10/25/13 – George Maschke – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
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All right, enough of all that.
On to our first guest today.
It's our old friend George Matschke from antipolygraph.org.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, George?
I'm well, Scott.
It's good to be with you.
Well, good times.
I'm glad to have you back.
It's been way too many years since we've spoken.
Yours is a subject I'm very interested in.
It's always good to see you writing on Twitter and speaking to journalists when they speak with you about this issue.
Always see your names.
Very good.
Very important thing.
And now it looks like you're doing too good of a job, and you may have attracted the attention of the National Security Agency personally, which I guess would put you in an even worse situation than everyone else on the planet who they've also targeted.
Well, I don't know if I'm in a worse situation than everyone else, but it does actually cause me quite a bit of concern, and also for the privacy of people who visit my site.
Bear in mind we're a lawful website operated by a United States citizen, and most of our visitors are American citizens who come to learn more about polygraph policy and how the lie detector works.
And the fact is it doesn't.
It's junk science, and that's been the consensus of the scientific community for years, yet our government continues to use the polygraph to pretend to judge the honesty and integrity of people with the highest levels of security clearances.
So it is a big concern, and if I could just tell you what happened, it's up on antipolygraph.org now.
In August of this year, I received an email from a U.S. Navy Petty Officer, and this is something I didn't mention on the article.
In the sort of unit where polygraphs indeed would be a requirement, and he wrote, I was recently polygraphed by the DOD, and they had logs of websites I had visited the night before from my ISP, and mentioned this site, antipolygraph.org, by name, and attempted to disprove to me everything you have on the website.
Certainly a scare tactic, more so interesting how they used logs regarding my web activity.
It seems somewhat constitutionally messed up, if you ask me, and it seems constitutionally messed up to me, too.
So I wrote him back, just wanted to make sure that this was, whether maybe this was a military network that they had logs of his web browsing on.
But no, he said it was a commercial ISP from his own personal house, and he promised to write me more later that day, but I never heard back, and he didn't, after that, my emails were not returned, and recently, when I called, upon identifying myself, he hanged up.
So it seems that he received a talking to, not to speak with me.
Wow, so, I mean, I guess the choices are either they have been very specifically watching your site, or they've really clamped down on the counterintelligence, and they're just watching everything their guys do, and then that's how they stumbled across you.
Did you say?
Yes, it could be both.
It's possible, of course, that people who are in positions where they would be required to take polygraphs, you know, maybe people who are working in signals intelligence might have their personal communications more closely watched.
Also, as Glenn Greenwald reported earlier this year, based on documents from Edward Snowden, there's a system called X-Keyscore, and one of the functions of this database is that an analyst can learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.
So I'm concerned that such a system might be targeted against antipolygraph.org, and I spoke with NSA whistleblower Russ Tice about that earlier this year, actually before the email from the petty officer.
And he said it was a no-brainer that antipolygraph.org is being targeted in that way.
And he's got a contact inside the NSA who told him that, yeah, people should not visit antipolygraph.org because they could be identified if they do so.
And what he told me his contacts inside the NSA did was, from a computer that was not traceable back to them, downloaded a copy of our book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, which explains, among other things, how to pass the polygraph, how to pass it whether or not you're telling the truth.
And I should specify, we make this information available not because we want to help liars beat the test or help people who aren't qualified get security clearances.
I'm a former Army intelligence officer myself.
That's not what we want to do, but because so many truthful people end up being falsely accused of deception and suffering irreparable career harm as a result, we think it's important that the truth about how these tests work and their shortcomings and how they can easily be circumvented needs to be in the public domain, needs to be understood if there's to be any rational debate over polygraph policy.
So Russ Tice's contact in the NSA, he described a circle of contacts there, distributed disinformation among themselves, and he says that they all took polygraphs after that and beat it.
I guess beat it because they had been in contact with him without authorization.
So based on what Russ Tice told me and this email from the Navy Petty Officer that I find credible, I'm really concerned that not just my personal privacy, but even more so the privacy of people who visit the site may be compromised.
And that's why if you visit antipolygraph.org now, you'll see right at the top, what we recommend is that people use the Tor network to connect to the site.
Of course, once you visited the site, it's too late, perhaps, but that's the best we could do.
Well, I'm looking at it right now, but then again, I'm calling you overseas right now, too.
So this call is monitored and recorded.
Well, we're broadcasting, too, right?
Yeah, they're hearing it.
But that's the point of this project is trying to use their technology against them back just a little bit, if I can, you know.
Well, so let me ask you a couple of questions here before you go on.
We've got plenty of time still, too short.
But first of all, so there's this McClatchy investigation, sort of a series that's been going on where they talked about this kind of whole new approach, this insider threat program.
And then as part of that, I guess it's number three in the series, right, is about the lie detectors, so-called lie detectors, the polygraphs and the crackdown on government employees who would look into these things at all.
And now and this is where we get to what you were just saying about your motive for doing this thing, because, of course, the government's point of view is if you're telling people that polygraphs are bogus and here's how I can prove it, all you got to do is wiggle your toes or whatever it is that rather than just trying to prove your case that this is something that should not be relied on, that innocent people are implicated and guilty people go free and these kinds of things and that too much weight is put into it, that kind of thing.
They say that's just cover, really, for you making money, teaching people how to deceive them into getting a job.
They have got a great tool here and you're undermining.
Well, a couple of points regarding that.
There is a criminal investigation called Operation Lie Busters.
The lead agency for that seems to be the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
And they actually there's a man named Chad Dixon of Marion, Indiana, who's heading to prison soon for eight months precisely for teaching people how to pass the polygraph test.
However, in order to convict him, they couldn't rely on anything they knew him to have done.
They sent undercover agents to do a sting to where they said they were people who had done things that would disqualify them from government employment, but they offered him a large sum of money, what would you say, like a thousand dollars, and went through his training.
And so they construed that as a crime and he took a guilty plea because he couldn't afford to contest the case in court.
I think if he had gone to court, he would have stood a good chance of acquittal.
Another person targeted in the investigation is Doug Williams of of Oklahoma, who runs a site called Polygraph.com, and he was raided.
All of his business records were seized.
And so the government has a list of at least recent customers of his, according to McClatchy, that list is in the neighborhood of 5000 people.
And who knows what they're doing with those names?
I can imagine that they've created perhaps a blacklist and will compare applicants for government employment against people who have contacted Doug Williams and purchased his manual or gotten in-person training from him.
But he has not been charged with a crime.
And my understanding is that if he is, he will go to court.
And I think that's a battle that the government might not want to take on because it will bring a lot of attention to the issue of the polygraph.
And, well, that's something the government doesn't want, because when people look at it and find out the truth, they realize it's unreliable and that our government's misplaced reliance on it is actually undermining national security and public safety.
It's vested public interest within government that perpetuate this pseudoscience.
And one other point I should clarify is with respect to antipolygraph.org, we're different in respect that we're not selling a manual or selling any training.
All of our information is available for free.
We don't offer in-person training.
I do reply to the mail when people email us or to phone calls or through the message board.
I am concerned that perhaps something that I've said may be construed as a crime too.
And maybe the next time I travel to the United States, I'll be detained or arrested for some sort of speech crime that I'm not aware I've committed.
But I think everything we're doing is protected by the First Amendment and that the government's attempt to criminalize teaching people how to pass a polygraph test is a huge overreach and is something that needs to be stopped.
All right, now, so here's the thing of it, from my point of view, and look, I'm an extremist on everything or whatever, but to me, a polygraph is a big joke.
I mean, the fact that they even call it a lie detector is one of those things where it's got to come with a big chuckle at the end.
Who are you kidding?
Like a little electronic box knows what the truth is.
It doesn't know what the truth is.
It's just measuring sweat or heart rate or blood pressure.
And that amounts to nothing.
That amounts to, you know, you might as well be a sandwich artist at Subway sitting there saying that you know how to interpret these squiggly lines.
It's ridiculous to me.
But so I don't know.
I mean, I guess inside the Department of Justice, inside the CIA, inside whichever these counterintelligence bureaus, their argument is because Dave here is awesome at it and he's been doing it for a long time and it is an art and and and he's talented, man.
He can sniff right through deception during a lie detector test.
So, you know, Scott and George are all wet on this issue.
Is there some kind of middle ground or who's right or is there anything to either side or what?
Well, there there is no middle ground.
The policymakers are dead wrong and they're hurting national security, public safety and individuals by relying on voodoo science in this way.
The science is quite clear.
I mean, there's no no correlation between the indices measured by the polygraph.
Breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration, no no relation between these and deception in humans.
I mean, that's a basic, basic science and it's well understood.
So when you're saying that they've done the double blind studies and all the best polygraphers in the world can't do better than chance.
Is that what you're telling me?
They've already worked it out trial after trial or how far, how tested is this position of yours?
Well, there's not a lot of good polygraph research, actually.
And perhaps it's not surprising because the polygraph wasn't invented by scientists.
It was invented by interrogators.
All the all the key figures in the development of polygraphy were interrogators, not scientists.
But there have been some studies done and the methodology has not been proven through double blind research to reliably detect deception at better than chance levels in the field.
Although in laboratory tests, sometimes with people who don't understand the procedure and who aren't familiar with polygraph countermeasures, sometimes they do better than chance in categorizing people who told the truth or or lied about some inconsequential matter.
So in other words, it may be slightly informative, but that's about it.
And it's what it's really meaningful for is as an interrogation prop.
If the person who's being questioned believes that the device can detect deception, then they may be more likely to make an admission thinking that things will be better for them if they just come out with the truth rather than risk being caught in a lie.
Right.
Like on the wire, they just use a copy machine and they just put some paper in there and make the copy machine spit out true, true, false.
Right.
On the same principle of scaring admissions out of people.
But, you know, in the age of the Internet, anyone with a modicum of curiosity who Googles polygraph will will rapidly learn that it's bogus.
And the methods for for defeating the test or circumventing it are simple and easily learned.
So you don't have to go to spy school or believe your own lies or or be a sociopath of some kind to fool the lie detector.
Well, so for all these reasons, I think our government's reliance on polygraphy is misplaced.
And the government's attempt to criminalize the teaching of the truth about the lie detector and how it can be defeated is an overreach and misguided.
Well, here, look, officially, George, I do not want anyone listening to use anything George says to help deceive any government employees out of doing their proper polygraph job as defined by their bosses or anything.
But I would very much like for you to describe some of the countermeasures that people can use only to demonstrate just the entire ridiculous theory behind it.
You know, the to to show people that what they because, you know, they call it a lie detector.
And we all grew up with this on TV is a lie detector.
And people just kind of believe in it without, you know, by default until they hear the good argument against it.
So how might one counteract this?
Not that you're giving advice to any bad guys.
OK, so let's say in a national security setting.
A relevant question that they might ask is, did you ever divulge classified information to someone who was not authorized to receive it?
Now, anyone facing a national security polygraph might be nervous when asked that question just because they know that if they're not believed, their career can be in jeopardy or if they're applying for a job, they won't get hired.
So what the polygraphers have done is to devise what's called a control or comparison question.
And so they'll ask a question like, did you ever lie to a person in a position of authority?
And they try to convince you that this is just as important as a question about divulging classified information because experience shows that people who would lie to authority figures are the same kind of people who would go on to be spies.
But secretly, they expect that everyone is lied to someone in a position of authority, whether it's a boss or a parent or a teacher.
So what they do is compare your reaction to the question about divulging classified information to a reaction about having lied to a person in a position of authority to the control question.
And if you react more strongly to the control question, then they assume you didn't divulge classified information.
On the other hand, if your reaction is if your strongest reaction is to the relevant question about divulging classified information, then you're deemed a liar.
It's very simplistic, has no scientific basis, but that is the sort of childish thinking that calligraphy is based on.
And the way you beat the test, if you're, say, a spy or a saboteur or a terrorist who wants to fool the US government, all you have to do is augment your reactions to that control question.
And you can do that by simple means like quickly solving a math problem in your head or by biting, covertly biting this side of your tongue or hard enough to cause pain, but not bleeding.
And that will create a reaction.
And in many cases, it'll be strong, create a reaction stronger than any reaction you might have to the relevant question.
In other words, create an artificially high kind of benchmark to compare any future deception.
Right.
So the polygraph can be gained by augmenting reactions to the control questions.
It's very simple.
And the polygraph community has absolutely no way of detecting them.
They claim they do, but they're lying.
And that's why they're going after people like Doug Williams, Chad Dixon and perhaps antipolygraph.org for telling people how to pass the polygraph.
And the way I know that they can't detect countermeasures is because at antipolygraph.org we've obtained training materials used by the polygraph community to train themselves, PowerPoint presentations and handouts that have been circulated at polygraph training meetings.
And they have no coherent strategy for detecting countermeasures.
Occasionally, they'll accuse someone of using them and they get a confession or admission that the person used countermeasures and they use this to claim that they have proof that they can detect them.
But detection is, you know, it means not being lucky a few times, but being able to reliably, at better than chance levels, detect countermeasures.
And no polygrapher has ever demonstrated any ability to do that.
Well, you know, I don't know if this is really representative or not, but I got a feeling it is.
The episode of Penn and Teller where, and you're of course featured in this, I think people could probably watch it on YouTube, George, or somewhere online.
It's on YouTube.
Yeah, it is on YouTube.
Of this guy who's accused or his girlfriend is taking him, his fiancee is taking him there because she doesn't believe his story of how tame his bachelor party was.
And so the so-called professional lie detector guy puts him through the ringer.
And it comes to a question of how close he got to the stripper or some kind of, you know, weird thing.
And ultimately the fake lie detector scam artist probably saved this guy from a life in hell with this girl.
But anyway, he completely, it was the biggest fraud in the whole world.
Anyone not who, you know, the cameraman, for example, or anyone watching from the third person point of view in this thing has got to laugh at it.
The way that this guy is pretending to have these expertise.
He really doesn't know anything from the squiggly lines at all, other than he's sort of got a feeling about what this guy's story is and how well he likes it.
And at the end of the thing, he just outright lies to him and says, oh, yeah, you failed on question four and five.
You lied on four and five, didn't you?
Something like that.
And then the guy goes ahead and says, oh, geez, I kissed her.
And the whole thing is a fraud, right?
There's no, there's not even polygraphing going on here, much less lie detecting.
Going on here, it's just some guy who's figured out a good scam for a living on.
And here it is on camera narrated by the great magicians who, of course, Penn and Teller famous for outing their own tricks and everybody or not everybody else is in a mean way.
But, you know, exposing scams and mean tricks that people play on each other.
Yeah.
And what's perverse is that it's a government subsidized scam in that.
And that really is pretty representative of how this works.
Right.
That guy in the in in that episode, that's pretty much the same game they all play.
Well, what he what in that Penn and Teller episode, the guy twists a minor admission into something big, as if, you know, made making a mountain out of a mole hill.
And to give you a recent example, a contributor to our message board at Polygraph.org recently wrote about his CIA polygraph experience.
And I'll read you what he says.
He admitted he was accused of committing a major crime.
And I'm quoting now, I said, I tried hacking into the hackers group anonymous the day before they took down the FBI website.
They wanted to know my process, how it how it how I went about doing it after telling them how.
And I also mentioned I did this with good intentions for the greater good, that if I can locate and identify one of them, it could really give me a boost to my academic career.
Well, this CIA applicant who mentioned he tried to hack into the group anonymous got a rejection letter stating that he was a member of the group anonymous.
So there you have an example of an admission being inflated into something it wasn't.
Yeah.
And now the CIA polygraph division can claim that they successfully prevented an infiltrator from the group anonymous from getting into the CIA.
Right.
That's funny.
And yeah, only for their narrow bureaucratic interest, that one division of the CIA, even at the expense of the rest of the CIA.
Yeah, well, I don't think any polygrapher has ever been suffered any career harm from falsely accusing an applicant for employment of deception.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Better safe than sorry.
Right.
Just flush them all out.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, it's good work that you do.
And I appreciate it because I just like the clarification between, you know, what the machine says and what the truth is, because I think people deferred to machines too much.
There's a human on the other side of every one of those things, you know, somewhere.
And that's where the responsibility lies.
And it's not the box.
It's the guy who claims he knows what the box says.
Yeah, well, it's time we abolished the polygraph.
All polygraph programs should just be shut down because the test doesn't work.
The cat's out of the bag.
It's easily beaten and it's time to stop making believe.
I agree.
Thanks, George Matsky, everybody.
Anti polygraph dot org.
Thanks very much, George.
It's been a pleasure, Scott.
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First, get the facts.
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