Quote:The expansion of the DoD polygraph program envisaged in the House version of the defense appropriations bill for FY 2004 has passed a House-Senate conference and is now a done deal.
The annual cap of 5,000 polygraph screening examinations in the Department of Defense will be lifted, and the DoD will no longer be required to file an annual report to Congress on its polygraph program.
The conference report's provisions for the DoD polygraph program are available here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2003/defauth.html#1041 A number of the DoD's annual polygraph program reports to Congress, which the DoD will no longer be required to provide, are available here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/ I note that the DoD deliberately misled Congress as to the findings of the National Academy of Sciences when they wrote:
"Finally, it is important to note that the NRC Report also concluded that the polygraph technique is the best tool currently available to detect deception and assess credibility. "
In fact, the NAS report said that no other techniques have been shown to "outperform the polygraph" when it comes to detection of deception (not the assessment of credibility). Of course, the NAS report also indicated a few things DoD might reasonably have been expected to note in a complete report to Congress:
1) The polygraph has never caught a spy. In fact, the NAS report specifically mentions that those spies who have been caught were stopped by traditional investigative methods.
2) The polygraph has not been shown to add any incremental validity (predictive value) regarding determination of security risks. This is a very damning assessment that alone should call into question the use of the polygraph. It means that simply claiming the polygraph is the "best tool currently available to detect deception" is like saying "standing on one foot is the best tool currently available for making people live past 150 years old". If the best tool you have doesn't do the job and has significant negative ramifications, then what does it mean to claim that it's the best?
3) False positives remain a problem.
Such deliberate distortions of the NAS report findings raise serious questions regarding the motivation of the DoD in this matter. Given the damning nature of the report's conclusions and the fact that DoD chose to ignore them in favor of one line taken out of context, one can only speculate that factors other than national security are taking priority in today's DoD security screening process. Their assessment, as reported to Congress, is clearly not an honest one.
skeptic
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DoD Polygraph Program Set to Expand (Read 10530 times)
