Anecdata but feral cats can help in the sense that the rats go elsewhere. I live in an area with a thriving rat population. There used to be a feral cat colony next door to us. In those days we almost never saw signs of rat activity, but our friends at the other end of the street were inundated with them. Construction happened, the cats were removed, and now both ends of the street have roughly the same level of activity.
Like the person to whom you're replying, I don't *want* another workspace, virtual desktop, or anything of the sort. Ever. So a system built around a model of "simply move to a new workspace" doesn't work for me. Period.
Sure, but don't you find it a little curious that these tests are being waived so selectively? If the FBI believes polygraphs serve some purpose, why would it choose to waive them?
Person A says "we shouldn't use this on Persons B, C, D".
Pretty major implications about the integrity and suitability of Persons B, C, and D, and about how Person A suspects they have stuff to hide.
(In some ways this is a good reason to keep them around. Even if some people know they're crap, the existence and popular mythology causes people to reveal more than they otherwise would through actions like this.)
If they were using dowsing rods instead of polygraphs would you still feel the same way?
It’s certainly suspicious. But it’s also a huge problem they use them at all when the private sector was banned from doing so since they’re so unreliable decades ago.
I'd absolutely feel the same way if we were talking about dowsing rods or a plastic Harry Potter sorting hat or any bullshit we can think of. I don't want our national security to rely on untested or disproven methods to determine whether people are trustworthy. Even so, as you say, that's also a problem (a big one).
I'd be quite comfortable if I knew that these polygraph tests were being scrapped entirely because they're nonsense and that the FBI is reworking its security procedures to improve all its background checks. As it is, these articles make it sound like they're replacing the polygraph test with nothing, and only for these select few people. I don't like that. It is a human-led interrogation, albeit with a useless (at best) machine. I want to know what's so trustworthy about these people that the FBI doesn't even want to get to know them before giving them jobs high up?
I think that's one very reasonable interpretation. The other is "I really want these people w to come work here and they don't want to do the polygraph because it's a huge pain so I as the manager I'm going to waive it to reduce their objections to being hired".
That's something that companies do all the time, they pay people "out of band" or give them extra benefits or accelerate their vacation accrual or vesting, or one of hundreds of other things.
I agree it looks bad for sure but it isn't necessarily sinister.
There has always been a contingent of people that do sensitive work for the government because they have important expertise but are either "unclearable" or unwilling to go through the formal clearance process. Limited affordances are sometimes made in these cases at the discretion of senior officials with that authority. For the government it is a practical risk/benefit calculus and they still have the ability to do a substantial background check on their own without a formal process.
While it would never be allowed for the average Federal employee it does exist outside of purely political positions.
That solution is to a problem that is not the topic of conversation here.
The problem is selective waiving of vetting processes due to political pressure and affiliation.
Acting as if the efficacy of the vetting process is a point relevant to this conversation either implies you believe they waived this process for these three due to their ineffectiveness - very much not the belief held my most observers, why just 3 then - otherwise it’s a pure strawman argument. Neither option is good.
If a company hires a new CEO and word leaks that HR exempted him from the background check, would you think “well, background checks have very high false negative rates anyway”, or would you think “what the hell is on that guy’s record!?”
This is not a story of incompetence. This is a story of corruption. Corruption that is seeping into processes that exist solely for the nation’s protection. If you are not arguing in bad faith, then I must assume you are passively commenting and did not care to read the article.
There are procedures to vet senior officials before handing them incredible amounts of power over the rest of the citizenry. These particular officials so happen to be part of an agency basically defined by structure, process, rules, and by a lexicon that does not contain the word "exception." If one step of the vetting process is to count how many freckles the candidate has on their left arm, then that is what they must do - no exceptions, no room for interpretation at the ground level, no "well, we could probably just skip this."
You obviously already know this, and the article of course discusses this as it is a defining component of this story; for example, very concisely:
"People familiar with the matter say his ascent to that position without passing a standard FBI background check was unprecedented."
"In fact, the FBI’s employment eligibility guidelines say all employees must obtain a “Top Secret” clearance in order to work at the agency following a background check. “The preliminary employment requirements include a polygraph examination,” the guidelines say."
"Former FBI officials said they could not recall a single instance in which a senior official like Bongino received a waiver and was then given a top secret clearance."
This story _should_ make one wonder: well, why did they break precedent and skip this part of the vetting process? What would they have been asked that perhaps they were trying to avoid discussing? Is there a chance there are real risks to placing these people in these positions, and why are we circumventing the safeguards intended to mitigate them? Is a podcaster with no qualifications for this role worth breaking security protocol & precedent? This is a story that gained media attention, I wonder if this is not a lone instance - what else could they be bending behind the scenes? Well, let's give them some benefit of the double - Is there perhaps actually a reasonable explanation for this that laypeople like us just wouldn't be aware of?
The article does answer some of these questions, such as "what could they be trying to avoid discussing" -
Polygraph examiners ask a standard list of questions about drug use, criminal history, foreign contacts and mishandling of classified information.
It also helps answer the "is there maybe a reasonable explanation?" question - and the answer is no, there surely is not, as instead of offering such a description they instead offered a lie:
The FBI spokesperson initially said the three officials are so-called Schedule C — a category reserved for political appointees. He said the status would mean they were “not required” to undergo polygraphs. But Daniel Meyer, a former executive director for the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community External Review Panel, told ProPublica that an FBI employee wouldn’t be excluded from taking a polygraph exam simply because they’re a Schedule C employee. Three other lawyers, who specialize in national security matters, said the same.
At no point in thinking critically about the situation relayed by this article should "well, polygraphs are bad anyway, so..." steer your thought. It is so "off" that the old forest-for-the-trees cliche isn't even applicable. Even if wanton and unprecedented disregard for process in a process-defined agency is generally not much of a concern to you, surely the fact that the disregarded process is one intended to weed out incompetence and people with intolerable levels of risk exposure from highly-privileged and sensitive agency roles should still raise significant alarm.
tldr; if your first thought after reading this article is "well, polygraphs are bad anyway" and not "what the hell may they be trying to hide", then you read the wrong article.
You really mean it's not worth getting upset that employees are put through stupid and sometimes even quite invasive or degrading questioning in a humiliating and fear-driven process that bosses don't?
Yes, but do you think that will be the outcome? Uniform scrutiny and uniform rules that benefit everyone equally and don't advantage the loyal coterie is not how situations like this go, and it's not how this one is going so far, is it? Exceptions to rules for insiders and the loyal is how it is actually going.
"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law" — Óscar Benavides.
Right, when people sow chaos sometimes the random chaos includes a few nuggets that are good. "No more polygraphs" isn't quite "Stop making pennies" but it's also not "We're reintroducing slavery" is it?
* Polygraph “tests” presented as objective, independent evidence for the truth or falsehood of statements, and
* Polygraph used as an additional channel (similar to but on top of assessment of body language, voice tone, etc.) by an interviewer to determine how to guide an interview to elicit information from a subject, including information that they might prefer to conceal.
The reason it's interesting is that the subjects of these fake tests thought they might work and thus they skipped them.
It's irrelevant whether they do anything. It's more important why they were skipped. What questions would the interviewer ask that they didn't want to risk answering?
> The reason it's interesting is that the subjects of these fake tests thought they might work and thus they skipped them.
This is just something you made up. Here's an alternative idea:
You are deciding whether to take a test. The test's results are 100% subjective. Anything you say during the test can be interpreted as a negative statement about yourself, and this determination will be made by the examiner.
> every time I see one of these my first thought is
Even ignoring the parts falling off & the safety, every time I see one of these my first thought is "who saw a picture of this and said 'yep, that's what I want'"
I have partial/spotty archives going back to the early 90s, which then turn into a full archive starting in 2004. It's not often but there are plenty of times where it's been useful to be able to dig up some nugget from 20-30 years ago to answer a question. And also, sometimes it's just fun to go on a nostalgia trip
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