Deep Dive

Are You A Liar?

The US government loves detecting lies. Let’s look at what exactly that means.

Endeavorance

Endeavorance

— 9 min read
Are You A Liar?

Lets Talk Polygraphs

What exactly are Polygraphs? And I'm not talking about an org chart for a polycule.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced that they will be screening every employee with a polygraph lie detector test in an attempt to identify employees who leaked information about ICE raids planned in two cities.

For those who don't live the Worlds Freest Country, ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is the group behind Trump's mass deportation efforts.

The government of course has a vested interest in kicking out "leakers" or would-be "leakers" of sensitive information. Though, I would propose that the term "whistleblower" could be used in many cases. Sure, there exist "legal channels for blowing the whistle," but unfortunately if the legal channels are also the ones having the whistle blown on them, they're not particularly great options to blow said whistle.

DHS says they've already begun screening and have fired two employees, though we don't know if the fired employees were dropped due to the polygraph for not. But hold up; aren't polygraphs famously inaccurate? Or is that a lie? And can they even do this?

Let's take a look at the scribbly-line lie detector we've all seen in too many movies.

First off, something kinda fun: the first known method of lie detection comes from China, where they would put rice in the mouth of the interrogation subject, then have them spit the rice out after answering questions. The belief was in a tie between lying and stress as well as a tie between stress and a dry mouth. So, if you spat out the rice and it wasn't sufficiently wet, you're a damned liar.

Thankfully, the "put this dry rice in your mouth and talk at us and it better be wet afterwards" method is no longer used today, but after researching a bunch about polygraphs, I'm not so sure I'd prefer them over the rice.

John A. Larson, hater of liars

The Polygraph was invented by John A. Larson in 1921, named for its charting of multiple signals onto a single graph. Modern polygraph machines work by continuously measuring a handful of vitals:

  • Respiratory rate
  • Pulse
  • Blood Pressure
  • Sweat Gland Activity
  • Muscle Tremors

According to the American Polygraph Association, a properly administered polygraph test can have accuracy of up to 95%. That's pretty amazing! Pair that with other bits of evidence and you've got yourself a foolproof way to establish guilt. Oh, wait, what's that? A cornucopia of asterisks and qualifiers? Ugh. I thought we were done already.

It shouldn't be surprising that the American Polygraph Association holds the position that polygraphs are super great. However, there's a lot of competing research into the efficacy of these tests, some which show a far less rosy picture, with false positives as high as 50%; not much better than a guess.

The potential inaccuracies of polygraphs are one of the reasons it's not considered permissible in court by default. At least in civilian courts. Polygraphic evidence can be used in military courts and in public government work, but for civilian courts it's up to local laws.

For private sector workers, there's actually a law on the books preventing employers from using a polygraph as a pretense to hire or fire someone. It's called the Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988. It stops short of preventing polygraph use for public sector work, and we can see that in action as the NSA, CIA, and FBI all require a polygraph test as a part of their security clearance protocols.

It is genuinely difficult to find non-biased information about how trustworthy these tests truly are, which further lends to the question of if they should be used at all. But they are used, and likely that won't change any time soon.

Among the reasons for the mixed information is the fact that its not a particularly hard science. We're talking about a system of human-interpreted results from human-produced graphs. Vibes on vibes. Human error or bias on the part of the administrator can upend everything. A skilled subject may be able to control their physiological responses. An unskilled subject may be freaking out the whole time regardless, and sometimes a clinical anxiety disorder can cause you to appear as if you're lying just because you're nervous.

Skilled administrators of these tests work hard to mitigate these factors, but they can never be fully eliminated. At the end of the day, it's still a century-old technology trying to solve one of the hardest imaginable problems: humans.

There are other options out there for "lie detection," such as fMRI, which involves using an MRI to scan the subject's brain function as they answer yes-or-no questions, but then you gotta get someone into an MRI for however long just so you can find out if they lied about their record time on Royal Raceway in Mario Kart 64.

At the end of the day, the fact remains that DHS is trying to root out leakers. This isn't surprising, but it should be a solid reminder that the US government has a vested interest in keeping its citizens in the dark for most things. The transparency touted by this administration seems to be coming more in the form of "look, I've invited the press to this meeting," rather than actual transparency.

Leaking or whistleblowing is often done out of a desire to do the right thing. Someone learns of something that makes them unable to sleep at night, so they get the word out. It's what happened with Edward Snowden, who despite having a tumultuous story, did ultimately spark valid criticism of the US Government's overreaching surveillance tech.

In summation: yes, DHS can do this, the government does this frequently for other reasons, but this is a bit of an oddball, and is clearly trying to scare would-be whistleblowers from informing their countrymen of threats from within.

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Policy Stuff

A Bold New Plan

A Fox News host, domestic abuser, alcoholic, and the United States Defense Secretary walk into a bar. The bartender says, "hey, you are one person named Pete Hegseth."

I'm sure his tattoos aren't cause for alarm.

The Somehow Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has reportedly ordered the DoD to cease offensive cyber operations against Russia. The Pentagon has denied these claims.

If the order is real, that's… one way to go about national security. Russia, China, North Korea, and others among the US' adversaries have constant cyberattacks against the United States (and of course, each other). The DoD has a lot of defensive measures in place, but they're not perfect, and are even being dismantled in some cases by the Trump admin, such as the shuttered investigation into the wide-reaching Salt Typhoon hacks.

Offensive cyber command work does proactive intelligence gathering to mitigate threats in a constantly changing landscape. Unfortunately, this isn't a matter of "protecting your data from threats" by using a better password or whatever. We're talking about state-funded hacking operations that target critical infrastructure like hospitals, airports, cell providers, and ISPs in efforts to cause chaos.

One Week From Shutdown, Again

The US government loves to fly by the seat of it's pants. Back under Reagan, there were eight government shutdowns over his eight year presidency. Clinton had a couple, and Trump oversaw the longest shutdown during his first term at 35 days.

It has become routine for the US Government's ability to keep itself open to come down to the last possible second, usually landing on some sort of "temporary funding bill" to push it back so we can almost shutdown again in a few months.

At time of writing, the US congress has one week to pass a bill before a shutdown happens. The Republican party holds majorities in both houses, as well as the presidency and the supreme court. Their current plan is to push through a funding bill that includes hard-no's for Democrats, goading them into rejecting the bill so that Republicans can blame the Democrats.

To be clear: It takes two to tango. Republicans and Democrats alike have traded blame and guilt for government shutdowns for years, each pointing to the other side. Shutdowns aren't particularly great for people, and usually cost taxpayers more in the long term, so it'd be nice if they could do the one thing they actually need to do as elected officials, ever.

What May Be Next For Gaza

Arab and European world leaders are putting their support behind a plan proposed by Egypt to rebuild Gaza and help restore human rights to the region.

The plan includes establishing an intermediate governing body of peacekeepers and local experts, focusing on getting humanitarian aid into the region and removing Israeli troops.

The United States and Israel reject the plan, as Donald Trump has stated he wants to "take over" Gaza, eject the millions of people who live there, and rebuild it as a beach vacation spot called the "Riviera of the Middle East."

If you look at a world map, you'll notice that Israel is not a part of the United States. You will also notice that the United States is not particularly close to Gaza, nor does Gaza have a significant contingent of pro-United States-citizenry. This makes Trump's plan look a bit like ethnic cleansing and conquest, mostly due to the plan's inclusion of ethnic cleansing and conquest.

Gaming Stuff

Infinite Grind

We finally got confirmation: Anthony Hawk's Professional Skateboarder 3 & 4 is a real thing that is happening.

You may better know the franchise as "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," but I prefer to use the full title myself.

The remake of Tony Hawk 1 & 2 was spectacular and finally brought the franchise back into the modern era after years of flubbed releases. If 3 & 4 are anything like the quality of 1 & 2's remake, I will be vibrating with excitement.

Oh, Banana

LocalThunk—the mostly anonymous developer of the hit indie game Balatro—posted a really interesting look into the timeline of the game's development.

Balatro was a solo project for LocalThunk, developed mostly just to be able to say "I have a game listed on Steam" as a resume-booster. Little did he know that it'd be a Game of the Year contender and a completely life-changing launch.

The timeline is fascinating and shows the good and the bad alike, from excitement about a new project to losing steam and focus to anxiety attacks to a launch that exceeded expectations by 20x (!!)

If you are a creative type, it's definitely worth a read. There's a lot of lived experience and lessons learned woven into the bullet points.

Here's the Weather

Source: VentuSky

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