Comment by trehalose
6 hours ago
Sure, but don't you find it a little curious that these tests are being waived so selectively? If the FBI believes polygraphs serve some purpose, why would it choose to waive them?
6 hours ago
Sure, but don't you find it a little curious that these tests are being waived so selectively? If the FBI believes polygraphs serve some purpose, why would it choose to waive them?
Does it bother me? Yes. But the real solution is to not have polygraphs at all, not to get upset that a few people didn't get them.
Let's ignore that they're crap.
Person A believes they work.
Person A says "we shouldn't use this on Persons B, C, D".
Pretty major implications about the integrity and suitability of Persons B, C, and D, and about how Person A suspects they have stuff to hide.
(In some ways this is a good reason to keep them around. Even if some people know they're crap, the existence and popular mythology causes people to reveal more than they otherwise would through actions like this.)
If they were using dowsing rods instead of polygraphs would you still feel the same way?
It’s certainly suspicious. But it’s also a huge problem they use them at all when the private sector was banned from doing so since they’re so unreliable decades ago.
1 reply →
I think that's one very reasonable interpretation. The other is "I really want these people w to come work here and they don't want to do the polygraph because it's a huge pain so I as the manager I'm going to waive it to reduce their objections to being hired".
That's something that companies do all the time, they pay people "out of band" or give them extra benefits or accelerate their vacation accrual or vesting, or one of hundreds of other things.
I agree it looks bad for sure but it isn't necessarily sinister.
There has always been a contingent of people that do sensitive work for the government because they have important expertise but are either "unclearable" or unwilling to go through the formal clearance process. Limited affordances are sometimes made in these cases at the discretion of senior officials with that authority. For the government it is a practical risk/benefit calculus and they still have the ability to do a substantial background check on their own without a formal process.
While it would never be allowed for the average Federal employee it does exist outside of purely political positions.
That solution is to a problem that is not the topic of conversation here.
The problem is selective waiving of vetting processes due to political pressure and affiliation.
Acting as if the efficacy of the vetting process is a point relevant to this conversation either implies you believe they waived this process for these three due to their ineffectiveness - very much not the belief held my most observers, why just 3 then - otherwise it’s a pure strawman argument. Neither option is good.
> The problem is selective waiving of vetting processes due to political pressure and affiliation.
It's all part of the same problem.
When you have agencies lead by people so incompetent that they believe polygraphs work then you will inevitably get more bad decision making.
You really mean it's not worth getting upset that employees are put through stupid and sometimes even quite invasive or degrading questioning in a humiliating and fear-driven process that bosses don't?
I'd prefer they just get rid of them altogether. They're stupid.
2 replies →
Nope. The tests don't do anything. It sucks that we require them for anybody but I have bigger fairness fish to fry with this administration.
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