Indeed, the FBI participated in the criminal investigation of the late Doug Williams, who offered training on how to pass or beat a polygraph "test." Because there was no actual crime for which to prosecute him, federal agents set out to stage one in a "sting" operation they dubbed "Operation Lie Busters":

https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2016/04/26/operation-lie-bust...

You are correct. The Employee Polygraph Protection Act of 1988, which otherwise prohibits the use of putative lie detectors by employees, provides exemptions for such cases.

That CBS 60 Minutes exposé aired 40 years ago, yet it remains relevant today. It may be viewed in its entirety here:

https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2007/01/30/cbs-60-minutes-exp...

On the Jeremy Kyle show, the lie detector drove one guest to suicide (which led to the show's cancellation):

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/22/jeremy-kyle-gues...

Beating the polygraph means passing it when you're lying about the relevant issues. Although polygraphy has no scientific basis, the methodology employed makes effective countermeasures possible.

Yes, unfortunately. The governments of the following countries, among others, rely on polygraphy to varying extents: Canada, UK, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and China.

China has recently abandoned the use of Polygraph (I read such a news recently).

The spam sites that replicate the original page's content make the original page look like low value content, too.

President Richard Nixon also considered forcing White House staff to submit to polygraph "testing" to plug leaks, though it seems he thought better of that idea in the end: https://antipolygraph.org/documents/nixon-polygraph-quotatio...

For federal agencies, the seat pad is now standard. There are no public studies of its effectiveness. Regarding how the U.S. government attempts to detect polygraph countermeasures, see:

https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2018/06/09/ncca-polygraph-cou...

The 1998 Employee Polygraph Protection Act largely prohibited the use of lie detectors for employee screening by private companies.