Accused Spy Peter Debbins Evidently Beat the Polygraph to Penetrate the NSA, DIA
antipolygraph.org46. During the meeting, RIS 5 and RIS 6 instructed DEBBINS not to take a polygraph and offered to give him training on how to deceive polygraphs. They further encouraged DEBBINS to continue pursuing a career in the Special Forces.
Certainly not the message the article intends to convey, but looks like polygraphs work, unless you were trained to defeat them. Enough of an obstacle for Russian handlers to ask their agent avoid it.
From a threat modeling perspective it doesn’t sound too promising: I doubt espionage is an activity that favors the unprepared, so people who need to know how to “beat the polygraph” will.
My understanding is that polygraphs “work” because people think they do. The machine _will_ catch you lying, so if you do, you get scared. Training to beat the polygraph mostly involves breaking this belief.
There are other ways, too. But even without it, the limited scientific evidence suggests that different polygraph operators show basically no agreement on analysing the outputs. It’s pot luck and gut feel, which, well, works somewhat, but the type 2 error is so big that it is an unfair tool to use.
Edit: I thought this was the same as last weeks article, but it's not, it's a fresh one!
Thread from last week...
Note that despite the shared polygraph angle, this is a different spy and a different national adversary.
Oh damn! I totally missed that. 2 in 1 week!
Thanks for the heads up.