We have a police problem in the country. We have kitted out every Podunk PD with mil-spec gear and turned them into game keepers. Only rich white people have faith in the cops because they have no choice. Everyone else ranges from total contempt to general distrust. A lot of crime goes unreported these days because dealing with the cops is more hassle than it is worth. The cops will go to the mat to catch you speeding, but can’t be bothered to find your car when it is stolen.
It is easy to pick on the cops as they are the part of the iceberg we see. Below the water line is the vast law enforcement industrial complex that supports it. The following insane story is a good example. Allegedly, it is against the law to teach people to lie and the Feds are now making a Federal case of it.
The owner of a website that instructs people how to beat polygraph tests was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday for allegedly doing just that — “training customers to lie and conceal crimes during polygraph examinations,” the FBI announced.
Doug Williams, a former Oklahoma City police officer and owner of Polygraph.com, who’s been teaching people how to pass polygraph tests since 1979, was indicted on obstruction of justice and mail fraud charges related to his work. The Department of Justice’s public affairs office announced the news in a press release. It reads, in part:
Douglas Williams, 69, of Norman, Oklahoma, was charged in a five-count indictment in the Western District of Oklahoma with mail fraud and obstruction. According to allegations in the indictment, Williams, the owner and operator of Polygraph.com, marketed his training services to people appearing for polygraph examinations before federal law enforcement agencies, federal intelligence agencies, and state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as people required to take polygraph examinations under the terms of their parole or probation.
The indictment further alleges that Williams trained an individual posing as a federal law enforcement officer to lie and conceal involvement in criminal activity from an internal agency investigation. Williams also allegedly trained a second individual posing as an applicant seeking federal employment to lie and conceal crimes in a pre-employment polygraph examination. Williams, who was paid for both training sessions, is alleged to have instructed the individuals to deny having received his polygraph training.
Williams is an outspoken critic of polygraph tests. On his website, he says polygraph tests are neither reliable nor accurate, calling them “insidious Orwellian instruments of torture,” a “scam” and a “sick joke.” He says he’s administered thousands of tests with the Oklahoma City Police Department, the FBI and the Secret Service and claims to have testified before Congress and advised two presidents.
The polygraph is pure nonsense. That’s why even our messed up criminal justice system has rejected them. The whole shtick is an act to fool dumb people into admitting things they would prefer not to admit. The mark is strapped into a gizmo that looks serious and is run by a guy who looks even more serious. The whole point is to convince the mark that the contraption and the the technician can tell if he is lying.
If the DOJ was charging him with fraud, then maybe they have something. The above paragraph is about all anyone can train you on regarding the polygraph. Promising more would be dishonest, but that’s not what’s going on here. This is not a consumer protection case. Weirdly, they are admitting that you can “beat” a polygraph. Otherwise, why bother indicting this guy? That alone should drop the use of the polygraph.
Regardless, this is a great example of anarcho-tyranny. The DOJ has allowed the IRS to run wild harassing citizens. They have done nothing about the systematic looting of the nation by the bankers. These are things the people want from their government. Instead, they get the Feds chasing after old men peddling DVD’s on-line.
Then why, gobsmacker, are this country’s pigs allowed to get such training with impunity?
Williams was charged with obstruction of justice. At first, I thought his arrest was a violation of his First Amendment rights. On second thought, I concluded maybe the police did have grounds for charging him. If a person schemes with a criminal or witness to a crime in such a way as to hinder the investigation or prosecution of a crime, that is definitely obstruction, no two ways about it. In this case, Williams knew exactly what his “students” were trying to do because they told him. Suppose, however, the undercover agents hadn’t told him why they wanted the training. Would that have been obstruction? I don’t think so, not as long as he wasn’t conspiring with or aiding someone he knew to be under investigation or indictment. Williams error in this case (one of official entrapment) was knowing that what his “students” planned to do with their training was illegal. Instead, he should have offered the training with “no questions asked.”
The original idea of Robert Peel was to create a public service of people authorised to make the arrest of another citizen on suspicion of committing crime. To this end the ‘Peelers’ were lightly armed and entirely subject to the law of the land; there was no exceptionality.
That’s why to this day UK cops are (mostly) unarmed though once more the spectre of islam and its holy-book-sanctioned violence has persuaded the powers here to have more unarmed cops to be in the reach of squads of trained weapons officers. Oh, and the IRA is still active, despite repeated shallow efforts to make their thugs welcome in society.
The problem however is that unarmed cops still have ‘powers’ and the desire by some of them to set the tone if not the letter of the law is worrying. The fact that policemen can tell citizens in public places not to take photographs when there is no British law that says that is one of the things a lot of people are uncomfortable about.
Britain has, some say, more surveillance cameras than any other country which — in the nature of the beast — clearly shows what law-abiding citizens are doing rather than finding the law-breakers. In one UK town CCTV cameras were used to ‘track’ a family who had applied legitimately for their child to go to a different school reveals how the power can be misused. Apparently the CCTV operators, who are not police, used the word ‘Targets’ when the family left their home and reported their movements to the local school board.
It isn’t just the police it would seem that people here have to worry about.
The “police problem” started with DUI checkpoints fueled by asset forfeiture. Both illegal scams that blur the line between law and lawbreaking.
“Every cop is a criminal.”–Bob Dylan
Here is part of Penn & Teller’s take on lie detectors as complete bullshit. Judging from this, I don’t think there’s much to “beat”.
The whole show used to be available, but now only this shortened segment, apparently.
Penn & Teller Bullshit Season 7 Episode 5 Lie Detectors PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bScv6kfxRyE
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Fake Indian will go after the bankers!