Members of Congress have been calling for swift anti-leak action in response to recent high-profile unauthorized national security disclosures:the first on the Obama Administration’s “kill list,” the second about U.S. cyber-attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. As some legislators frame it, the most recent leaks are part of a growing trend of potentially harmful disclosures.
But this week, the Director of National Intelligence announced that the government is expanding its use of the polygraph to expose federal employees who leak classified information to the media. Yes, you heard that right: we're expanding our use of a tool that many regard as crackpot science.
As we reported on the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), here's why this is a bad idea:
Polygraph testing could put intelligence workers at risk of being falsely stigmatized, jeopardizing their careers and their ability to contribute to the national security. It also could have a chilling effect on employees considering blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing, whistleblower advocates said.
“It is clearly at odds with everything we learned in our report,” said Stephen E. Fienberg, a professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon University who led a 2003 National Research Council study of the use of polygraphs in security screenings.
Briefing a Senate committee on the study in 2003, Fienberg put it this way: “Unfortunately tests that are sensitive enough to spot most violators will also mistakenly mark large numbers of innocent test takers as guilty.”
In an interview with the Project On Government Oversight this week, Fienberg said the study’s findings still apply.
Additionally, as Jesselyn Radack, the Government Accountability Project's national security and human rights director, points out, "In the past, we’ve seen whistleblowers subject to mental evaluations, security clearance investigations, and I think this could easily become another tool of retaliation, rather than a tool to find out the truth."