Computer, which is seeking access to e-mail archives that could help identify an employee believed to have leaked trade secrets, should have done due diligence by subjecting its employees to lie detector testing to find the leaker. Matthew …
Moscow Airport Says Passenger Screening Device Doesn’t Detect Lies: It Reads Minds
On 6 April 2006, Adrian Blomfield of the Daily Telegraph reported that Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport would soon begin requiring passengers to submit to voice-based lie detector “testing” in an attempt to identify terrorists and drug smugglers. The device, Nemesysco’s GK-1 Security Access Control System, is completely unsupported by any peer-reviewed scientific research whatsoever. Now, in …