GlitchyDigiBun comments on FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

[–] GlitchyDigiBun@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's more about probing specifically where to look if you want to find dirty laundry when looking for security-clearance candidates. They don't assume you lied when you said you didn't do hard drugs, but your body did react to that question deliberately in a way that suggests maybe we should look into a history of drug abuse before we accept you reading about sensitive topics.

Or sexual scandal blackmail waiting to happen is a great way to get... state secrets... in the... hands of... Oh hey, they raided Mar a Lago, lookit that...

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[–] Carnelian@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They don't assume you lied when you said you didn't do hard drugs, but your body did react to that question deliberately in a way that suggests maybe we should look into a history of drug abuse

You mean subconsciously?

Other than that, I guess I just don’t know what you mean about that, where they don’t assume you’re lying but it gives them a hint that they should go investigate it. Like, why else would they investigate it based on the reaction unless they thought the reaction meant something, you know?

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[–] GlitchyDigiBun@lemmy.world 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

Let me clarify. They do not use polygraph tests alone to determine when someone is lying. They use it to determine the priorities of how resources get devoted to uncovering what might become a security risk for any individual. This is common, good sense practice when handling classified information. It's OpSec. It should be happening to keep us safe. Even if it's, say, 80% accurate under optimal conditions, that saves time and money when devoting resources into invading the personal life of a classification candidate. It helps catch the bad candidates early, unlike what's happening here.

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[–] Carnelian@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

No I know what you mean, it just doesn’t track

Even if it's, say, 80% accurate under optimal conditions

Why are we using 80% as an example when it’s definitely impossible for the most skilled interpreters to beat a coin flip? Right like you see the issue? The problem isn’t that it’s sometimes unreliable the problem is that is fundamentally impossible to derive any meaningful information from it

What you’re arguing for is similar to the thought experiment where they have an airport scanner that can tell with 99% accuracy whether someone is a terrorist (spoiler: even with this level of accuracy, the scanner cannot be relied on alone, because counterintuitively due to false positive rate, the end result ends up being that only one in a thousand positive scans is a true positive).

But the polygraph is simply not similar to that thought experiment. It’s like “narrowing your search results to better manage your resources” based on the results of asking a magic 8 ball. Which is why it’s illegal to submit polygraph as evidence in court

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