Polywantahcracker,

Please excuse me if I use my last post to address a separate audience.  I hope I addressed your comment satisfactorily.  I would like to address any National Security officials who might peruse this site from time to time and would like to pick up where I left off:

Quote:


I'd like to look at the aforementioned from the point of view of our fictional next spy.   The picture I have painted is considerably more favorable towards catching our spy than really exists, but even using the previously stated assumptions our spy finds himself sitting quite pretty.  At worst he is lumped into a population of a thousand and his chances of being caught are considerably reduced due to this 1 in a 1000 statistic.  Both he and you (national security official)  know that this population is virtually all composed of false positive polygraph results.  All he has to do is to take the Aldrich Ames approach and deny deny deny.  He is virtually guaranteed to be cleared based on your (National Security official) known and reasonable predisposition in the matter.  What if he wants to make the game a little more difficult and put himself in a bigger haystack and one that won't even be further looked at.  As I have indicated many times, a child can be taught to successfully employ countermeasure techniques.  Our spy is more motivated and, no doubt more knowledgeable than most, so I would suggest to you that he could easily put himself into the bigger grouping of the 9000 true negatives (innocent employees who were found to be non-deceptive) and be the only direct false negative in this case.  I hope it should be clear to you that you are playing a losing game if this is the strategy and game plan you have and currently employ.  If  any in your community would like to contact me directly I would be happy to discuss some ideas regarding how you might do a better job than that which has been done in the past.  Regards....

187Dick wrote on Apr 7^th, 2006 at 5:11am:


It has come full circle now.  We have had a polygrapher blow in here and claim that those who dislike polygraphs are a bunch of child molesting spies.  Here is my all time favorite, it is the 2nd post down.

http://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?board=trashbin;action=display;nu...

187Dick wrote on Apr 7^th, 2006 at 5:11am:

187Dick wrote on Apr 7^th, 2006 at 5:51am:


Your post was not censored. When you view the "most recent posts" link, what is displayed is not the last 10 posts to the message board, but rather the last post in each of the 10 most recently updated discussion threads. Mr. Mystery's post automatically replaced yours as the most recent post for this discussion thread.

Gentlemen,

As a soldier on the front lines, I will admit that the polygraph usage is increasing in the Federal sector.  I have admitted as much in many of my past postings.  I have no delusions that the polygraph is going away.

That said, I assure you that prescreening polygraph usage in today's FBI is killing a huge crop of applicants that would have been accepted in the 1970s and 1980s.

Good scientific minds that can think "out of the box" and "connect the dots" are not even applying because they give no validity to any agency that uses the polygraph for employment decisions.

The private sector unemployment is down and competition for top talent is up.  This is the worst case scenario that I have predicted for the last two years.

The FBI is not able to get the people it needs to accomplish its mission and the polygraph is an anchor being dragged on the bottom by a ship that needs to sail at full speed.

187Dick,

Thank you for your civil discussion.  Only in extreme cases have I found this site censored in anyway.

Regards.

Onesimus,
     While my mathematical approach was rather simplistic, it's still relatively accurate.  If the polygraph worked on 50% of the population, that would be the same as not working.  50% would represent an equal guess right or wrong on yes or no answers.  (The average.)  If the polygraph were only that accurate, I would be siding wih almost everyone esle on this site in regards to the elimination of the polygraph exam as part of a security background check, pre-employment screening and even criminal investigations.  I can tell you that my opinion of the CVSA is exactly that.  It's a piece of junk and does not work.  The polygraph as used by a well trained and ethical examiner is a different story.
     If the polygraph is working 90% of the time,  then it stands to reason that 9 out of 10 people who are administered an exam would be detected by a good examiner.  The failures would be divided between false positives and false negatives, hopefully heavily weighted toward false negatives.  Now if the polygraph is used properly as an investigative tool (which I will admit is not always the case), then in all cases where the other investigative steps failed, (whether to clear or target subjects), the polygraph would be a useful tool in putting the investigation back on the right course.
     Of course the argument to that is that it would also add investigative scrutiny to completed investigations where the subject had passed the investigative process, but had failed the polygraph exam. 
     Another factor that I don't like to stress, but admit is something to consider, is the deterrent factor.  I know that many years ago when I was in college, I was tempted to participate in illegal drug use with many of my friends.  Even if I had the attitude back then that I would quit when I finished college, I also knew that if I wanted a career in law enforcement, I would most likely have to submit to a polygraph examination during the background investigation.  That piece of knowledge kept me away from even minor drug use in college.
     I bring that up because I may have gone down the same slippery slope that so many do when they use illegal drugs.  They don't intend to end up where they do, but so many of them do.  I believe it's the same with most cases of espionage in this country.  Most cases start out small where some entity exploits a weakness in someone who already has the security clearance.  Once that step is taken, the person becomes a slave to that entity with no chance of turning back or saying no.  Hopefully, the possibility of an annual polygraph exam will keep many from taking that first step in the wrong direction.  One thing about deterrence though, and why I don't like to use it as an argument in favor of polygraph exams, it can never be measured.  We don't know if it worked one time or a thousand times.  Other than my own experience, I can not offer a single specific incident where I can say it absolutely had that effect.  But the logic of why I believe it does work is still worth mentioning.

We will talk again.

PS   
Eos,
     Sorry about the false accusation.  It was later explained to me why my original post had disappeared from the ten most recent posts page.  There was no censorship.  I was relieved and humbled.  Please accept my apology.

187Dick wrote on Apr 10^th, 2006 at 10:52pm:


Here is a more detailed approach I took to a similar problem:

numbers game