It’s crazy to me how much weight the intelligence agencies seem to put on polygraph tests. Some enterprising huckster should sell them on some high-dollar phrenology gear.
The fact that that polygraph tests don't work was well known certainly by the 90's (if not much much earlier). I struggle to believe anyone at all interested in the field wouldn't have some awareness of that, especially if they knew in advance they were going to be tested.
And I'd dispute that they "work" even if the subject is unaware of the flaws. Studies have shown innocent people regularly react to assertions of criminality. It's basically left up to the individual tester to "interpret" whether or not they find the person to be lying.
Sure sometimes it may inspire someone to admit to something they otherwise wouldn't. But these people are more likely to be largely honest people who made a mistake then hardened criminals or people actively working against the state.
>Studies have shown innocent people regularly react to assertions of criminality.
Yeah, if I were accused of a big crime I would look at it like this: if my faith in the justice system is 99%, and if I'm facing 50 years in jail, then given my innocence I'm facing an expected value of 6 months in jail. You can bet I'd be sweating!
The main test they use for ASD, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) – a Cochrane review [1] found that across 12 studies of diagnosis in preschoolers, the ADOS-1 [2] had a summary specificity of 0.8 – in other words, an average false positive rate of 20%. But, looking at the studies individually, the specificity ranged from 0.2 to 1.0 – in other words, the false positive rate ranged from 0% to 80% across the individual studies. And, that is in research contexts – there are good reasons to believe that the test will be less accurate in clinical use than in research contexts. In order to use the ADOS in research contexts, one has to demonstrate "research reliability", which is a process of scoring videos of the test being performed and comparing your scores with one's colleagues, repeating the process until you get sufficient agreement, and doing this again once every few months to make sure you stay in agreement. None of that rigour is required in clinical use. Added to that, I think in clinical contexts psychologists sometimes feel the urge to "put their thumb on the scales", they'll think "I know the test says this child doesn't have ASD, but I know they are struggling and an ASD diagnosis will get them funding that will help them, so I'll just fudge the numbers a bit to make it come out positive." Some psychologists who would never do that in research (it's scientific fraud) will do that sort of thing clinically. So, it seems very likely (if difficult to prove rigorously) that tests like the ADOS will have less accuracy in clinical contexts than research contexts, so however accurate they are measured to be in these studies, it is probably worse than that in real life.
Sometimes, they suggest combining the ADOS with the ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised), which is a structured interview of parents/caregivers. The combination is even called the "gold standard", with the suggestion that using the two in combination is more accurate than either alone. But, does the research actually support that belief? Well, that Cochrane review says they could only find one study (in preschoolers, they excluded studies of older individuals) which compared the accuracy of ADOS-1+ADI-R to ADOS-1 alone. It found a modest improvement in specificity (equivalent to false positive rate), at the cost of a modest worsening in sensitivity (equivalent to false negative rate), but the result wasn't statistically significant. So, this belief that using the combination improves accuracy doesn't appear to really be supported by the evidence.
But, do you think clinicians tell parents any of this? In my personal experience, no. Either they are ignorant of the research, or they are keeping that knowledge close to their chests. How much faith would parents put in the results of the ADOS if they were told that in research contexts it had a 20% false positive rate on average? And that there is good reason to believe that in clinical contexts (their current context) the test probably performs worse than that? And that 20% is just an average over multiple studies, and in some individual studies its false positive rate was substantially higher?
[2] the ADOS-1 has been replaced by a new version, the ADOS-2. At the time of that Cochrane review, there hadn't yet been any studies published on using the ADOS-2 in preschoolers, so it was excluded from their analysis. But, the fundamentals of the test haven't changed, so I doubt the ADOS-2 performs significantly better than the ADOS-1 did.
I agree with the first part but the second doesn't really follow. How will your belief that phrenology doesn't work influence the result of such a test (assuming you live in a world where such tests are even considered)?
Phrenology doesn't allow the same "luxuries" as the polygraph because people are more or less stuck with the size and shape of their skull. Their guilt is exclusively in a chart not in their beliefs. Only thing that matters is if the people (judicial system) giving the test believe in it.
Ok but are applicants for intelligence jobs that naive/uninformed? I’m not particularly intelligent or informed but I’ve come across articles and books debunking polygraphy many times over the past 20 years. It’s not very obscure information. Scary to think that our “best and brightest” can’t be bothered to do cursory research. Also if I was facing a polygraph you can be damn sure I’d research it ahead of time. Are candidates not doing this?
Even being aware that something is fake doesn’t necessarily mean that you believe it.
There are placebo effectiveness studies where the participants know they are taking a placebo pill, for instance, and yet still feel better than a control group who isn’t offered any treatment. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/placebo-can-work-even-kn...
This seems like the right answer. If the polygraph is able to essentially determine some sort of nervousness beyond normal, then someone who really believes they work and is not used to lying is going to be really damn nervous trying to lie and get caught up.
But if someone knows what it really does, and then just knows you just have to be calm and say whatever you want, then it won't work.
There's a fourth assumption missing, which is also wrong: that the localized traits are things like "honesty" or "good character" instead of things like "motor function in the upper right torso." My neurology textbook has a great figure from an old phrenology publication, it demonstrates the philosophical idea of there being brain regions for cognitive functions, but the partitions and labels are completely made up.
How much weight do you think they put in polygraphs? The bulk of the work polygraphs do is encouraging people to admit past deeds. Things a person has done in the past are rarely disqualifying. Hiding them is. The polygraph encourages the candidate to be forthcoming.
It's not just the polygraph they are facing, but the background investigation as well. How well do you can lie in front of an investigator (with or without a polygraph) when you know they have been talking to past associates/neighbors/friends?
And what is your goal in lying? Getting one over on the stupid military complex. Maybe, just maybe, they aren't as stupid as you think they are.
Yes, every time this is mentioned someone comes up with some through-the-eye way of "how this is actually very brilliant and you are too stupid to see it".
And then another leak happens, and there they are, the gaudy PowerPoint slides, the shitty Java enterprise software, the scuffed up abominations of open source tools, none of the supposed magic is anywhere to be found.
No, I'm sure the real magic is just really well hidden!
Why use a known fraudulent technique? Explain why it’s more beneficial than just thoroughly vetting and interviewing/interrogating candidates.
It’s embarrassing.
Edit: It’s odd how you seem to be trying to make this a personal/emotional thing about wanting to lie to the MIC, etc. If I was a huge supporter of the intelligence community I’d want them to quit wasting time, money, and credibility on an ineffective scam. Also I explicitly stated that I’m not particularly intelligent so why you are painting me as a know-it-all for daring to question this practice.
It's difficult to reconcile the image of Snowden the idealistic whistleblower with Snowden the right-wing Islamophobic security-state cheerleader who wanted leakers to be shot in the balls, from just a couple of years earlier.
At least one of these is a manufactured persona, and I don't know which.
Why? Can't a person who is naturally prone to fervent dedication change from one ideology to another? I mean, for reference, look at a billion examples of religious converts, or for perhaps a better analogy to Snowden, look at /r/atheism.
I don't think it's even a particularly large shift. Both "personas" demonstrate a large degree of in-group loyalty and a desire to hold "traitors" accountable, to the American state and the American people respectively. It's not hard to see how a realization that the state was "betraying" the people could have provoked his change in perception of "in-group".
I suspect part of the answer is in the first image :
> That was intentionally incendiary[...]. Don't take it personally. :D [...] I just wanted to be clear. I'm not really an ugly american. I just play one on the intarwebs [sic].
A played-up personality on one side, and five years of changing beliefs, make this less of a contradiction IMO. Considering the decision to leak may also have triggered him to re-evaluate some of his other views, in a "What else was I lied to about?"/"What else was I wrong about?" sort of way. I don't see any reason why both couldn't be a true reflection of his views at the time.
I don't see a disconnect. For one, people will overlook that he at least made an effort to whistle blow responsibly (& I've yet to see evidence that he failed in that effort). He didn't pass off his information to wikileaks
I might think it's more plausible since I myself have gone from wildly left wing youth to libertarian left adult. Recognizing that faith in state is as bogus as faith in religion has great impact on one's political opinions
& sometimes I like to dial things up on the internet too
You are called a right-winger if you like or dislike this statement.
As for the latter points, it's perfectly pleasurable for someone to go in idealistic/extreme thinking NSA is totally good and leakers are totally bad. Once hired he gets hit with reality which is more in the middle. The lack of imagination-reality correspondence is interpreted as a signal that there are systemic problems (as basically the opposites are true) and he thus undermines the bad system.
These are when he already is employed at the CIA. The posts he is talking about are from before he got his security clearance, which was apparently in 2005. The positions appear very libertarian, but not racist or misogynistic. So these are probably things that he continued to post after his pondering, and that he has also outgrown.
Quote: "Their most effective features were combined by a young Mark Zuckerberg into a site called FaceMash, which later became Facebook".
Except this is not quite true. Zucky did FaceMash as a joke in campus. And he took quite the heat from Uni headmaster for it. And while later when he made "The Facebook" (yeah it had "the" in early days) probably took some lessons into it from FaceMash, it definitely did not evolved from it.
I don't share the sympathies of him being a hero. I'd wait until seeing all the information before making a judgment:
There's conflicting stories on Edward Snowden's history. There's accusations acted out in the workplace and possibly embellished information about himself [1]
There are things in the report that made it look like he planned out taking the data. That's the most damning information against him. If that didn't exist though, or was refuted, the story could be more sympathetic.
There'd still be allegations in this summary he may expect to confront eventually, fibbing about his legs, cheating on an entrance exam, him misrepresenting his job positions as if he was more senior than he was, based on the report, he appears to self-aggrandize out of habit.
In his upbringing he probably had events with parent/authority figures where he learned to lie to cover up his mistakes as a survival tactic. It's progressed to more than hiding, if he cheated on an entrance exam, some people may see that as fraudulent.
He would allegedly break chain of command and email managers too high up when localized stuff happened, his story feels more like someone who was under a lot of pressure and needed more experience defusing issues in a professional environment.
The leaks themselves:
He didn't suggest improvement to the laws or regulations. He divulged the methods themselves, which other governments were probably doing anyway. Those other countries won't stop doing it, and they'd be happy if adversaries stopped.
In his videos / posts, he never talks about how information could be used to prevent a terrorist attack, surveilling / interrupting a spy cell, gathering other valuable information for his country to better understand things. It's as if he had his wish, he'd throw away the whole system.
It's like he can't discern consumer privacy (which is minimal in US), from protecting data from criminals (which is improving with TLS, 2FA, etc), from his own job. I wouldn't look to him as a role model for national security, civil liberties, or even basic ethics.
Yes. Those are the questions I'd like to see asked. Right now, it is the convenient talking points that Snowden already seems to have a reply for.
Can you really compare yourself to Daniel Ellsberg, when you take a job with the aim of leaking everything you get your hands on (without being able to vet it)?
Why did Snowden download the entirety of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia What abuses of the constitution did he expect to find in a secure data sharing platform? Were these potential abuses of the constitution worth it to leak its ~255,000 user accounts to a journalist who made his boyfriend travel through customs with an undecrypted USB-stick, thereby globally exposing it?
Why did Snowden steal the passwords from his colleagues and clients to do the leaking? Had he already found documents with abuses of the constitution using this method before? And what about the first time he did this? Was this day-to-day exposure to material that required whistleblowing? Or was this an elaborate hunt for material that could eventually, in part, amount to whistle-blowing-worthy, thereby partly justifying your strange snooping behavior?
Snowden fled to Hong Kong (China) -> Russia -> South-America, and then makes it sound like the US put him in Russian exile.
Then, instead of facing justice in the US, he knew, that by handing over unvetted documents to security-unaware journalists, they would end up in the hands of other security agencies. The damage would be akin to having a administrator-level Russian-China spy embedded in the US IC, leaking everything out. So don't make the damage about "some papers published something about 0.001% of the leaks that was of public interest and of no harm".
About the extract in question: I really believe that if Snowden could have deleted all his old moronic internet posts, he would have. He could not figure it out. Talks about writing an easy script, but then goes on to bloviate about some Southpark "the internet should be a place where people can make mistakes" moral.
> I could put together one tiny little script — not even a real program — and all of my posts would be gone in under an hour. It would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to do. Trust me, I considered it.
And his girlfriend is still suspicious as hell, given that she visited China and Hongkong for months, before meeting up Snowden by 8'ing all the desk jockey looking men on Hotornot.
Instead of attacking the content of the leaks or his claimed motives you are mainly attacking his character.
It should be obvious that he planned to take the data. Taking it without a plan would be a good way for him to fail to accomplish anything. The main detraction I can see is that he leaked without regard to content, even considering he may not have had time to look over what he had taken (e.g. there is some top level stuff about drones that probably could have been redacted with a quick scan of the documents).
He likely avoided commenting on improvements to remain apolitical; if he had not, it would be more ammunition for character assassination. Other countries may be doing roughly the same but most people's issue is not with the fact spying was occurring but that it was largely turned inward.[1] You do not know he would throw away the whole system. As previously mentioned, he likely had no time to figure out what documents were what and the impact of their release would be.
In any case, he was acting as if he expected his own government to completely ignore the protections it had built in to defend its citizens. That some of the domestic programs he exposed were since cancelled due to public outrage is telling.
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[1]: Besides the unconstitutionality of inwards-facing spying it is also a red herring. We repeatedly see little in the way of domestic terrorism but because inward spying is so much easier to do it seems to make up a disproportionate amount of the information generated; information that is likely not representative of real threats.
Well, he defected. Please understand I'm trying to understand him better myself, because his actions don't match the high-minded platitudes he claims to espouse: he didn't file a lawsuit, write criticism of his bosses, policies, etc, run for congress or started lobbying to improve the system. He bypassed all those mechanisms and dumped programs. We can't have the public oversee every method to gather information, or it wouldn't be very effective.
And judging by the posts/comments I read on here and news sites, I'm not sure people understand the difference between information gathering, criminal investigations, and consumer / medical / etc. privacy. Don't you think it'd be better to agree on a common ground that these are different purposes before engaging in a dialectic on it?
I bring up him having workplace / life stress, because he's human. He fits a model very similar to traitors who worked for their gov that spied for other countries, except he replaced his handler was a journalist. What he says here is spooky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9yK1QndJSM&t=70
Put is this way: Why should I get my safety as a US person put at risk so someone can publicize their story that someone leaked something again? In that video at 1:00. He's trying to make it so classification basically no longer has meaning, if they defect to a journalist.
> Besides the unconstitutionality of inwards-facing spying it is also a red herring.
I'd think a normal person would expect that: if you're a national, your government should be protecting you, not targeting you with those tools. Unless it's your intent to destroy it somehow.
For the sake of encouraging understanding: I think constitution is used as a way to imply subjectivity of what feels right. Unless you have court decisions to mention. The constitution hasn't been updated much and the case law is porous. Example: Unopened email after a certain time is treated as abandoned.
Don't you think the policies around the use of the data gathering tool / method is more important than the tool existing or not? Based on how Snowden evangelization goes: if we took its philosophy to its logical end, people will just leak every source / method, the system will never improve, and it wouldn't be very safe for us!
That's not what I'm saying, the leaking to a journalist is the defection.
The leaker is on the best behavior to impress their new handler. They're suckers and getting played.
An analogy to what Snowden did: How would you feel if you had a significant other that promised themselves to you, but behind your back, connected with someone else, some jester/stranger/charlatan. Hurtfully, you find they were eager to move mountains for them, and all the while criticizing your mere existence as a person. It'd be safe to say they've broke their vow, even though they haven't officially acknowledged yet.
People stood up to the warrant-less searches but were disposed of one way or another. A good example is the Qwest CEO: he wasn't killed, but he was jailed after acting in his own self interest after his company was ruined.
There are occurrences that are less clear cut but still suspicious and that involve long prison terms or death.
>Put is this way: Why should I get my safety as a US person put at risk so someone can publicize their story that someone leaked something again? In that video at 1:00. He's trying to make it so classification basically no longer has meaning, if they defect to a journalist.
You're wanting to trade freedom for security. I disagree that that is a good idea. You also do not know that he is trying to do that; certainly he has not stated as such.
He exposed high crimes. That is why people think he should not suffer punishment.
>For the sake of encouraging understanding: I think constitution is used as a way to imply subjectivity of what feels right.
That is true in the sense that all laws are only what "feels" right. There is a long history of the US federal government twisting laws to give the federal government more power.
It really feels like you're trolling, the last statement does not seem to follow any way I try to read it.
I can acknowledge that yes, there are people out there who want to kill you and take your stuff. Defunding the defense apparatus of the US is not a valid solution. But neither is the status quo.
