" The emperor has no clothes, so instead of clothing the emperor we just make sure everybody's wearing a blindfold."

That's precisely the official thinking about polygraph policy. Ten years ago, a senior instructor at the federal polygraph school floated the idea of criminalizing the public dissemination of information about polygraph countermeasures. I never thought it would come to pass, but it seems a considerable effort is being made.

I should have mentioned in the original post that investigative reporter Marisa Taylor of the McClatchy newspaper group has a PGP public key (7DCA14DC) that can be used to securely contact her. I've signed it with my own key (316A947C).

I should have added that McClatchy investigative reporter Marisa Taylor has a PGP public key (7DCA14DC).

I did, in fact, first use a PDF reader other than Adobe's. The PDF is available as a MIME attachment to the e-mail I received, the raw source of which can be downloaded here: https://antipolygraph.org/documents/help%20help%20help%20please.eml . If any readers have the technical skills to analyze it for malware, I'd be grateful.

I found no malware associated with the PDF, though the thought occurred to me before I opened it that it might be malware. The original, raw source of that e-mail message is available here: https://antipolygraph.org/documents/help%20help%20help%20please.eml

Thank you! Yes, I did look at the metadata associated with the PDF file, but haven't been able successful in deducing anything more from it. My replies were in Persian.

AntiPolygraph.org has been hosted outside the United States (first in Canada, and most recently in Iceland) precisely because of National Security Letters.

One sure fire way to fail a federal polygraph is to admit up front that you've researched polygraphy, you know that it has no scientific basis, and that it's vulnerable to simple countermeasures that you have read about and understood (but promise not to use them). When the "test" is done, you'll be accused of deception, attempted countermeasures, or both.

No, it's not a re-post. Last week, Slashdot featured an earlier story by McClatchy about the same criminal investigation. On Friday, 30 August, McClatchy published a follow-up article with details on the case of Chad Dixon, the only person to have thus far been criminally charged in an investigation that the government is calling "Operation Lie Busters."

After reading the headline, am I the only one that thought embedded in the context of microprocessors instead?