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Lying on control questions is not advisable. A polygraph would be conducted inside of a larger investigation which would, among other things, fact-check your cl
by superuser2 12y ago
Lying on control questions is not advisable. A polygraph would be conducted inside of a larger investigation which would, among other things, fact-check your claims by other means. These data would be considered in the interpretation of your polygraph results. Whether or not you live in Chicago is very easy to check; when they see that you are lying on control questions they will consider everything else suspect.
In the contexts in which polygraphs are applied (i.e. security clearance, witch hunts within security services), simply being suspicious in this way is enough to cause the negative outcome (i.e. not getting the clearance, getting fired), so even if it might muddy the evaluation of your response to, i.e. "Are you a Russian spy?" it would still cause the negative outcome.
It has no bearing on criminal prosecution, because polygraphs are already inadmissible.
- dean 12y agoIf you lie on a question that is easily fact-checked, and the polygraph shows that you told the truth, doesn't that just prove that the polygraph doesn't work? To my mind that is a simple test that disproves the effectiveness of the tool. It should cause a reasonable person to conclude that the tool doesn't work and should not be used.
- jessaustin 12y agoThe people who run these tests for a living probably have techniques to explain their way around stuff like that. They might say it just shows the subject was deceptive about the whole test.
- superuser2 12y ago>It should cause a reasonable person to conclude that the tool doesn't work and should not be used. But it is likely to cause an FBI-drone to conclude that you are attempting to beat the polygraph and therefore untrustworthy.
- dean 12y agoYes, what a strange situation. I lie to prove that the machine can't tell that I'm lying and am branded a liar for revealing the truth. Maybe the machine isn't meant to do anything, and it's the examiner judging whether you are lying based on how your react to its presence.
- shubb 12y agoI wonder if polygraphs are there as a cover for refusing clearance due to secret evidence. If you know bob is a Soviet spy because your agents in Russia say so, you don't want to blow their cover, so you need an arbitrary reason to refuse clearance.
- jessaustin 12y agoIANASpy, but my understanding is that even someone with clearance can't just look at whatever she wants. So we probably want to give a mole an arbitrarily high clearance, and just make sure she looks at top secret fake documents we've cooked up for her.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoIs this aspect of security work that makes me wonder in the back of my mind whether Snowden is a modified limited hang out.
- jessaustin 12y agoIt's an intriguing possibility, but my imagination is unequal to the task. If they didn't mind showing us all this evil crap, what horrific secrets are they actually hiding? Secret pacts with Cthulhu? Hitler was actually a USA agent? Nothing big enough seems plausible.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoWell, it could be cold war thinking, a line from Dr Strangelove gives one plausible reason. "Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world, Eh?" Benway's panopticon only functions if the inmates think they are watched. The secret might be that they cannot actually process all the data and are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of it, in which case the surveillance is more useful if people think they can.
- sean2 12y ago