It’s reassuring to know no one at the CIA has ever done anything wrong, like stealing fifty dollars.
Not really, since everyone has done so. Even you.
Not getting caught for it on the other hand could be a positive.
And there's enough ambiguity in it that it's easy for the operator to believe it helps. Like a dowser with their rods, a clergyman with a holy book or an astrologist with a horoscope. That gives them the power boost of sincerity.
You're saying "of course it isn't" - but how do you know that?
At the time the Soviets had the same sort of projects. So until you're sure it's not possible, the potential capability is an enormous threat if it is.
How they went about that research is where the waste creeps in.
> Brigadier General Dean Hopgood: Yes sir. But now that they are doing psy-research, we're gonna have to do psy-research, sir. We can't afford to have the Russian's leading the field in the paranormal.
Source: The Men Who Stare at Goats
The misuse is that they're used at all.
OTOH, someone arrested can (probably should?) refuse.
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.
They went through the standard stuff, interviewing my neighbors, etc. Then they flew me to Fort Meade for a polygraph. This article matches my experiences well - the interviewers latched on to arbitrary accusations and threw them at you over and over. I walked out feeling absolutely miserable and the examiner still claiming I was hiding past crimes and drug use (nope, I confessed to everything all the way down to grabbing coins out of the fountain at the mall when I was quite young). My interviewer said some large percentage of people fail their first and most pass the second.
...except there was no second, because shortly after I passed an interview and got an internship at a large tech company that paid significantly more and didn't require me to take a polygraph. No regrets on that decision.
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.
Sure was lucky you didn’t work on any of those classified projects - <wink>
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?
You wouldn’t make a good candidate for a national security job, not that it sounds like you want to be. Investigators would want to know who you’d been associating with at all those different places, and tracking it all down would take a long time ( the wait for the investigation can be years, the period during which you’d be unhireable for the job you were going after.)
But I take your point of course. :-)
Ehm ...
I am actually not that convinced of that, largely because e. g. the KGB operated quite differently. And it seems very strange to me that the CIA would train an army of wanna-be's as ... butt-clenching recruits. The more sensible option is to have a poker face; and totally believe in any lie no matter how and what. That's kind of what Sergey Lavrov does. He babbles about how Ukraine invaded Russia. Kind of similar to a certain guy with a moustache claiming Poland invaded Germany (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident).
Do they also have little "Hang in there!" posters on the wall, too?
National Security is a PITA, full of cutthroat sociopaths who would eat the SV VC-types for breakfast. That is a compliment, because the work they do is broadly dark and grimly necessary, at least at the levels of global geopolitics a lot of them are expected to operate at. I washed out in contracting for much the same reason this person kept "failing" polygraphs: honesty to the point of external perceptions of naivety. The types who excel in these sectors see folks like us as doormats or tissues, and react poorly when we catch them in the act and demand anything resembling respect because they know we're a threat to the entire establishment if we're allowed to succeed.
The point of polygraphs has always been about control, and folks who resist that sort of control are incidentally highlighting themselves as being uncontrollable to power alone. The books the author links are excellent starting points for understanding the true function of a polygraph, and why more places are outlawing them as a means of trying to diversify a deeply broken and hostile security apparatus by preventing it from being a "blind fools and sociopaths-only" club.
> I washed out in contracting for much the same reason this person kept "failing" polygraphs: honesty to the point of external perceptions of naivety.
I'm curious if you're willing to elaborate on this story. So far in my career I've yet been forced to bend my knee to a lizard, nor become one, but it sounds like you have some experience.
Then they told me to wait. An hour later one of them came back and told me I had passed. I had the impression he was watching me very carefully for some kind of relief, and that moment was the actual test. I laughed at him, which seems to have been the right answer.
I still think it's an interrogation manipulation prop, and the courts that don't admit polygraph results have it right.
(all-caps bad transcription)
> THE ESSENCE OF A POLYGRAPH TEST IS IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO LOSE BY FAILING A POLYGRAPH TEST IF YOU WILL, OR SOMETHING TO GAIN BY PASSING IT, THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE POLYGRAPH EFFECTIVE. WITHOUT THE FEAR OF DETECTION IT IN A SIMPLE WAY AS I CAN PUT IT THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT WORK. YOU HAVE TO BE AFRAID. IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BY TAKING THE POLYGRAPH TEST THAN THE PRESSURE IS NOT ON YOU. BUT AS I SAID THAT IS WHAT MAKES YOU WORK. IT HAS TO BE PROTECTION MORE THAN GILTS. NOW YOU MAY FEEL GUILTY, BUT FEAR OF DETECTION IS THE OVERRIDING CONCERN IN IN A POLYGRAPH TEST
Of course they do. And if you read the article in the OP you also realize why.
Polygraphs are an interrogation tactic, you can force a subject into a somewhat ridiculous procedure and ask them threatening questions, creating an disorientating situation. Afterwards you can accuse them of having "proven" that they are a liar. Polygraphs work, it just does not matter whether the machine is on or off.
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 torture.
Would I take a polygraph to reactivate my clearance? Yeah, if I had to. Would I pass? That's up to the examiner, because much like the author I won't tolerate being called a liar, nor will I capitulate to power games. I'll be honest, forthcoming, and cooperative - and if that's not enough to pass, then I don't want to work for you.
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.
@dang/tomhow, could we consider amending the "no accusations of astroturfing" rule to cover "accusing people of being bots (or using LLMs)"?
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.
For the same reasons as the former, the latter are virtually never adding to the conversation.
I agree it's (increasingly) a threat to the quality of discourse here, but adding to the noise does not solve it.
that just looks lIke grmticly crrct writing to meeee