15 years of polygraph use.
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| Yuri Ivanovich KHOLODNY, Doctor of Law, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Regional Educational and Scientific Center «Security» of Bauman Moscow State Technical University |
Mikhail Pavlovich SYCHEV, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of Bauman Moscow State Technical University. |
The psychophysiological instrumental method of «lie detection», designed to identify information a person is hiding, has been used in world practice for over a hundred years.
This method is based on phenomena known to mankind since time immemorial.
It has long been noted that when giving false answers, a person experienced mental stress associated with concealing some information, and the resulting fear of possible exposure caused noticeable changes in the physiological processes of his body.
Thus, by interrogating a person and simultaneously monitoring his physiological reactions, they revealed the concealed information and thereby separated lies from the truth.
Since the end of the 19th century, laboratory equipment has been used for these purposes, and in the 1930s a special device was designed — a polygraph, which is often incorrectly called a «lie detector».
«LIE DETECTOR» IN THE USSR: FACTS OF THE RECENT PAST
In Russia, the described psychophysiological method first attracted attention more than 80 years ago.
In the 1920s, the young psychologist A. R. Luria, a future academician of the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, conducted research in the laboratory of experimental psychology at the Moscow Provincial Prosecutor's Office, convincingly showing that this method should be «expected to be of great practical use over time» in solving and investigating crimes.
However, in the early 1930s, scientific and applied research into the psychophysiological method of «lie detection» was stopped for many years.
Following the ideological guidelines of those years, legal and psychological sciences declared the use of the polygraph for the purpose of revealing information hidden by a person to be a «pseudoscientific method» of bourgeois criminology, and its use in domestic practice to be «morally unacceptable.»
But real life made its own adjustments.
In the 1960s, the intelligence service of the German Democratic Republic lost several well-trained agents who were exposed during their testing on the «lie detector» and informed the KGB of the USSR about their losses.
This forced an objective assessment of the capabilities of the «lie detector».
As a result of scientific research conducted by KGB scientists and specialists under the leadership of Academician P. V. Simonov, it was already proven in 1970 that a lie detector test, or, according to modern terminology, a polygraph test (PUT), is an effective method of revealing information a person is hiding.
Nevertheless, it took several more years of scientific research, and finally, in addition to this, the will and authority of the KGB Chairman Yu. V. Andropov, so that in 1975 the first specialized laboratory in the country on this topic was formed in the department.
Thus, having overcome the barrier of accusations of pseudoscience following genetics and cybernetics, the OIP was put to the service of the state.
The fact that the USSR began to use the «lie detector» became known to the world in two or three years.
However, ideological attitudes held back the widespread introduction of the OIP into law enforcement practice: the use of the polygraph was very limited, and, moreover, the very fact of the use of the OIP in the country was hidden for many years.
The press first reported on the use of the polygraph in the USSR only in early 1991, when this device was used to investigate the murder of priest A. Men.
The use of the «lie detector» did not cause a negative reaction in society: the need to introduce new methods in the fight against crime became obvious.
POSSIBILITIES OF THE OIP: A BRIEF DESCRIPTION
In domestic mass media and some scientific publications, one can sometimes come across understated or negative assessments of the applied capabilities of the OIP, and the polygraph test itself is considered violence against the individual.
Such statements are due either to poor knowledge of the essence of the issue under discussion, or to certain opportunistic considerations.
We will briefly note only the most important characteristics of the OIP method.
In global and domestic practice, OIP is used to solve problems of two classes:
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during investigations or official proceedings in order to assess the reliability of information that the respondent previously reported to the inquiry, search or investigation;
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during personnel selection and monitoring of the activities of working personnel in order to prevent offenses — these are the so-called screening tasks (from the English screen — to sift, to check for reliability).
The IIP is carried out exclusively on a voluntary basis.
This principle is fundamental and unshakable: it is determined not only by moral and ethical reasons, the need to respect the rights and freedoms of man and citizen, but also by the technology of the OIP itself.
According to the standards established in world practice, the OIP specialist (polygraph examiner) informs the respondent before the start of the polygraph test that the latter can interrupt this procedure at any time and refuse further participation in it.
Indeed, if a person does not want to undergo a polygraph test, it is almost impossible to force him to do so: he will simply not allow the sensors to be put on him or will not comply with the polygraph examiner's requirements and answer his questions.
The reliability («accuracy») of the results of the IIP for the purposes of investigations, according to the American Polygraph Association (USA), is 90-96%.
According to data from US federal agencies, compiled in the mid-1980s, errors in polygraph tests in criminal cases were made in less than 1% of completed OIPs.
This is also confirmed by the review «Summary of the Practice of Using the Polygraph in Investigating Crimes» prepared by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation (2005), which stated that «the effectiveness of using the «lie detector» in many situations that prosecutors have to deal with is unconditional.»
When working with personnel, the OIP allows for the successful prevention of official crimes and offenses by “culling” individuals who have concealed their non-compliance with the requirements established by the employer, i.e. who have concealed, for example, connections with criminal groups, the commission of any criminal offenses in the past, distortion of personal data, etc., or reprehensible personal characteristics (abuse of alcohol, drug use, passion for gambling, etc.).
For example, according to the Center for Psychophysiological Diagnostics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, depending on the region of the country and the social group from which personnel are recruited for the internal affairs agencies, in 2008 “up to 47% of the examined candidates for service were classified as persons concealing negative information.”
In essence, the OIP is one of the methods for testing human memory.
Using this method, you can get information from a person only about those events that happened in the past and are of high importance to him in the conditions of a polygraph test.
Especially important events (for example, a committed crime), imprinted in the so-called emotional long-term memory, are not forgotten, are not subject to amnesia, and a person cannot intentionally «erase» such memories, no matter how much he would like to.
Practice shows that with the help of the OIP, you can reveal a person's hidden involvement in important events that happened 10-15 or more years ago.
This explains the effectiveness of using the IPR in investigating unsolved crimes of past years.
Although the term «polygraph» is not found in Russian laws, the use of the OIP in the country is developing based on the legal norms established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation, the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, as well as the Federal Laws «On Operational Investigative Activities», «On State Secrets», «On Commercial Secrets» and «On State Forensic Activity in the Russian Federation» and a number of other laws.
The effectiveness of the OIP method in solving the tasks set and the low cost of its implementation in practice have long proven its practical cost-effectiveness.
The legalization of the use of the polygraph in Russia is an objective consequence of the changes that have occurred over the past two decades.
The steady spread of the IPR in the country is based on the principle that society and the state are obliged to strictly observe the parity between the constitutional rights to privacy, human freedoms, on the one hand, and the right of society to protect its interests and security from illegal and criminal attacks by individuals, on the other.
IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENTS
In 1993, the OIP method was approved by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for use in domestic law enforcement practice.
Over the past years, much has been done to develop this area, and the most important achievement is that the polygraph has become firmly established in public practice in Russia.
In particular, the OIP is actively used in the activities of a number of law enforcement agencies and security agencies in Russia.
It is enough to note that in the internal affairs agencies alone, in the period 2002-2007, the volume of work with the polygraph increased 14 times and the number of cases of use reached almost 22,000.
And although other federal agencies of the country do not provide official statistics, it can be said that in 2008, at least 35,000-40,000 polygraph tests of various purposes were conducted in the public sector of Russia.
Private companies and firms use polygraph tests even more actively — ahead of the public sector.
This suggests that, taking into account the public sector, approximately 100,000 polygraph tests are conducted annually in the country.
Such estimates provide grounds for concluding that Russia is among the top five polygraph users, second only to the United States and, probably, China.
Polygraph tests have ceased to be a «metropolitan exotica.»
If in 1993 the method of «lie detection» in Moscow was mastered by no more than fifteen people, then at present there are already about 350 specialists in OIP (polygraph examiners) working in the civil service and about the same number in the private sector: in terms of the number of polygraph examiners, Russia is also among the countries leading in this field.
In passing, it should be noted that Russia contributed to the introduction of the polygraph in neighboring countries: Russian specialists trained the first polygraph examiners in Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
An obvious achievement is that Russian specialists are provided with domestically produced computer polygraphs.
Russia is one of five countries that produce this class of devices.
Six commercial companies operate in this area in the country, producing more than a dozen different models of computer polygraphs.
The best models of domestic polygraphs are not inferior in their tactical and technical capabilities to the latest models of overseas devices of the same class, and in some characteristics, Russian models are superior to foreign ones.
In the early 1990s, the OIP came to forensic science as an «unconventional» method of an unclear nature, the admissibility of which in solving and investigating crimes was disputed by many legal experts and criminologists.
As a result of scientific research conducted at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries by Russian scientists, the IIP has taken a worthy place in the system of methods and means of Russian forensic science.
Achievements in the development of forensic foundations of the psychophysiological method of «lie detection» have led to the fact that IIP began to be carried out in the form of forensic psychophysiological examinations (SPPE), and their results were presented to the court as evidence.
Finally, an important achievement is the draft Federal Law «On the Use of the Polygraph», the preparation of which was carried out on the initiative of the State Duma Committee of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on Security; scientists and specialists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor General's Office and other federal agencies of Russia took part in the discussion of the draft law.
NEAR FUTURE TASKS
According to some experts, a «polygraph boom» is currently being observed in Russia.
This was confirmed, in particular, by three (!) conferences held at the end of 2008 in the internal affairs agencies on the topic of polygraph use.
These conferences defined the current positions of the current period of development of the use of the OIP in Russia, the implementation of which largely depends on the success of the solution of the most important issue — the Federal Law «On the Use of the Polygraph».
Existing Russian laws potentially allow the use of the IIP in various areas of public practice.
At the same time, in the absence of direct legal regulation, various federal agencies, acting in a single legal field, use the polygraph differently.
The bill developed in the State Duma should establish a uniform procedure for the use of the IIP in the country.
In particular, in order to eliminate the inconsistency in the use of the polygraph in areas of activity important to the state, it is proposed to introduce, along with polygraph tests carried out on a strictly voluntary basis, also OIPs that will be mandatory for a certain group of users — departments, state and non-state institutions defined by law.
In particular, the IIP should become mandatory for Russian citizens applying for access to information constituting a state or military secret (this is already being implemented, for example, in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB), or ensuring the operation of critical technologies (for example, nuclear power facilities), or who have agreed to undergo the IIP under the terms of an employment contract.
Of particular concern is the unrestricted use of the IIP in the non-governmental sphere by any legal norms, which is inevitably accompanied by abuse of the polygraph and violations of human rights.
For example, there are many known cases where a non-governmental employer, in violation of Russian labor legislation, offered its employees to undergo the OIP and, having received a refusal, immediately fired them without any explanation.
The current lack of strict qualification standards has led to the fact that in Russia, especially in the non-governmental sphere, the use of the OIP is often carried out by hastily trained underachievers who, without knowing it, cripple the fates of people tested on the polygraph and mislead those who turned to them for help.
(This happened in the 60s-80s of the last century in the USA until a law was passed that regulated the use of the polygraph in the country.)
In connection with this, the bill proposes to introduce strict regulations according to which persons performing OIP, but who have not received the qualification of a polygraph examiner in the manner established by law, are subject to criminal liability.
Finally, the law should legitimize the profession of «polygraph examiner»: the number of specialists in the polygraph examination in Russia is in the hundreds, and several thousand are already needed.
The idea expressed by a group of scientists and specialists who are convinced that «for the active use of the polygraph in the life of Russian society, the will and determination of the top officials in the state are first and foremost necessary» seems correct and timely.
They support the «adoption of the Federal Law «On the Use of the Polygraph» and, on its basis, the establishment of control over the harmonization of criminal, civil, administrative and other legal norms for effective action»; it is clear that the adoption of such a law will contribute to the improvement of measures to combat corruption.
One cannot but agree with the opinion of the Ministry of Internal Affairs employees that «it is necessary to constantly use all means and methods, primarily the media, to promote the importance and necessity of using the polygraph» in the country.
In order to promote the expansion of the legitimate use of the polygraph in Russia and to meet the growing demand of the domestic market for polygraph examiners, the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (MSTU) — the country's leading technical university — in addition to dozens of other educational programs, joined the process of professional retraining of specialists in the field of applied application of the OIP in 2008.
Experience has shown that the use of the polygraph in the country will be more successful and further expansion of the use of the OIP will be perceived by the public with greater understanding if potential users know more about this method.
Therefore, Bauman Moscow State Technical University began a new topic for itself — professional retraining of specialists — with courses that received the conventional name «Implementation».
The first students of the «Implementation» course were heads of state and non-state institutions, employees of law enforcement agencies and expert institutions, university teachers of legal and psychological disciplines, specialists in the field of security and information protection.
In connection with the progressive use of the IIP in the form of forensic psychophysiological examination, the «Implementation» course should also be useful for judges and lawyers.
Next in line is the development of other training programs on the topic of applied use of the polygraph and assistance in the practical implementation of the IIP in the activities of state institutions and non-governmental organizations in Russia.
1 Bezyazychny A. I, Dubyagina O. P., Dubyagin Yu. P., Bordilovsky E. I., Novozhilov V. I, Kalugin V. A. Methodology and methods of using the polygraph in public relations and the fight against crime //Problems/of using polygraph devices in the activities of internal affairs agencies: Materials/scientific and practical conference (September 25-26, 2008, Moscow). Moscow: All-Russian Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 2008. P. 17.
Source: Business Glory of Russia