National Reconnaissance Office accused of illegally collecting personal data

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National Reconnaissance Office accused of illegally collecting personal data

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/1...#storylink=cpy

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — One of the nation’s most secretive intelligence agencies is pressuring its polygraphers to obtain intimate details of the private lives of thousands of job applicants and employees, pushing the ethical and legal boundaries of a program that’s designed instead to catch spies and terrorists.



The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting confessions of personal or illicit behavior that officials have admonished polygraphers who refused to go after them and rewarded those who did, sometimes with cash bonuses, a McClatchy investigation found.


The disclosures include a wide range of behavior and private thoughts such as drug use, child abuse, suicide attempts, depression and sexual deviancy. The agency, which oversees the nation’s spy satellites, records the sessions that were required for security clearances and stores them in a database.



Even though it’s aggressively collecting the private disclosures, when people confess to serious crimes such as child molestation they’re not always arrested or prosecuted.


“You’ve got to wonder what the point of all of this is if we’re not even going after child molesters,” said Mark Phillips, a veteran polygrapher who resigned from the agency in late May after, he says, he was retaliated against for resisting abusive techniques. “This is bureaucracy run amok. These practices violate the rights of Americans, and it’s not even for a good reason.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/1...#storylink=cpy

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The agency’s is among eight Pentagon polygraph programs that under Defense Department policy can directly ask only about national security issues in what’s known as the counterintelligence scope polygraph. The test was designed to catch spies and terrorists who are trying to infiltrate the government without encroaching unnecessarily on the private lives of government employees and military personnel. Polygraphers are allowed to ask about espionage, terrorism, sabotage and the unauthorized sharing of classified information.


But about five years ago, the National Reconnaissance Office began pressuring polygraphers to pursue information outside those limits in what amounted to an unwritten policy, said a group of polygraphers who agreed to describe the practices to McClatchy. The polygraphers include Phillips, a former Marine who worked for a number of intelligence agencies over two decades, and a former National Reconnaissance Office colleague, Chuck Hinshaw.



Both agreed to be named because they think the agency’s practices violate Defense Department policies and should be stopped.



Other polygraphers backed their accounts, but they asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation. “I was coached to go after this stuff,” one of the polygraphers said. “It blew my mind. They were asking me to elicit information that I’m not permitted to ask about, and I told them I wasn’t going to do it.”


Another longtime polygrapher said the National Reconnaissance Office had established an off-the-books policy that encouraged going after prohibited information.


“The organization says in writing that they’re not supposed to be asking about this information, when in fact behind closed doors they are pushing (polygraphers) to actively pursue it,” the polygrapher said.


Hinshaw, who said he’d witnessed the improper practices as a former acting supervisor, accused the agency of becoming so cavalier about following the rules that the polygraph branch chief, Michael McMahon, pressured him to change the results of the agency director’s polygraph if he failed the test. In the end, director Bruce Carlson passed, but Hinshaw said the incident demonstrated how the agency’s use of polygraph was arbitrary and wasn’t about protecting the country.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/1...#storylink=cpy

[Winehole23]

The agency’s is among eight Pentagon polygraph programs that under Defense Department policy can directly ask only about national security issues in what’s known as the counterintelligence scope polygraph. The test was designed to catch spies and terrorists who are trying to infiltrate the government without encroaching unnecessarily on the private lives of government employees and military personnel. Polygraphers are allowed to ask about espionage, terrorism, sabotage and the unauthorized sharing of classified information.


But about five years ago, the National Reconnaissance Office began pressuring polygraphers to pursue information outside those limits in what amounted to an unwritten policy, said a group of polygraphers who agreed to describe the practices to McClatchy. The polygraphers include Phillips, a former Marine who worked for a number of intelligence agencies over two decades, and a former National Reconnaissance Office colleague, Chuck Hinshaw.



Both agreed to be named because they think the agency’s practices violate Defense Department policies and should be stopped.



Other polygraphers backed their accounts, but they asked to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation. “I was coached to go after this stuff,” one of the polygraphers said. “It blew my mind. They were asking me to elicit information that I’m not permitted to ask about, and I told them I wasn’t going to do it.”


Another longtime polygrapher said the National Reconnaissance Office had established an off-the-books policy that encouraged going after prohibited information.


“The organization says in writing that they’re not supposed to be asking about this information, when in fact behind closed doors they are pushing (polygraphers) to actively pursue it,” the polygrapher said.


Hinshaw, who said he’d witnessed the improper practices as a former acting supervisor, accused the agency of becoming so cavalier about following the rules that the polygraph branch chief, Michael McMahon, pressured him to change the results of the agency director’s polygraph if he failed the test. In the end, director Bruce Carlson passed, but Hinshaw said the incident demonstrated how the agency’s use of polygraph was arbitrary and wasn’t about protecting the country.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/1...#storylink=cpy