As a ex-law enforcement officer, I cannot agree that any law enforcement organization now or in the past has ever perfected any technique "over the...centuries."  When anyone tells me that their way of getting to the truth is 99% accurate, I have much skepticism.

Inmates are some of the smartest, most manipulative, and high IQ civilians I have ever met.  They are masters of testing and bending "tried and true techniques."  I do not admire their actions but I do admire their ingenuity.  Most of them are not dumb, they just chose to not obey the rules in our society and need to be kept out of society for that reason.  They do not play nice.  Some of them would kill you for no reason other than they find you of no use to them.

If you makes you feel any better, I am well aware of the incredibly DUMB civilians who somehow think that THEY know better than police officers, trained guards, etc all the tricks to beating the myriads of security measures that those in the security business have perfected over the ... centuries.

Luckily, I have not personally encountered TOO many such dumb civilians, but I know they are out there.
For example, EVERY single time, after some item hit the news about some security breach - whether minor or major -WITHOUT EXCEPTION the media will pull out some person with a "100% foresight" knowledge of "what should have been done" and how "security should have been tighter" - of course, WITHOUT EVER pointing out that there is a necessary trade-off of reducing somebody's freedom or convenience in order to gain tighter security.

As a civilian, I know that there are MILLONS of security and surveillance tricks that I don't even know about,since it is the SMART thing to ASSUME one's opponent (or protector, supposedly) has thought through things more than I have.

(But, polygraphy does not fall under that realm of surveillance tricks and skills and training.)

Hence, my rage is never the same tired old tirade that the media spews out about people's (government and non-government workers') skills, training, education - for the job that they are paid to do. 

My rage is over whether the job should exist at all.

T.M. Cullen wrote on Oct 12^th, 2009 at 1:29pm:


That's nice, but I don't.
I respect polygraphy 1000x less than I and most people respect child molestation. 

As far as the "doing a job that almost no one else would take" idea - the bottom line observable fact is: more people choose to be police officers, prison guards (and, throw in other non-civilian jobs, too, like the military) than, say, get openly involved in animal rights work, for which there is no pay.

Just now I wrote and deleted an entire followup to this idea, out of respect to antipolygraphy.org, because it would get too far off topic.

Point is: polygraphy is just another unfair government law, that, like ALL human laws, is created and defended by someone. Those who create and defend unfair laws deserve to fight and die for their idiotic stupid beliefs, NOT those who defend fair laws.

(Yes - I have a lot more explaining to do about "everyone has a different opinion about what's fair" thing, which, again, cannot be done on this forum, again, because 1) it would go way off topic, and, 2) it requires formal logic to explain, which cannot be presented easily - or at all - in text format.)

And, to all the "you can respectfully disagree" people i.e. "you can respect a person even though you have a different political opinion than them" people - and I know you are out there: if you dare say that - and, of course, you say that ONLY about those with "mainstream" views and especially about those in the military (i.e. "respect the military personnel even if you disagree with their actions")
- then you had absolutely better say it about EVERYONE - without a single exception. That means it is absolutely irrelevant to respecting a person whether they are a "terrorist" or a rapist or a criminal or a child molestor or any of these labels the gov't puts on people, because it is a difference of political opinion whether "terrorism" or rape or child molestation or polygraphy or pornography or abortion or guns or marijuana or blowing up a prison to free the prisoners inside, etc. should be legal or illegal.

I am not saying I am one of these "respect everyone regardless of their political opinion" people, since "respect" is a meaningless word. But, for those of you who are like that, I am shoving the consequences of your brainless words back down your throats as hard and often as possible.

I like polygraphers and I think they are really "cute" when they get angry (e.g. Mr. Coffey).

TC

As a police officer, I have had to do things that the vast majority of the population would not be willing to do for a million dollars.  I have done them for considerably less.

I also served in the U.S. Army, helping to defend the rights of people like you to speak your mind. 

You should probably take a deep breath, relax, and realize that painting everyone with a broad brush like that is a mistake.

I read this forum recently about some subhuman worthless piece of garbage who came on here and preaches to the administrator of this forum about some absolute piece of excrement "morality" against naming the names of those who support polygraphy. It is the administrator's absolute moral and legal right to SAY ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING they want on this forum, and to name whom they want, and to ban anyone, even me.

And even with the almost certain knowledge that I, too, will be banned from this forum, because my political opinions (below) go INFINITELY farther than the administrator's do, I STILL assert my hatred and disrespect towards polygrapher religionists (that's what polygraphy is: a religion) and those who support and defend such idiotic and unfair laws, such as the use of polygraphy in gov't agencies.

I could tell you about my personal experiences on the subject of polygraphy, but they are irrelevant. For one thing, they were both relatively good experiences. Yes - the examiner did the usual make-believe fantasy that I was somehow not revealing the truth or some garbage like that.
But, my personal experiences were not nearly as bad as many as those presented throughout this forum

The bottom line is that police, prison guards, judges, and all those who defend silly frivolous excrement like -isms, such as nationalism or governments, have cushy easy no-stress jobs. They never did a hard day of work in their lives. They are freeloaders off taxpayers. Taxpayers have their money stolen from them by violent force.

Essentially, all those who defend unfair and stupid laws - simply BECAUSE they are laws - should be forced to die and suffer for their trivial frivolous causes - NOT those who fight for fair laws, such as those who fight for civil liberties.

These police, guards, bureaucrats, and other assorted gov't workers, who are each individually responsibly for defending these worthless gov't agencies that use polygraphs, do not have the mental capacity that computer programmers and physicists do, for example, to comprehend that they - - CHOSE their excessively high-paying jobs - that NOBODY FORCED them to take those jobs. 

I do not care that the police/guards/etc cry that they risk getting killed in the pursuit of their jobs. Bottom line: they are getting paid. *I* could get killed, too, in the pursuit of MY political goals, too, while protesting or lobbying. But, unlike cops/guards/etc I do not get paid.

That is because these gov't "workers" do not have the mental capacity to fairly - i.e. logically consistently - compute the consequences of actions.

It takes absolutely no brains or effort or skill to become a polygraph examiner. One can just make up any kind of fantasy psychobabble one wants to make up the conclusions.

It is my political right to lobby for ANY laws I want whatsoever. I make NO moral or political distinction between the use of deadly force by civilians vs by soldiers. That is OTHER people's political distinctions, not mine.

I make distinctions on the use of force ONLY based upon utilitarian net effect of good over bad.