SuperHack/SuperHack CD.bin/ANARCHY/LIEDETECTOR.TXT

Text File | 1996-04-22 | 11KB | 212 lines

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  %%   How to Beat a Lie-Detector   %%
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  %%               By               %%
  %%   --==**>>THE REFLEX<<**==--   %%
  %%   [Member: Omnipotent, Inc.]   %%
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     This file would be useful to you if you were cuaght by Gestapo, uh...I
mean Bell Security (B. S. for short).

     The polygraph test was invented by William Moulton Marston, who was,
strangely enough, also the creator of the Wonder Woman comic strip (under
the name Charles Moulton).  The standard polygraph records only three
distinct vital signs.  A blood-pressure.  Wires attached to the
fingures measure changes in electrical resistance of the skin due to
sweating.  Rubber straps around the torso measure the breathing rate.
This information is displayed as four squiggles on a moving strip of graph
paper.

     Whether or not you believe a polygraph provides useful information
(most psychologists have their doubts), there is a good chance you'll
be asked to take a polygraph test.  The vast majority of lie-detector
tests are administered for employee screening--"Have you been using the
WATS like for personal calls?" and so forth--not for police work.  In 'A
Tremor In the Blood:  Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector' (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1981), polygraph critic David Thoreson Lykken estimates that
as many as one million polygraph examinations are performed on
Americans each year.  In criminal cases however, even the manifestly
innocent may be asked to take a ploygraph test.  All Yakima County,
Washington, rape victims are required to take the test; refusal means the
case will not be prosecuted.

     At best, all the polygraph can indicate is a heightened emotional
reaction to a question.  It cannot specify what kind of an emotional
reaction.  Polygraphers try to design question formats so guilt-induced
nervousness will be the only emotional invoked and so the subject's reaction
to relevant questions can be compared to other, "control" questions.

THE LIE CONTROL TEST
--------------------

     This is the quesiton format used in most police investigations.  It
usually starts with a card trick devised by two pioneer polygraphers,
John E. Reid and F. E. Inbau.

     The polygrapher hooks the subject to the polygraph and takes out a deck
of cards.  The polygrapher tells the subject that he must "calibrate" the
polygraph with a simple test.  He fans the deck and asks the subject to
select a card.  The subject is told to look at the card but not to show it or
mention its name.  The polygrapher tells the subject to answer "no" to
every question asked about the card.  "Is it a black card?" the polygrapher
asks.  "Is it a high card?" and so on. After each "no" the polygrapher
scrutinizes the tracings and fiddles with the dials.  If the no answer is
incorrect, the polygrapher disagrees. The field is soon narrowed to one
card--and it is the correct card.

     Needless to say, the polygrapher uses a trick deck.  The point is to
foster confidence in the machine.  After idntifying the card, the
polygrapehr comments that the subject's recations are particularly
easy to read and segues into the interrogation.

     Three types of questions are used in a lie-control test.  The entire
list is read to the subject well in advance of the test.  The start of a
typical interrogation might run like this:

  1. Is you name Sarah Elkins?
  2. Is Paris the capital of France?
  3. Have you ever failed to report more than $50 of tip, gambling or
     gift income on a single year's tax return?
  4. Is this apple red?
  5. Do you have any idea why the cash reciepts for the last quarter are
     about $22,000 in error?
  6. Is there something important that you did not mention on your job
     application?
  7. Have you ever been embezzling from the company?

     The first question is always irrelevant to the matter being
investigated.  It has to be because many subjects get nervous on the first
question no matter what.  Other irrelevant questions are asked
throughout the interrogation (questions 2 and 4 in the sample
list).  If the subject gives any questions to provide a yardstick for
evaluating responses to the relevant questions.  Actually, the irrelevant
questions are there to give the subject's vital signs time to return
to normal.  They aren't the control questions.

     Questions 5 and 7 in the list above are relevant questions--the only
questions the examiner is really interested in.  The relevant questions
are asked in several different wordings during the test.

     Questions 3 and 6 are control questions.  In the pretest discussion
of the questions, the polygrapher explains that it is helpful to throw
in a few "general honesty" questions. Whoever committed the serious crime,
the spiel goes, probably comitted less serious crimes in the psat.  Hence the
inclusion of questions about tax cheating, lying on the job
applications, stealing as a child, etc.

     The polygrapher affects the attitude that it would be damaging
indeed to admit any such indiscretions.  Frequently this scares
the subject into admitting minor crimes.  In that case, the polygrapher
frowns and agrees to rewrite the question.  Should the subject concede
failing to report eighty dollars in gambling winnings, question 3 might be
changes to "Have you ever failed to report more than a hundred dollars of
tip, gambling, or gift income on a single years's tax return?"  If
necessary, several of the control questions may be reworded before the
test--always so that the subject will be able to give the "honest" response.

     In reality, the whole point of each working question is to
manufacture a lie.  It is the secret working premise of polygraphers that
everyone commits the minor transgressions that are the subject of
the usual control questions.  All the subject's denials on the control
questions are assumed to be lies.  The polygraph tracings during these "lies"
establish a base line for interpreting the reaction to the relevant
questions.

     The reason for rewriting somecontrol questions is so a candid
subject will not admit to minor crimes on the test.  That would be telling
the truth, and the polygrapher wants the subject to lie.  The control
questions are intentionally broad.  Even if a question is reworded to
exclude the confessed instance, it is assummed that any denial must be a
lie.

     The rationale for the lie-control test goes like this:  The honest
subject will be worried about the control questions.  He'll know that he
has committted small transgressions or suspect that he must have, even if he
can't remember them.  So he'll be afraid that the machine will detect
his deception on the "general honesty" questions (especially in view of its
success with the card trick).  That would be embarrassing at least, and it
might throw suspicion on him for the larger crime.  In contrast, the
relevant questions should be less threatening to the honest subject.  He
knows he didn't commit the crimes they refer to.

     The guilty person, on the other hand, should have far more to fear
from the relevant questions.  If the machine can detect lying on the
relevant issue, it matters little that it might also implicate him in petty
matters.

     By this hypothesis, an innocent person should have greater polygraphic
response to the control questions than to the relevant questions.  The guilty
pattern is just the reverse:  greater response to the relevant qustions.
This, at any rate, is what polygraphers look for when the machine is switched
on.

THE RELEVANT-CONTROL TEST
-------------------------

     The relevant-control test is the type used for most employee
screenings.  Thus it is the most common type of examination.  The
interrogation consists only of irrelevant and relevant questions.  As
with the lie-control test, the first question and a few others are
irrelevant.  The relevant questions usually test workplace honesty:  "Have
you ever taken home office supplies for personal use?" "Have you ever
clocked in for someone else?"

     The premise is that no one will lie about everything.  So if a few of
the relevant questions produce heightened responses, they are
presumed to be the questions on which the subject is lying.  Unfurtunately,
there is no ambiguous way of deciding how much response is indicates a lie.
Most psychologists agree that the relevant-control test is a poor test
of deception.

     The Reid/Inbau card trick is eliminated from employee screenings:
There is too great of a chance of coworkers comparing notes and
discoverings that everyone picked the ace of spades.

HOW TO BEAT THE LIE-DETECTOR
----------------------------

     To the extent that the polygraph works at all, it works because people
believe it does.  Many criminals confess during polygraph examinations.
Many employees are more honest for fear of periodic screenings.  But a
dummy polygraph that hummed and scribbled preprogrammed tracings would
be no less in these instances.

     David Thoreson Lykken estimates that lie-control polygraph tests are
about 70 percent accurate.  (Remember, though, that choosing "heads" or
"tails" of a flipped coin can be accurate 50 percent of the time.)
Accuracy of 70 percent is not impressive, but it is high enough to
talk meaningfully of beating a polygraph test.

     Just by having read this far, you stand a greater chance of beating a
polygraph test.  You won't be wowed by the card demonstration.  You realize
that the polygraph's powers are limited.  There are two additional
techniques for beating the polygraph.  The more obvious is to learn how to
repress physiologic responses to stressful questions.  Some people are
good at this one; others are not.  Most people can get better by
practicing with a polygraph.  Of course, this training requires a
polygraph, and polygraphs are expensive.

     The opposite approach is to pick out the control questions in the
pretest discussion and exaggerate reactions to these questions during
the test.  When the control-question responses are greater than the
relevant-question responses, the polygrapher must acquit the subject.

     Because breathing is one of the parameters measures, taking a deep
breath and holding it will record as an abnormal response.  Flexing the arm
muscles under the cuff distorts the blodd-pressure reading.  But a
suspicious polygrapher may spot wither ruse.

     A more subtle method is to hide a tack in one shoe.  Stepping on the
tack during the control questions produces stress reactions with no
outword signs of fidgeting.  Biting the tounge forcefully also works.  Can
you imagine the polygrapher's response to the "Is this apple red?" question
when you say "red" and the machine starts going crazy?  He'd shit his
pants!