Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
On Friday, 11 December 2020, Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), which provides oversight for the country’s intelligence agencies, issued its annual report for 2019. Among other things, the report is highly critical of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS’s) reliance on polygraphy to screen applicants and employees, noting that the Security Intelligence …
In January 2020, the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse published online an article by Marigo J. Stathis and Maria M. Marinakis purporting to show that the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA), a quack device marketed as a lie detector by the so-named National Institute for Truth Verification (NITV), is highly useful for interrogating pedophiles who …
On Friday, 23 October 2020, Oklahoma district judge Dennis Morris revoked Benjamin Lawrence Petty’s probation and sentenced him to 15 years in prison because he allegedly failed two polygraph “tests” and denied having committed the crime for which he was on probation. In 2016, Petty pleaded guilty to raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl at …
The tabloid television talk show Dr. Phil, which debuted in 2002, has long used polygraphs as a ratings gimmick, especially during Nielsen sweeps, a rating period that is especially important for advertising revenue. For years, the show’s primary polygraph operator was retired FBI special agent Jack Trimarco. However, Trimarco died in 2018, and for some …
AntiPolygraph.org has previously reported and commented on U.S. government efforts to foist the pseudoscience of polygraphy on other countries and on local employees at U.S. diplomatic facilities. For example: In 2008, the U.S. government foisted polygraphy on the government of Iraq, which was under U.S. military occupation; In 2013, the U.S. embassy in Yemen compelled …
Friday, 18 September 2020 marks AntiPolygraph.org’s 20th anniversary online. Over the past two decades, we have published five editions of our featured publication, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, which with hundreds of thousands of downloads, is arguably the most widely read book on the topic of polygraphy. AntiPolygraph.org has also curated the internet’s largest …
On Thursday, 20 August 2020, a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia indicted former U.S. Army Special Forces officer Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins of Gainesville, Virginia on a single count of “Conspiracy to Gather or Deliver Defense Information to Aid a Foreign Government.” Debbins was arrested on Friday, 21 August 2020. The indictment …
On Thursday, 13 August 2020, FBI Special Agent Chris Jensen filed under seal a criminal complaint against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma of Honolulu, Hawaii, charging him with “Conspiracy to Gather and Communicate National Defense Information of the United States to a Foreign Nation.” On Monday, 17 August 2020, the complaint was unsealed. In an accompanying …
The FBI’s first documented use of the polygraph in an espionage investigation came in 1938 in connection with a Nazi German spy ring operating in the United States. The most important suspect interrogated with the polygraph was Dr. Ignatz Theodor Griebl, a medical officer in the U.S. army reserve who is believed to have been …
The so-named National Institute for Truth Verification (NITV), which markets a putative lie detector called the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA), and its associated group, the National Association of Computer Voice Stress Analysts (NACVSA), ((The close nexus between the NITV and the NACVSA is reflected in the fact that a single entity, Voice Biometrics, LLC, …