Edward Snowden’s (not-so-secret) Secret Superpower

I’ve nothing to hide, but please don’t ask about the midget porn.

I’ll let you into an open secret. Lie-detectors (polygraphs) don’t detect lies: they elicit confessions. They’re the juju in a Nacirema witchdoctor ritual, designed to soften you up before the interrogation (or, as they like to call it, the post-test interview).

The real test begins like this:

There seems to be an anomaly in your response to Statement 17: “I never conceal my actions from my employer.” Do you have any comments on this I can add to my report?

Which is another way of saying:

Alright, buddy. We know you done it. Your autonomous nervous system already ratted on you. So here’s the deal. You tell me what happened, and maybe I can get you a light sentence.

If it brings down the price of insurance, I’m all in favour. But in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. So I chuckled over this quote, in an article about how Edward Snowden persuaded his colleagues to give him passwords (emphasis mine):

In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you’ve been cleared, and especially if you’ve been polygraphed, you’re an insider and presumed to be trustworthy.

In my mind, this makes Snowden a kind of nerd hero. The NSA lies to its staff about the nature of polygraph tests. But Snowden was smart and skeptical enough to check the facts for himself. This knowledge gave him the edge he needed to blow the lid off the NSA’s whole disgusting, illegal operation.

Will people finally wise up and stop believing in polygraphs? I doubt it. Maybe the NSA will learn from this mistake, but there’s still a sucker born every minute, and we all want to believe in magic.

(By the way, the picture is a still from the NSA training video The Truth About the Polygraphs. The key quote is at 4:59 If we see anything that is of concern on the test then... we will discuss that with the person and give them an opportunity to resolve that issue.)