Failed Poly and have quick question

[DaOne]

As I stated earlier I failed my pre-employment poly with FBI. Basically I realized rather quickly what a joke the poly is after being told I was lying about something that where I was telling the absolute truth.  I want to send my AC an email with some of the NSA findings just to let him know that the proof is out there that plenty of HIGHLY qualified and patriotic people are being denied employment due to this black magic they call polygraphs. Would emailing the Applicant Coordinator be unprofessional and unethical (get in their way of doing productive investigation services)? If not does anyone know how I can obtain his email?

[George W. Maschke]

DaOne,

The FBI knows that polygraph screening is unreliable. They know that many honest applicants like yourself are being falsely accused of deception. But they don't care.

E-mailing your AC with the NAS report findings is not likely to help. I think it would be prudent to write a polite letter contesting the results and requesting a re-test. If you are granted a re-test, then you might consider adopting the "complete honesty" approach outlined in Chapter 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. (It seems likely that FBI polygraphers now expect that persons granted re-tests will have researched polygraphy.)

Also, it would be prudent to look into how best to protect your rights at this point. I suggest that you consult Mark Zaid, who is representing several plaintiffs who are suing the FBI and other federal agencies over their pre-employment polygraph practices. You'll find filings from these cases here:

http://antipolygraph.org/litigation.shtml#zaid

Mr. Zaid's phone number is (202) 223-9050.

[Marty]

DaOne,

The FBI knows that polygraph screening is unreliable. They know that many honest applicants like yourself are being falsely accused of deception. But they don't care.

I think it is not so much a matter of "don't caring", but that they believe any level of false positives below 50% is acceptable so long as the available applicant pool is large enough. The confessions obtained guarantee that statistic and it does in fact reduce somewhat the prevalence of the factors they are screening against. The part that is somewhat dishonest is not telling the examinees the truth about how arbitrary such screens may well be at the start of the application process so they can choose not to participate in the game of chance.

-Marty

[George W. Maschke]

I think it is not so much a matter of "don't caring", but that they believe any level of false positives below 50% is acceptable so long as the available applicant pool is large enough....

Marty,

You've explained why, but the bottom line remains that the FBI doesn't care that is falsely (and permanently, in the form of an FBI HQ file) branding large numbers of truthful applicants as liars.

Because the Bureau doesn't care about this injustice, informing one's recruiter about the invalidity of polygraphy, as DaOne suggested, is not likely to help.