HEY,  FAST EDDIE, AS IN FAST EDDIE GELB, THE COWBOY BOOT WEARIN' SMUG SON OF A BITCH.  I KNOW YOURE READING THIS AND YOU STILL SUCK!!!!!   YEAH LET THE JON BENETS GET AWAY WITH KILLING THEIR KID, THIS IS A NEW LOW FOR YOU.....OOOOPS, NO IT ISNT!!!!!

Ronin,

It is very important that polygraph victims contact their elected representatives, as you have done. Legislative reform is necessary to end the on-going abuse and injustice associated with polygraph screening. But unless legislators hear from their constituents, they won't feel compelled to take action.

Please let us know what response(s) you receive. You might want to follow up with phone calls after a few days.

I just wanted to comment that I have sent letters to all of my California state legislators urging them to eliminate the polygraph exemption for state and local governments.

I recently took a poly with major a metro southern california PD and was accused of lying on two questions i have no history of being guilty of. it is absolutely ridiculous that local governments can implement this tool that neither the courts nor the private sector are allowed to use.

Fred F.,

I'm sorry to read about your experience, but look forward to working with you on this issue! You wrote in part:

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In order to change the law in our state, it will take more than form letters, I'm afraid. If you like the proposal I made in the first message of this thread, then I urge you to call the local offices of your representatives in the California Assembly and Senate and to request an appointment to meet with a staffer to discuss this issue. There is really no substitute for such interpersonal contact. (Unfortunately, I'm working overseas and am not presently able to personally meet with my representatives or their staff).

We need to find legislators to sponsor a bill removing the state and local governmental exemptions to Section 432.2 (a) of the California Labor Code and extending to all Californians the protections of the Minnesota polygraph statute. And we need to put those legislators who would be inclined to support such legislation in touch with each other, so they know they're not alone on this issue.

Last year, Senator Alarcon sponsored a bill that would have simply required that employment-related polygraph interrogations be videotaped in the state of California. Such recording would have been an important safeguard against polygraph abuse. Although there was little coordination amongst polygraph opponents to support this bill, both the Assembly and the Senate approved it. But the California Association of Polygraph Examiners lobbied against the bill, and Governor Davis ultimately vetoed it. We need to prevent this from happening again.

If you are willing to meet with your state representatives' staffs, please send me an e-mail at maschke@antipolygraph.org and I'll provide you with some additional information that may be useful.

Fred, is the form letter you sent the one to elected officials by Wild Bill? I noticed you said you sent it to your local Reps. How about to your national Reps. and Sens. in Washington D.C.? Also, how about getting everyone you know to do the same. There is power in numbers. Martin L. King proved that. I have sent many, many and none have had the balls to reply. I have sent quite a few to "letters to the Editor" of newspapers. And none of them, that I know of, has had the balls to print it. However, if they received hundreds they might feel enough pressure to respond. All elected officials know that not a damn one of them can pass the questions posed in that letter unless the polygrapher munipulates the machine or the use of countermeasures. By the way, news magazines i.e. 20/20, 60 mins., 48 Hours has no balls either. I have contacted them all. They should have the courtesy to respond with "this network doesn't have the balls to take on Washington D.C." As you can tell, I am angry as hell and what made me that way is the way a fellow Navy man was treated by sadistic, scum polygraphers. Lets go all out and get this crapola polygraphy ABOLISHED.

George,
I am a new member to the site but have been following it for a while. It's to bad that I found you so late as I was one of the 4,800 polys that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs conducted and probably one of 3000 plus that "failed". Had I known what I know now from reading "The Lie Behind The Lie Detector" when I tested, I would be a deputy already. I have used the form letter to contact my local representatives and didn't get a reply. I still continue to pursue a career in law enforcement, there are agencies that don't poly and even if I must subject myself to this "testing" again, I will be "prepared". The Polygraph is useless, just ask the 12 LA Sheriff's deputies who "passed" the "test" and were recently arrested for 
credit card fraud while working in the jail system. 

Fred F.

It's time to remove the governmental exemptions from Section 432.2 (a) of the California Labor Code, which bars private (but not public) employers from requiring employees or applicants to submit to lie detector "testing."

The Problem

California leads the nation in science and technology, yet many agencies in our state rely on pseudoscientific lie detector "testing" to make hiring and other employment-related decisions.

Employees of, and applicants for employment with, public safety agencies are the main population affected. Many agencies require applicants to submit to lie detector "testing." In 1999, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department alone conducted some 4,800 pre-employment polygraph examinations. The California Highway Patrol requires applicants submit to a competing pseudoscientific lie detection technique: Computer Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA). And the Los Angeles Police Department's Narcotics, Anti-Terrorist, and Organized Crime and Vice Divisions require officers serving in those units to "voluntarily" submit to polygraph "testing."

Yet lie detectors -- whether the polygraph or CVSA -- have not been shown by competent scientific research to operate at above chance levels of accuracy under field conditions. Lie detection is not even a standardized scientific procedure, such that it's validity might be determined through scientific research.

These pseudoscientific "tests" have no standing in the scientific community, and it is with good reason that the top-notch scientists at our national laboratories are so vociferously opposed to lie detector "testing." (Read their comments on the Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers website.)

As readers of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector know, polygraph "tests" actually depend on the polygrapher lying to and deceiving the person being "tested," have a built-in bias against truthful persons, and yet can be easily beaten by deceptive persons through the use of polygraph countermeasures.

Governmental reliance on pseudoscientific lie detector "testing" to judge a person's honesty and integrity is fundamentally unfair.

Current California Law

Section 432.2 of the California Labor Code prohibits employers from demanding or requesting employees or applicants to submit to lie detector "testing." But it specifically exempts government from this prohibition:

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While Section 3307 of the California Government Code does prohibit public safety officers from being compelled to submit to a lie detector test against their will, it does not prohibit an agency from "requesting" that a public safety officer submit:

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Although no written notes about an officer's refusal to submit to a lie detector "test" may be made, any officer refusing such a request can be certain that mental notes will indeed be made, and that gossip will spread. Because of the prejudice that results from an officer refusing to submit to lie detector "testing," agencies should additionally be prohibited from even requesting that a public safety officer submit.

The Solution

We need to close the loopholes in California's lie detector legislation and protect all Californians from lie detector "testing." No one should have his or her honesty and integrity assessed based on these pseudoscientific techniques.

Minnesota's polygraph statute provides an excellent model, and we should adopt the same protections in California. The Minnesota polygraph statute is reproduced in full below:

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What to Do

We cannot expect the state legislature to adopt polygraph reform on its own initiative. Our legislators need to hear from us! Do you part by writing to your state Assemblymember and Senator. Look up your California legislators on-line at:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

Ask them to sponsor a bill removing the state and local governmental exemptions to Section 432.2 (a) of the California Labor Code and to extend to all Californians the protections of the Minnesota polygraph statute. If you have been the victim of polygraph abuse, tell your state legislators about your experience. And follow up your letters with a phone call.

When you've done that, post a note about your representatives' responses here. That way, we can put those legislators who support polygraph reform in contact with each other, and hold publicly accountable those who would deny California's public employees and applicants equal protection from pseudoscientific lie detector "tests."