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In my aerospace company days, almost everything I did was unclassified, but I was put through the mill of getting higher level security clearances so I could be assigned to classified projects. Fortunately, I never was.
Adding my POV from a former National Security perspective: Author is 100% on point. The point of a polygraph is three-fold: weeding out the dipshits; exerting power over the powerless; and identifying the valuable assets (typically sociopaths). It does not - cannot - identify liars, deceit, or bad actors on its face (that comes from the manual the author linked). It's not scientific assessment, it's psychological tor…
I knew a guy who did security clearance checking for the Three Letter Agencies for many years. He told be that if I ever had to do these interviews, I just need to pick good sounding lies and stick to them. He said it's the ones who try to be honest and introspective who get failed out.
I've no idea why I read to the end of that, seems like a long ramble, I kept expecting something to happen and it never did.
tl;dr: polygraphs aren't reliable and can be misused?
The misuse is that they're used at all.
I went through national-security polygraph exams twice, and they were no big deal. Filling out SF-86 (which used to start "List all residences from birth"), now that's a hassle. In my aerospace company days, almost everything I did was unclassified, but I was put through the mill of getting higher level security clearances so I could be assigned to classified projects. Fortunately, I never was.
I never know what to say about my residence. Even now, I own a house, but I don't consider it my home, at least not all the time. Have a specific "residence" presumes that there's one set of coordinates on earth that is canonical for each human, but many people don't live this way.
Is there a definition that cuts through this?
I've no idea why I read to the end of that, seems like a long ramble, I kept expecting something to happen and it never did.
That was all that was in there. Just complaining from someone that was salty they might have missed their chance at playing with the infant annihilator gun in South America.
It’s reassuring to know no one at the CIA has ever done anything wrong, like stealing fifty dollars.
I watched at Derbycon multiple times someone that could make a polygraph test do whatever he wanted, otherwise he was a murderer that murdered himself and it all happened before he was born. The test was being administered by a long time veteran polygraph operator who had recently retired.