Summary
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has begun administering polygraph tests to employees in an effort to identify individuals leaking information about immigration operations.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan have blamed recent leaks for lower-than-expected ICE arrest numbers.
Noem stated that two leakers had been identified and would be prosecuted, though it’s unclear if polygraphs were used.
While DHS has used polygraphs before for hiring screenings, they are now being used to question employees about leaks of classified or sensitive law enforcement information.
Thats just plainly false.
There’s no reliable correlation between lying and heart rate or any other bodily functions. It’s an intellectual act after all not a physical one. It simply doesn’t compute.
The physiological response could be driven by literally anything and there’s no way to isolated it to “lying” - what if I’m nervous just because I’m being interrogated by people who are known to be dirty and untrustworthy?
Polygraph is the biggest snake oil in contemporary crime “science” and frankly its infuriating that it still exists and everyone who defends it should be bullied into returning back to sanity.
This is why they’re unreliable. Too many false positives. But the stress of lying can produce a physiological response, which is the basis for the polygraph in the first place.
But people can also control their responses, so there’s also a high possibly of false negatives.
The true positive and true negative rate is too low to be considered reliable, but it’s not like there’s zero basis in fact, like those bomb scanners that were literally empty shells.