Texas Department of Public Safety Brouhaha Over Polygraph Policy

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Mike Ward, staff reporter for the Austin American-Statesman reports that — much to the horror of the state’s Public Safety Commission — the Texas Department of Public Safety has hired applicants who failed lie detector tests. Unfortunately, left out of the report is any mention of the fact that polygraphy has no scientific basis. The proper question is not why are applicants who failed this bogus test being hired, but why is the state of Texas relying on this pseudoscience to screen applicants?

Ward reports:

Some Texas Department of Public Safety troopers have been hired despite failing polygraph tests on their background checks, while others have been hired after admitting to past criminal behavior, agency officials said Thursday.

With legislative pressure already on DPS officials to ensure that state troopers meet the highest standards, officials made a number of disclosures at a meeting Thursday with the Public Safety Commission, which oversees the department.

Some members of the current training academy class of more than 100 failed polygraph tests on background checks. Others who failed polygraphs have been hired in the past.

Some recruits in the past were accepted after they admitted to past criminal behavior during interviews, even if they were never arrested or charged.

“More than a handful” were rejected by other law enforcement agencies before they applied to the DPS.

Others have been promoted from the training academy and put to work despite recommendations from training supervisors that they be dismissed.

“Wow!” said Commissioner Ada Brown of Dallas, after hearing the details at the meeting.

Despite some recruits’ deception on the polygraph tests, “you give him a badge?” she asked Capt. Phillip Ayala, who was in charge of recruiting, and human resources director Paula Logan. “I have a problem with that.”

Continue reading ‘Texas Department of Public Safety Brouhaha Over Polygraph Policy’ »

Massachusetts Police Face Polygraph Dragnet

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Although pre-employment polygraph screening of law enforcement officers is prohibited by law in the state of Massachusetts, such protection against the pseudoscience of polygraphy evidently ceases upon hiring. In the town of Dracut, some 40 police officers either have been polygraphed or face polygraphic interrogation regarding the disappearance in 2003 of a quantity of marijuana that was stored by police as evidence. Reporter Dennis Shaughnessey covers the story for the Lowell Sun in “Police tested on lost drugs”:

DRACUT — With time running out, police have turned to lie-detector tests to find out who was behind the disappearance of $80,000 in marijuana stored as evidence behind the old police station in 2003.

Up to 40 people have taken, or may be called to take, the test. Several told The Sun they are nervous, not because they have something to hide, but because polygraph tests are not perfect.

“It’s like in the old movies where they put you in a room with a big black box with a light bulb on it,” said Tony Archinski, a lieutenant who retired Dec. 31. “They say it’s just an additional tool in the investigative process, but even if it’s 90 percent accurate, and that’s being generous, who wants to be on the short end of a false positive?”

Indeed, it is absurd to suggest that polygraphy is anything near 90% accurate. A statistical analysis (255 kb PDF) of the best field studies of polygraphy suggest that “if a subject fails a polygraph, the probability that she is, in fact, being deceptive is little more than chance alone; that is, one could flip a coin and get virtually the same result for a positive test based on the published data.”

“How do you do this in good conscience?” said one officer, on condition of anonymity. “There were people on the force at the time who are gone now. How do you conduct an investigation?”

But another said the tests have divided the department.

“We want to get rid of the people in this department who have no integrity,” the officer said. “Look around. Look who is running scared. That should tell you something.”

It should tell you who understands that polygraphy has no scientific basis and who, like this anonymous officer, is ill-informed.

The full-scale administrative internal investigation, which includes polygraph tests, is being conducted by the North East Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council‘s Internal Affairs Division, headed by Tewksbury Police Chief Al Donovan. Donovan declined comment, and would not discuss specifics of the tests, administrators or procedures.

Repeated attempts to reach Dracut Police Chief Kevin Richardson and Deputy Police Chief David Chartrand were unsuccessful.

In 2007, Selectman George Malliaros pushed to require any officer who was on the force when the drugs went missing to submit to the lie-detector test.

State police and the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office last year investigated the disappearance of the evidence and did not press criminal charges. Richardson then called for an internal investigation to preserve the “integrity of the department.”

Resorting to a polygraph witch hunt will not preserve the “integrity of the department.” Instead, it is likely to further erode what is left of it: polygraphy is inherently biased against the truthful. Nonetheless, liars can pass using simple countermeasures that polygraphers have no demonstrated ability to detect.

George Maschke, a polygraph expert in the Seattle area who has written extensively on polygraph tests, said a polygraph dragnet is “more likely to misdirect the investigation.” He points to the investigation into the 2000 disappearance and murder of 16-year-old Molly Bish, of Warren, Mass.

“At least 11 individuals failed polygraphs in that investigation,” said Maschke, who writes for a Web site, antipolygraph.org. “There is no raging debate among scientists over its accuracy. There is broad consensus that it’s junk science.”

It should be pointed out that while AntiPolygraph.org’s voice mail and fax number (1-206-666-2570) is indeed in the Seattle area, George Maschke lives and works in The Hague, The Netherlands.

A little more than two months remain before the statute of limitations runs out in the Dracut case.

The North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council would be wise to abort its polygraph dragnet and instead pursue traditional investigative techniques. Relying on such magical thinking as polygraphy is more likely to misdirect investigators than identify the culprit(s). This situation speaks to the need for a Comprehensive Employee Polygraph Protection Act that would extend to all Americans the protections enjoyed by most under existing federal law.

Controversial Justice Department Lawyer Pooh-Poohs Presidential Polygraph Prohibition

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Steven J. Bradbury

Steven J. Bradbury

With less than a week remaining before President George W. Bush leaves office, controversial Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury on Wednesday, 14 January 2009 issued a legal opinion finding that a memorandum from President Lyndon B. Johnson to the heads of departments and agencies prohibiting use of the polygraph in the Executive Branch except under limited conditions is without legal effect. The summary of Bradbury’s opinion states:

An undated four-page memorandum from President Lyndon Johnson entitled “Use of the Polygraph in the Executive Branch”and addressed to the heads of Executive Branch departments and agencies, which was neither issued as a directive to the Executive Branch nor understood contemporaneously to have legal effect, does not now bind the Department of Justice or other entities within the Executive Branch.

It is not clear why Bradbury, who last year testified before Congress against all evidence and reason that waterboarding is not torture, has issued such a legal opinion at this late stage. Nor is it clear what this opinion may portend for future polygraph policy. Bradbury’s opinion on the Johnson polygraph memorandum is at the time of writing the only Office of Legal Counsel opinion publicly posted on the Department of Justice website for 2009.

In related news, Russ Kick at The Memory Hole reports that the Office of Legal Counsel has in recent days released a slew of legal opinions some of which had been withheld from the public for years.

It should be noted that a 2002 research review by the National Academy of Sciences found polygraph screening to be completely invalid, concluding that “[polygraph testing's] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies.” The Bush Administration, however, completely disregarded this damning report and instead siginificantly increased federal reliance on the polygraph. In 2008, for example, the Defense Intelligence Agency announced a plan to greatly expand its polygraph screening program and the Department of Defense began using hand-held lie detectors in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sam Harris on True Lie Detection

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Neuroscientist Sam Harris answers the Edge Foundation’s annual question for 2009, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” with a commentary titled “True Lie Detection.” Excerpt:

When evaluating the social cost of deception, one must consider all of the misdeeds — marital infidelities, Ponzi schemes, premeditated murders, terrorist atrocities, genocides, etc. — that are nurtured and shored-up, at every turn, by lies. Viewed in this wider context, deception commends itself, perhaps even above violence, as the principal enemy of human cooperation. Imagine how our world would change if, when the truth really mattered, it became impossible to lie.

The development of mind-reading technology is in its infancy, of course. But reliable lie-detection will be much easier to achieve than accurate mind reading. Whether on not we ever crack the neural code, enabling us to download a person’s private thoughts, memories, and perceptions without distortion, we will almost surely be able to determine, to a moral certainty, whether a person is representing his thoughts, memories, and perceptions honestly in conversation. Compared to many of the other hypothetical breakthroughs put forward in response to this year’s Edge question, the development of a true lie-detector would represent a very modest advance over what is currently possible through neuroimaging. Once this technology arrives, it will change (almost) everything.

Economist Robin Hanson at the Overcoming Bias blog takes a more skeptical view in his brief commentary, “A World Without Lies?”

Mumbai Attacker Reportedly Subjected to Polygraph “Testing” — “Truth Serum” to Follow

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CNN reports that the lone gunman reportedly taken alive in the recent attack on Mumbai, India has been subjected to a polygraph test:

[Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh] Maria identified the suspect as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, from Faridkot village in the Okara district of Pakistan’s Punjab province. He is the son of Mohammed Amir Kasab, the police commissioner said.

Multiple law enforcement and intelligence sources familiar with the investigation said Kasab was put through a polygraph test and has also been interviewed by the FBI.

Maria said all 10 attackers were Pakistanis, which Pakistani officials have denied, blaming instead “stateless actors.”

While the polygraph may have some use as an interrogational prop with naive and gullible persons, it’s junk science of the highest order, and Indian investigators would be wise not to rely on it. But pseudoscience seems to be in vogue in India. The Times of London reports that the gunman, whom it identifies as Azam Amir Kasab, will also be injected with “truth serum”:

Indian police interrogators are preparing to administer a “truth serum” on the sole Islamic militant captured during last week’s terror attacks on Mumbai to settle once and for all the question of where he is from.

Rather than resorting to the magical thinking of lie detectors and truth serums, Indian authorities would be better served by using traditional investigative methods, which although they may require time, hard work, and critical thinking, deliver more reliable results.

Polygrapher Versus Polygrapher in the UK

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In a case that calls to mind Grogan v. Paolella et al. in the US, a polygrapher in the UK has sued a fellow polygrapher for defamation. The Independent’s Jerome Taylor reports:

Lie detectors at war (but who’s telling the truth?)

It’s not just Jeremy Kyle and Trisha Goddard who are rivals: the polygraph experts on the two shows are engaged in a bitter defamation battle. Jerome Taylor reports

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

It is the kind of argument that could probably have been settled by the tools of their trade, but bosses at two of Britain’s major polygraph companies are choosing to deal with their differences in the High Court rather than opting for lie detectors.

On one side is Bruce Burgess, a 64-year-old polygraph expert whose company is used to identify love rats and maintenance shirkers for ITV’s The Jeremy Kyle Show. On the other side is Don Cargill, who conducts polygraphs for The Trisha Goddard Show, Five’s rival show to Kyle’s.

According to a writ filed in the High Court, Mr Burgess is suing his opposite number over a letter Mr Cargill allegedly wrote to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom in which he reportedly said Mr Burgess had been sacked for incompetence from a government pilot to test sex offenders.

Mr Burgess claims he was never even hired for the government programme and has alleged that Mr Cargill was trying to discredit him because he obtained different results on a lie detector test they both conducted on the same person. Mr Burgess has now filed a defamation case for £50,000 against Mr Cargill in the High Court. Continue reading ‘Polygrapher Versus Polygrapher in the UK’ »

Cruel Joke: U.S. Exports Polygraphy to Iraq

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AFP: An American solider sits strapped to a lie detector during a press conference in Baghdad's secure 'Green Zone'In an article titled, “Iraq Turns to Lie Detectors to Outsmart Al-Qaeda,” Agence France Presse (AFP) reports on the graduation of the first class of U.S. Government-trained Iraqi polygraph operators. But to outsmart Al-Qaeda, doesn’t one need to be smarter than Al-Qaeda? As AntiPolygraph.org has documented, Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents — unlike the U.S. and Iraqi governments — understand full well that the lie detector is a pseudoscientific sham. See Al-Qaeda Documentation on Lie Detection and The Myth of the Lie Detector for the proof.

Iraq turns to lie detectors to outsmart Al-Qaeda

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Faced with infiltration of state organs by wily insurgents and Al-Qaeda jihadists, Iraq’s government has turned to a detection method highly favoured by the United States — polygraphs.

The first eight officials of the defence and interior ministries to be trained by US experts in the use of sophisticated lie detection equipment graduated last month after a six-month course.

“It is vital that we ensure that our employees in key services are trustworthy,” General Hamier, of the national police force, said at a small graduation ceremony in Baghdad’s highly-fortified Green Zone.

“Until now we have made employees fill in questionnaires on paper, and then we questioned them. It is very easy to lie. But now (with the new equipment) that will be much more difficult,” said Hamier.

Because polygraphy has no scientific basis to begin with and is vulnerable to simple countermeasures, it is not at all clear that it will be much more difficult for liars to get hired by the Iraqi government. Making matters worse, polygraph screening is inherently biased against the most truthful persons and is likely to screen out the very kind of straight arrows the Iraqi government desperately needs. Continue reading ‘Cruel Joke: U.S. Exports Polygraphy to Iraq’ »

El Paso Police Chief Calls Polygraph a “Piece of Junk”

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El Paso Chief of Police Greg AllenSpeaking in unusually blunt terms for a senior law enforcement official, El Paso, Texas chief of police Greg Allen has decried the polygraph as a “piece of junk,” while El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association president Bobby Holguin has pronounced it “garbage.” Adriana M. Chávez reports for the El Paso Times:

EL PASO — The El Paso Police Department has dropped the use of polygraph exams — commonly known as lie detector tests — on police officers during internal investigations because the results were considered useless.

Until several months ago, the exams were used when complaints were filed against officers.

Police Chief Greg Allen, who was appointed police chief in late March, called the exams a “piece of junk” and the president of the police union said they are “garbage.”

In August, the El Paso City Council approved a new contract with the El Paso Municipal Officers Association that made it possible for an officer to request an independent polygraph examiner to administer the test, instead of one employed by the department, if the chief requests a polygraph test.

But the new administration of Chief Allen simply decided to not use them even though they are still an option.

Criminal suspects also have the option of taking a polygraph test, said police spokesman Officer Chris Mears.

The Police Department has three police officers who are certified to administer polygraph tests.

Both Allen and El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association President Robert “Bobby” Holguin said they have issues with the accuracy of polygraph tests.

Allen and Holguin are in good company. The consensus view among scientists is that polygraphy has no scientific basis. Continue reading ‘El Paso Police Chief Calls Polygraph a “Piece of Junk”’ »