The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 7, 2018 4:47:18 JST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings
> Want to become a police officer, firefighter, or paramedic? A WIRED investigation finds government jobs are one of 
> the last holdouts in using—and misusing—otherwise debunked polygraph technology.
> By MARK HARRIS
> Oct 1 2018
> <https://www.wired.com/story/inside-polygraph-job-screening-black-mirror/>
>
> Christopher Talbot thought he would make a great police officer. He was 29 years old, fit, and had a clean background 
> record. Talbot had military experience, including a tour of Iraq as a US Marine, and his commanding officer had 
> written him a glowing recommendation. In 2014, armed with an associate degree in criminal justice, he felt ready to 
> apply to become an officer with the New Haven Police Department, in his home state of Connecticut.
>
> Talbot sailed through the department’s rigorous physical and mental tests, passing speed and agility trials and a 
> written examination—but there was one final test. Like thousands of other law enforcement, fire, paramedic, and 
> federal agencies across the country, the New Haven Police Department insists that each applicant take an assessment 
> that has been rejected by almost every scientific authority: the polygraph test.
>
> Commonly known as lie detectors, polygraphs are virtually unused in civilian life. They’re largely inadmissible in 
> court and it’s illegal for most private companies to consult them. Over the past century, scientists have debunked 
> the polygraph, proving again and again that the test can’t reliably distinguish truth from falsehood. At best, it is 
> a roll of the dice; at worst, it’s a vessel for test administrators to project their own beliefs.
>
> Yet Talbot’s test was no different from the millions of others conducted annually across the public sector, where the 
> polygraph is commonly used as a last-ditch effort to weed out unsuitable candidates. Hiring managers will ask a range 
> of questions about minor crimes, like marijuana use and vandalism, and major infractions, like kidnapping, child 
> abuse, terrorism, and bestiality. Using a polygraph, these departments believe, increases the likelihood of obtaining 
> facts that potential recruits might prefer not to reveal. And like hundreds of thousands of job candidates each year, 
> Talbot was judged to have lied on the test. He failed.
>
> New Haven allows failed applicants to plead their case in public before the Board of Police Commissioners. So in 
> February 2014, Talbot sat down and recited his experiences with lie detectors. He had first applied to the 
> Connecticut State Police and was failed for deception about occasional marijuana use as a minor. He then tried again 
> with a police department in New Britain, where a polygraph test showed him lying about his criminal and sexual 
> history.
>
> This time he had failed the New Haven polygraph for something cryptically called “inconsistencies.” “[But] I’m not 
> hiding anything,” he said at the hearing. “I was being straight and honest and I’ve never been in trouble with the 
> law. I’m not lying about anything.”
>
> Electronic lie detection is a peculiarly American obsession. No other country carries out anywhere near the estimated 
> 2.5 million polygraph tests conducted in the US every year, a system that fuels a thriving $2 billion industry. A 
> survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2007 found that around three-quarters of urban sheriff and police 
> departments use polygraphs when hiring. Each test can cost $700 or more. Apply to become a police officer, trooper, 
> firefighter, or paramedic today, and there is a good chance you will find yourself connected to a machine little 
> changed since the 1950s, subject to the judgment of an examiner with just a few weeks’ pseudoscientific training.
>
> Last week the technology burst into the news when Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accuses Supreme Court nominee 
> Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her as a teenager, said that she had taken a privately administered polygraph 
> test to help bolster her account of the incident. “While not admissible in court, they’re used by various 
> governmental agencies and many people believe in their abilities,” Douglas Wigdor, a former prosecutor who now 
> represents victims in sexual harassment and sexual assault cases against high-profile men, told The Washington Post.
>
> In one of the biggest surveys of law enforcement use of polygraph screening to date, WIRED filed more than 50 
> public-records requests with America’s largest federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, seeking to 
> discover how they use the polygraph during hiring and what safeguards they have in place to prevent abuse. The 
> results were erratic—and discouraging. A quarter failed to respond at all, and nearly half said they had no 
> responsive documents— meaning they do not track the age, gender, race, or disability status of those undergoing 
> examination.
>
> But the results obtained offer a peek inside an outdated system that continues to influence who gets hired—and who 
> doesn’t—at some of the most important institutions in the United States. Inconsistent and skewed polygraph screening 
> programs are undermining the very places that are designed to uphold the law—a failure that comes with personal costs.
>
> [snip]
>
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