An Ex-Cop's War on Lie Detectors(bloomberg.com) |
An Ex-Cop's War on Lie Detectors(bloomberg.com) |
You're insane if you think a TV show is there to help you.
In a real polygraph exam a baseline is established and you review all the questions "before" the test is run so that there is no surprise when they are asked the second time. Even then the nature of the questions can elicit a measurable response.
The best advice I ever got from a polygraph examiner was to never voluntarily take one. Advice given while I was strapped to his machine. Never could be sure if he was being sincere or just manipulating me.
What the actual fuck?
Let's assume that lie detectors actually work. To "pass" such a test you have to be reasonably certain about your answers. Have you ever passed information to the enemy: Yes/No? Is everything in your application truthful? Only some people can be completely secure about there answers. The more knowledge and experience a person has in an area, the more the likelihood that they cannot give that yes/no answer. So what they get is a bunch of young, mostly male, kids who are not the type to self examine. They are sure that they are correct, that they have done no wrong. That infeed might explain much of the direction that the community has taken in recent years.
http://www.acfei.com/forensic_services/jobsearch/job-236170....
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Title: PhD COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGISTS
Date Posted: 05/03/2012 [...]
[...] seeking contract physiologists to provide technical expertise in central nervous system (CNS) studies related to credibility assessment. [...]
Candidates will provide expertise in the use of CNS technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), [...]
A Top Secret security clearance is highly desirable. Candidates without a security clearance who possess superior qualifications may be processed for the required USG security clearance before commencing work.
As I've posted elsewhere in these comments, the best available evidence suggests that fMRI is no more useful than polygraph for lie detection. Unfortunately, the power of brain images to induce credulity in otherwise intelligent people is well-known [e.g., 1].
[1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-007-9003-3
Keep in mind that as far back as 2011, researchers succeeded in reconstructing images from the visual cortex[0].
Moreover, the intelligence community has far more resources and motivation to perfect such a technology. It's possible they may already have advanced well beyond what's currently known today. If not, then they certainly will in the future, provided the technology continues to hold its promise.
And, the idea that a good citizen with a conscience will give a "bad" response easier than a hardened criminal certainly rings true.
Maybe the lines weren't quite so bright red with Williams, but that pushing and pushing to the point where you lose sight of the bigger picture seems characteristic of many "solo" advocates (expanding the word "solo" to include not just loners but maybe also founders of non-profits who don't give up the leadership reigns, like Stallman at FSF).
By contrast, really great advocates can look beyond their cause and keep the wider world in perspective. Nelson Mandela is a good example of this (since he focused on uniting post-apartheid South Africa instead of seeking vengeance on the White gentry like his wife and many others wanted to do).
I'm not sure you'd use fmri as widely as polygraphs are today, but maybe for targeted investigation they'd be a useful tool?
There are claims of up to 90% accuracy[1] while not perfect, are better than polys.
[1]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-lie-detector/
http://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
Essentially, even a stinking dead fish will show positives in an fMRI. And yes, these studies have really rocked the fMRI field and called into doubt many experiments.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15265160701842007
Also known as the false positive paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox
Philip K. Dick has the prior art
Is America the only first world country where such an extraordinary thing is possible?
Here is the witness tampering law: "(c) Whoever corruptly—... (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,"[1]
[1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512
I'm guessing a lie detector test is an Official Proceeding.
What crimes?
Now, I haven't read the article, but you have to careful that such information is present and stated and not ignore. News services all too often, nowadays, leave facts out of stories and, to be honest, I don't view Bloomberg as a source for these types of crime stories.
Personally, I think polygraphs whether used as lie detectors or "personality tests" should be illegal and have no place in a modern society except perhaps in a museum.
I wonder that if, say the US would decide to retaliate and steal similar data from China, they would find records with I-Ching readings? :-)
http://www.salon.com/2000/03/02/polygraph/
Polygraphs don’t have to work to be a deterrent. People just have to believe that they work and can reveal whether they have committed crimes. The DOE doesn’t have to believe they work, either.
More important, polygraphs are an immensely effective interrogation tool; they need not detect lies. Lykken tells an anecdote of two cops interrogating a suspect at a time when copy machines were not familiar objects. Lacking a lie detector, the cops put a piece of paper in the copier that said “He’s lying!” They made the suspect place his hand on the strange machine while they asked him questions. When they didn’t like his answers, they’d hit a button on the machine. It would groan, whir, stink and shoot out a piece of paper that read “He’s lying!” Realizing that denial was useless, he confessed.
“If I was in the police business I would use [the] polygraph,” says Lykken. “It’s a powerful inducer of confessions, and you don’t have to hit ’em with any clubs. I can’t blame the police for using it; I only blame them for believing it.”
A 1983 report from the Office of Technology Assessment says, “It appears that the NSA [National Security Agency] (and possibly CIA) use the polygraph not to determine deception or truthfulness per se, but as a technique of interrogation to encourage admissions.”
edit: I am not advocating for this. Personally, I think they should be illegal to use.
Is this a win or a loss for society?
The problem here isn't the sting operation, it's that it's a crime to help someone defeat a polygraph in the first place.
By having one of the agent talk about the cocaine smuggling or the other agent talk about sexual abuse, it made the case much stronger because it proved clearly that he was knowingly helping someone to lie to a federal agent since the lie had been made clear by the agents.
The reason I say that it's entrapment is that they've manipulated him into committing a crime by doing this.
One thing I'm not clear about American law is if, in this kind of cases, all records are given of the interactions between the agent and the defendant or not. If not and if the defendant's lawyer doesn't have access to the records, then it's very easy to use certain parts of the recordings to make a much stronger case than would be possible otherwise. Out of context quotes can incriminate people very easily. And in that case, depending on what would be hidden, it's entirely possible that he wouldn't have actually helped someone in a similar situation.
Now this is my interpretation based on what I understand, I'm not a lawyer and all that :-)...
Coerced is the wrong word, induced is the correct one, and that's what happened here.
The way this guy was busted though, I don't think I have a problem with it. He knew the stakes he was playing for and clearly knew that a sting was possible yet he went ahead and helped someone who claimed to be a drug trafficker and another, a child rapist. Yeah, technically he was not caught aiding a criminal, but I don't think this was entrapment, where someone got him to commit a crime he wouldn't have otherwise.
I believe he was being sincere. If you think about it, if the best it can do is simply not provide evidence against you. The worst it can do is make you look guilty, whether you are or not. That's a pretty bad deal for you.
The ill-founded and bankrupt part comes from all of weak and tenuous interpretation that comes after that. fMRI can teach us much about brain physiology, but when blood flow is linked to psychology we should exhibit heightened skepticism.
He helped him beat a lie detector test knowing that he committed a crime. Now I would assume being administering a lie detector test is a "preceding before an executive department."
From wikipedia on witness tampering (this is what he was charged with): "Witness tampering is the act of attempting to alter or prevent the testimony of witnesses within criminal or civil proceedings. Laws regarding witness tampering also apply to proceedings before Congress, executive departments, and administrative agencies."
Police in the US are allowed to lie or use deception to get someone to get a confession.
http://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/6909121-Case-law-on-...
Its her fault she got raped, she wore a SHORT SKIRT.
Edit: fuck you.
It would be comical if you weren't so unpleasant and rude.
"... different policies should be considered for different applications of fMRI-based lie detection. We do not join calls to ban fMRI-based lie detection across the board. Despite the enormous shortcomings of the current evidence ... we suggest that restrictions should be proportional to the outcomes and principles at stake. Risk reduction in dating calls for different standards of certainty and different protections of individual rights than the interrogation of terrorist suspects."
[0] http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v15/n2/abs/nrn3665.html
On that note, aside from your assessment almost certainly being far more accurate than my own, I would say yours is largely more desirable from a societal point of view. Even if the technology advances at a most glacial pace, society may still not be properly prepared for the implications upon its arrival. The slower the better, perhaps.
As the purported 'lie' was actually the truth, where is the crime?
The subjectivity of this word amuses me to no end. I can distinguish whatever I want whenever I want, as long as facebook and twitter agree with me.
You don't believe there's a distinction to be made between "that was a bad idea with predictable consequences" and "he/she deserved [insert misfortune here]"?