Lightknight said:
Kerethos said:
Considering there are far better interrogation methods, with more reliable results than torture,
Oh? Do tell *pulls up chair*. What kind of studies have you performed to corroborate your claim and what are the exact methods of interrogating with a higher success rate than torture?
What I've heard a lot of people say is that torture is bad. What I haven't heard someone say is an alternative to it if the information is that vital.
I have not made any in-depth study of the effectiveness of various interrogation methods, though I would certainly be interested in such a study.
From my limited knowledge, however, I've gathered that mind games are quite effective, which basically boils down to bluffing, lying, gaining confidence or confusing the person you're trying to gain information from. A basic example would be cross interrogation of multiple suspects, in order to catch them in lies and eventually piece together the truth.
Or you could attempt to confuse the terrorist into believing more time has passed and that the attack already took place, simply by keeping them indoors and without access to any means of telling time. Having to rely sole on you to provide that information. At that point the person might chose to gloat, and reveal the place of attack well before it happened.
Gaining the confidence of the person has been proven quite effective, if time consuming. And making deals has a long history of working out.
With torture you never know until you've checked if the information is correct, or if you are simply given what the person thinks you want in order to stop the torture. Making any information gained inherently unreliable - that's unreliable, not worthless. Meaning a constant flood of plausible information could delay the process long enough for the "subject" to die or the information you needed to become obsolete.
I might have a look to see if I can find any studies that verify what I've been told about the unreliable nature of information gained from torture, and how it's considered poor information by interrogators. But it's pretty late here and I no longer have access to where, and from who'm, I initially learned about interrogation techniques, so I it's unlikely I can produce anything more solid than Google searches at this point
My knowledge on the subject comes primarily from speaking with people within the security businesses, trained in and teaching interrogation techniques. And by that I mainly refer to people working towards event, systems, organization and personal protection (such as protecting heads of state or public persons needing to appear in public as well as a large organization).
I doubt any has actual experience with "get the terrorist to tell us where the bomb is", but I could be wrong on that. Hard to tell with ex military, they don't really care to share specifics with casual acquaintances or students - nor did I ever ask such specific questions, as we didn't (I think) officially bomb anyone at the time.
We still don't - at least to my knowledge - we just point to where the bomb needs to go and let the French or Americans do the actual bombing - which is kind of a dick way to remain neutral, imho. But it was, at least, how we used to roll. I'm in no better position than most people nowadays to find out where our allegiances lie, aside from being fairly sure it's still - at least in some areas - closely tied to our American partners; that we don't officially spy with and for, but really, we do. Oh my, we so do. And that pissed a lot of people of when that got out
Anyhow I, unfortunately, have yet to take any classes on interrogation techniques or methods - as they where not needed for my intended position. It's also been almost 7 years since I worked with security assessment, making my knowledge somewhat dated and admittedly second hand; due to not having any training or practice.