No they don’t. Certain types of clearances for DoD or the Intelligence Community may require polygraph along with the background investigation process, but the vast majority of cleared US government or contractor personnel do not have to undergo polygraph testing – they only go through routine reinvestigations at the 5- or 10-year marks following favorable adjudication for their initial clearance.
Ancestor post said "lie detector". A polygraph test would be a separate thing entirely. I'm not entirely certain why you thought to link them.
The lie detector in the regular process is when the federal employee investigates whether the answers on your questionnaire match up with public records and in-person interviews.
The polygraph is security theater intended to intimidate the subject and possibly reveal previously undisclosed issues by provoking a stress response. That's why they keep using it.
That’s true, although the requirements for different clearance levels are drastically different, and most people don’t refer to the standard background (re-)investigation process as a “lie detector,” even if the investigators are in fact attempting to determine your honesty in addition to evaluating other signals about your behavior and potential ability to be influenced or manipulated.
Most of the time, comments about “lie detectors” are a reference to polygraph tests, which only apply to an extremely minor percentage of the overall cleared workforce; I just wanted to point that out, that it’s not quite as bleak as implied by the parent.
I was tongue-in-cheek trying to break the implied association between polygraph and "lie detector".
The lie detector in a polygraph test is always the human running it, and they're about as fallible and unreliable as anybody else, with respect to determining honesty. They could just chuck the machines in the trash and call it a "veracity interrogation", but selling the machines and training the people to use them is a better money sink, and gives more ass-cover when someone invariably deceives the investigators. "Trained to beat the machine" sounds better on paper than "really good liar".
Security theater needs its props.
As far as I know, only those working in secure compartmentalized facilities and with high-value assets ever get polygraphs.
If you hold a key and wait by a coded terminal in a nuclear missile silo, you get one. If you reduce and analyze anti-ballistic missile test telemetry, you don't. If you write systems code for submarines, you might get one. If you write route-planning software for in-flight refueling tankers, you don't. My guess is that it ultimately depends on how much Country X would probably pay you to borrow or copy your access. If it's above $Y, they do a little more to scare you into being a good little guardian of the nation, and hope you're not another Snowden.
They just have way too much need for cleared personnel to spend enough to actually make certain, for everybody. Doing it correctly always costs more, in time and money. Why do it right when you can make it look like you did it right, and get paid the same?
Quote from a friend who works at such a job: "I just want to drink beer and get my dick sucked"
I really don't think there is much hope. He just thinks everything works out in the end when in reality it is people fighting tooth and nail and giving up their lives to fight for this shit.
FMRI data that is taken from direct brain scans is admissible in courts in India to determine if a suspect is lying in high profile cases. India also has the largest biometric database (outside of the NSA).
I'm not convinced a very dark future is preventable