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FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

propublica.org

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Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#141

Post by sigwinch »

themafia wrote: post #53
tucnak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not accurate. Polygraphs are not detecting lies, they're used to assess your sensitivities; there are really talented interrogators in counterintelligence, whose full-time job is to fuck with you in subtle ways. To poly a person at will is very much a power move, and some guys fucking love it. But that's a different story all together. Most of the time it's a formality like everything else. In reality, people…

> whose full-time job is to fuck with you in subtle ways. And this is a process that you expect to produce an output with any predictive value what so ever? > it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. You could also just end up selecting for psychopaths and sociopaths for whom this test does not function, regardless of how much you "fuck with them."

There is something of value it produces:

The relationship between politics and finance has lost accountability. Would you take a chance investing with just any cryptocurrency? Or will you make the wise decision and choose mine, the first and only crypto that’s polygraphed all programmers for accountability.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#142

Post by sigwinch »

chemotaxis wrote: post #104
tucnak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not accurate. Polygraphs are not detecting lies, they're used to assess your sensitivities; there are really talented interrogators in counterintelligence, whose full-time job is to fuck with you in subtle ways. To poly a person at will is very much a power move, and some guys fucking love it. But that's a different story all together. Most of the time it's a formality like everything else. In reality, people…

> Unpopular opinion: private companies should poly people more often in hiring, it could prove more useful than other arbitrary kind of culture fit interviews. Food for thought. OK. I'll bite. I'm interviewing with you to be a frontend developer. You have me hooked up to a polygraph. What do you ask?

“If you had the opportunity to inject pig-butchering scenery into our banking app, would you flee the country after its executed?”

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#143

Post by SR2Z »

sigwinch wrote: post #140
refurb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not illegal for me to share non-confidential data of my employer either, but if you were hiring, would you want to understand an applicants attitudes towards such leaks especially after having issues with it in the past? I would.

So it’s not involved in a criminal investigation. Then it’s a loyalty test. Specifically, it reassures them you can keep a secret.

To be fair, that's an important qualification for the job regardless of who is president.

It's just the political loyalty that's a bad requirement.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#144

Post by parineum »

defrost wrote: post #127
parineum wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about fiction, I'm talking about interviews with detectives on a show like 20/20. The way they talk about both people refusing to take the polygraph and whether they pass or fail belies a belif in their credibility. I also know some police personally who speak in the same way but that's a much smaller sample size.

This is still subjective feels. I absolutely believe that some police detectives have real genuine faith in polygraphs being accurate. I strongly suspect a good many do not. That's orthoganal to how detectives that don't have faith in polygraph results being "real" feel about people that refuse to take them. Many may feel that people that refuse tests that supposedly tell truth telling from lying can be ranked with p…

> These are professionals being interviewed

They're detectives from the case. They aren't interviewing the same guy over and over, it's a different guy for every case. And, like I said, I've known a few personally who echo the same thing.

Never once have I seen it presented as an interview technique. They will "clear" people based on polygraph.

This could all be theater, as you're saying, but we're getting into 9/11 size conspiracies to keep all of this coordinated. It's much more likely they are telling the truth. If only there was a machine we could hook them up to to find out...

> Many may feel that people ... that's a sign that that they very probably have something to hide.

That's another can of worms.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#145

Post by gadsnprch »

general1465 wrote: post #45
gadsnprch wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many say the same about remote viewing but results matter.

If remote viewing would be a thing, spy networks would not be necessary and encryption would not matter.

It is a thing. It’s not very robust.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#146

Post by pdonis »

moron4hire wrote: post #93
pdonis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these people can't pass TS Where does it say that?

Why would they need a waiver?

To not have to go through the polygraph process at all.

In the case of Bongino, at least, he was in the Secret Service before, and might well have already gone through the TS clearance process once, including a polygraph, which would be a reason to waive it this time to expedite his clearance.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#147

Post by unethical_ban »

jki275 wrote: post #67

polygraphs are junk science. I don't know who the other two are, but Bongino was already polygraphed and cleared for the Secret Service -- there's no reason to pretend that he wasn't cleared for the job. This article reads like a political hit piece and has no real grasp of reality. It also has statements that clearly betray its author doesn't really understand how security clearances work anyway -- most clearances d…

Then they could remove them altogether, but they aren't pushing that.

Your argument about the effectiveness of polygraphs is entirely irrelevant. The inconsistency and special treatment is the problem.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#148

Post by GolfPopper »

YZF wrote: post #129
GolfPopper wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This person would not have been caught if it wasn't for this polygraphs screening. The organization whose crimes she exposed claims she would not have been caught if its wasn't for the polygraph screening. Corrupt law enforcement types love things like polygraph tests because they give them a ready avenue for parallel construction.

That was my own interpretation... but admittedly maybe too strong of a statement. Maybe she would have be caught. That said, the psychological setup in those periodic interviews with a "maybe lie detecting machine" create opportunity to find real issues. In terms of the details here, the leak wasn't to expose the crimes, it was to resist political pressure [my speculation anyways]. The crimes were being investigated…

About a decade ago, "magic wand" bomb detectors and similar products were pretty big among security services in places like Iraq. [1] Their various supposed methods of operation were transparent BS, in ways that make the EM drive proponents look rigorous.

What always struck me about reporting on them was how there was a great deal of coverage about how fraudulent they were, but seeming puzzlement on why security services would keep buying such obvious BS. What seemed clear to me, was that the BS was the point. Similar to polygraphs and drug-sniffing dogs, the purpose of the tool is to give the investigator a seemingly-objective excuse to follow their intuition (or engage in arbitrary targeting and abuse; take your pick).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#149

Post by YZF »

GolfPopper wrote: post #148
YZF wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my own interpretation... but admittedly maybe too strong of a statement. Maybe she would have be caught. That said, the psychological setup in those periodic interviews with a "maybe lie detecting machine" create opportunity to find real issues. In terms of the details here, the leak wasn't to expose the crimes, it was to resist political pressure [my speculation anyways]. The crimes were being investigated…

About a decade ago, "magic wand" bomb detectors and similar products were pretty big among security services in places like Iraq. [1] Their various supposed methods of operation were transparent BS, in ways that make the EM drive proponents look rigorous. What always struck me about reporting on them was how there was a great deal of coverage about how fraudulent they were, but seeming puzzlement on why security serv…

I was once in an airport in some third world country and one of those dogs was pointed at my luggage. I was really worried their operator would give them some secret signal to find "drugs" in my luggage. Nothing happened but I can imagine that's a thing.

Those wands were completely fake. Dogs do have a keen sense of smell and can be trained to sniff certain substances.

The polygraph I think is more in the disputed category. It actually measures some physiological signals which in theory could correlate to stress.

That said I don't disagree. These tools can be abused. At the end of the day you need various checks and balances in all these systems (e.g. FBI's internal investigation or whatever body is involved in the security clearances in the US in this example). Applying psychological pressure in various ways is a legitimate tool in these domains.

Re: FBI Director Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Three Senior Staff

#150

Post by refurb »

SR2Z wrote: post #143
sigwinch wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it’s not involved in a criminal investigation. Then it’s a loyalty test. Specifically, it reassures them you can keep a secret.

To be fair, that's an important qualification for the job regardless of who is president. It's just the political loyalty that's a bad requirement.

Why would political loyalty be bad? These are cabinet positions, not representatives of the voters whose actions change with changing voter sentiment.

The cabinet is chosen to implement the President’s policies. It would be odd to select for people opposed to the policies or those would actively try and stop them through leaks.

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