Who uses a lie detector in their work

The use of a detector to detect various forms of deception is widespread and tends to increase. It is difficult to determine the exact number of such tests conducted in the United States; in any case, not less than a million per year ^[124] .
Most often (about 300,000) they are conducted by private employers. These tests are carried out as part of a preliminary interview for admission to work, to identify all sorts of offenses among employees within firms and to make recommendations for promotion. The preliminary interview with the detector is “very common among members of the National Association of Pharmacists and the National Association of Consumer Services ...”, as well as among grocery workers ^[125] .
And despite the fact that its use is prohibited in 18 states, employers find all sorts of workarounds for this. “An employer may accuse an employee of theft, but if he finds a way to prove his innocence, he will not be dismissed” ^[126] .
In 30 states, the use of the detector is officially authorized, and most often it is used by banks and retail organizations. For example, more than half of the 4,700 McDonalds eateries use a detector test when applying for a job ^[127] .
In second place for the use of the detector are law enforcement services involved in criminal investigations. Moreover, not only suspects, but also victims and witnesses are sometimes subjected to tests, especially if there are doubts in their testimony. The Department of Justice, the FBI, and the police use the detector only after the investigation manages to narrow the number of suspects to several people, and in many states it is forbidden to make the results of such tests public in court. However, twenty-two states take these results as evidence if this has been agreed in advance and agreed with the prosecution and the defense. Lawyers, as a rule, use such an agreement in exchange for the promise of the prosecutor to close the case if the detector shows that the suspect is telling the truth. That was the case with Hummer Fay, the description at the beginning of the chapter. But usually, if the prosecutor has compelling reasons sufficient to convince the jury that the suspect is guilty, he does not make such a deal.
In New Mexico and Massachusetts, test results can be announced regardless of the position of the parties. Appeal federal courts usually do not recognize the test result, unless it was agreed in advance. And not a single state appellate court will cancel the decision of the district court on the grounds that it refused to recognize such results. According to Richard C. Willard, the second assistant to the US Attorney General: “The Supreme Court, unlike the federal court, in its decisions never takes into account the results of tests on the lie detector” ^[128] .
The third place is taken by the federal governments. In 1982, according to various federal lie detector agencies, 22,597 tests were carried out. With the exception of tests conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), most of them belong to criminal investigations. NSA and CIA, as a rule, use a lie detector in intelligence and counterintelligence. This includes testing people who have access to secret work, but are suspected of activities that threaten the maintenance of secrecy, as well as workers seeking such access and people suspected of espionage. According to the NSA, in 1982, 9672 tests were carried out, mainly for admission to work. The CIA does not report on the use of the detector, but it is known that it applies it in almost the same cases as the NSA.
In 1982, the Ministry of Defense proposed a slightly revised view of the use of a lie detector, which could mean its wider use in the future, both for checking workers seeking admission to secret work, and for constant checking workers who already have such access. This would mean that refusal to pass a detector test for workers and applicants would have “the worst consequences”. In 1983, President Reagan proposed further expanding the use of such tests. All executive ministries were recommended to “require workers to undergo a lie detector test during investigations into unauthorized disclosure of classified information ...” As in the proposal of the Ministry of Defense, refusing to pass such a test would entail… administrative sanctions and withdrawal of access to secret materials ... Government policies would also allow widespread use of a lie detector in testing workers (as well as field candidates) who have access to secrecy. The new policy would give the agency leadership the right to conduct such tests periodically or permanently for arbitrarily selected workers from among those with the highest tolerance of secrecy and in case of refusal to deny them such admission ^[129]
Congress responded to such a proposal by the Ministry of Defense to delay the use of a lie detector until April 1984 and requested the Bureau of Technology Assessment (BTO) to prepare a conclusion on scientific evidence of the accuracy of the results of the tests conducted on the lie detector.
This conclusion was published in November 1983, and now, as I am writing this chapter, the White House has revised its proposal to expand the scope of the detector; next week, the congress begins hearing this case.
The BTO conclusion is an unparalleled document, giving a deep detailed review and critical analysis of the evidence of the scientific validity of the lie detector tests ^[130] .
It was not easy to make such a conclusion, because the question is too responsible and the passion around the legality of using the detector, even among the scientific community, is raging very strongly. All the more valuable it was that the advisory board overseeing its writing consisted of leading scientists belonging to opposing parties of the scientific world. Moreover, most of them doubted that they could find a common language, but they found it and made a conclusion both objective and truthful. And even despite the presence of some evasions, which of course is slightly disappointing, it must be admitted that, in general, the conclusion was made in good faith.
Some professional operators who are not in the scientific world believe that the conclusion of the BTO interprets the work of the lie detector too negatively. So, for example, experts from the Ministry of Defense consider. In 1983, a report by the National Security Agency “The Accuracy and Utility of Lie Detector Tests” appeared, created by the heads of departments dealing with the use of such tests in the army, navy, air force and in the NSA itself ^[131] .
Their report, prepared in just 30 days and not taking into account the advice of the scientific community, showed the complete protection of the lie detector. The NSA and the BTO agreed only on one (although the BTO does it more carefully) that detector tests are most effective in investigating certain criminal offenses. With regard to the credibility of this statement and the conflict between the BTO and the NSA regarding the use of the detector in checking tolerances for secrecy and working in counterintelligence, we will talk a little later.
In conclusion, the BTO, unfortunately, there is no single simple conclusion that could be adopted as a law. As was to be expected, the accuracy of the lie detector (as well as other techniques for detecting cheating) depends on the nature of the lie, the liar himself and the verifier (although BTO does not use such terms). In addition, it depends on the specific technique of asking questions, and on the operator’s ability to determine the range of these questions, and on how the equipment is debugged.