Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary fears her department has an enemy within, apparently.
Summary
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has ordered lie detector tests for DHS staff to identify leaks that allegedly foiled immigration raids, including a failed Colorado operation targeting Venezuelan gang members.
The directive, leaked to Bloomberg, requires polygraph questions about unauthorized communications with media and nonprofits. Despite polygraphs' unreliability, DHS insists they are necessary for national security.
The crackdown follows frustration from Trump’s border czar Tom Homan over compromised raids and aligns with broader MAGA-era efforts to control government communication.
People like her are dumb enough to believe "lie detector" tests are completely dependable and always print out perfectly clear "lie" and "not lie" results. Everyone else knows polygraph tests are inadmissible in court for a reason and require a lot of careful prep and interpretation. Even then, they're far from 100%.
Daily reminder that there's no such thing as an accurate lie detector test. Completely unscientific. Illegal to use except by government and it's basically a scare tactic/way to deny/fire people they don't have other cause for.
Totally made up metrics but used by govt. Meaning that if there was ever an easy way to purge ICE and DHS of brown people, this is an easy, no fuss way to do it.
Honestly ya may not be far off, humans even profligates like those in Trumps orbit have a generally good enough ability to detect when folks are pissed at them. When said pissed folks have access to weapons, are more intelligent than you, and probably think what you are saying is beyond stupid then well wearing a comfort vest is probably the only thing keeping her from booking it out of the room.
Funniest thing about that is they only help in an all-out fire fight to protect your vital bits except the head which would have a helmet. She’s not going into any situation nearly so dangerous and if someone wanted to take her out, specifically, there’s plenty of options.
She might as well have a mall ninja sword strapped to her back.
It should be pretty common knowledge that lie detector tests are completely bogus and can't be trusted. They're not admissible in court cases. Polygraph tests are proven to be made up pseudoscience.
They might as well try using crystal pendulum tests to dowse out the national security threats.
I want to point out - the results are inadmissible, but anything you say IS admissable.
A polygraph is an interrogation technique. And to this day I still don't know why they try to use it with so many things. Like security clearance. It doesn't really give them any insight into anything about you, other than if you like to run your mouth
“This isn’t a game,” Homan raged to the Associated Press. “We know that TDA is dangerous. Everybody can agree to that, but when they get a heads-up that we are coming, it’s only a matter of time before our officers are ambushed. Their job is dangerous enough. So we are going to address this very seriously.”
I don't think that leaking this is a good idea, but come on. If gangs find out in advance that they're about to be raided, are they going to disappear or seriously voluntarily going to stay and have a shootout with DHS?
Like, this can certainly mess up investigations, but I have a pretty hard time believing that it's going to get DHS agents killed.
I think it’s meant to “snuff out” as in “kill” the leaks, not necessarily the perpetrators. Like, we’re gonna do this to end the leaks. The wording is somewhat awkward and questionable, but not necessarily incorrect. Snuff out is used to refer to extinguishing candles, so it’s not unheard of to use it in contexts other than ending human lives.
I see your line of thinking, but let's also remember that polygraphs wouldn't end leaks even if they really were lie detectors. The most they could do in that fictional scenario would be to reveal the leaks; to sniff them out. To snuff them out would require some additional, separate action.
Also snuff out applies to candles only because the snuff is literally part of a candle's wick. The phrase is not being used literally here, which leaves us with the common non-literal meaning: to murder.
I still think the most charitable interpretation is that author confused it with sniff out, and failed to consider the grisly meaning of what they wrote.