What I don't understand (CIA torture)

I know this is not exactly the 'best' place to canvas this subject, but there are authors here, I am sure, who will have some knowledge - and it will be better than the ideas of people in other venues - of modern neural signal detection technology.

On the one hand we are consistently told how the CIA or the US government at some deep level of 'programs' and/or 'research projects' has the best science and technology around, on the other hand the first resort to fairly basic and old fashioned torture methodology runs completely off-centre from what leading science can do when it comes to determining whether people are lying or even, what they are actually thinking about.

It's not at all incorrect that the leading edge modern neural mechanistic techniques cannot say WHAT people are specifically thinking - they most certainly can. Down to numbers, down to alphabets.

If you have a restrained subject then it is all the easier to get both transducers and other more advanced sophisticated electronic field sensors not only subcutaneously engaged but also picking up the smallest, deepest, and the most specific of neural network energies.

But if you start tampering with what someone's neural network is ACTUALLY doing, by torturing them, the LESS likely it will be that any accurate data is going to be attained through modern technological means from neural signalling sensing.

Admittedly it's going to cost a whole lot more to apply the technology that is around these days, compared to drowning or suffocating someone with saran-wrap and water, but then I thought that was the whole point in the first place - to spend as much or waste as much, taxpayer money as it is humanly feasible to do without being taken out and shot as a common thief by an enraged Auditer General.

I prophesy the dissemination of intelligence that is too diluted and scatter-logical to make any sense to interrogators. That is, the real intelligence is spread around so collectors need most of the agents to reconstruct anything useful.

Professional intelligence officers know that torture techniques work for subjects telling you what they think you want to hear, whether it has any truth in it or not, just to get the torture to stop (although, yes, it can get someone to just spill all the beans they know to avoid further torture--but that's usually someone who hasn't been trained to resist--and even then they're likely to embellish into the false to curry sympathy). It's not considered reliable by professionals and to the extent the CIA has gotten involved in it, it was imposed by political oversight forces (not to say that some CIA professionals didn't/don't just go along with it to get ahead with political oversight forces). The way to get more reliable information from subjects is to give them something they want more than they want to protect the information they have and then to hold it back if they don't continue to produce. It's even more helpful is what they want is illicit and than can be held over their head in blackmail.

I have quite a few stories on Lit. exhibiting this.

Incidentally, the lie detector doesn't reveal lies, either. It reveals changes in emotional/physical responses to the question. What causes the change in the response doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the subject being queried. Professional polygraphers know this. They just hope the subject doesn't know this and will unlock to tell them "whatever."

Desiremakesmeweak said:

I know this is not exactly the 'best' place to canvas this subject, but there are authors here, I am sure, who will have some knowledge - and it will be better than the ideas of people in other venues - of modern neural signal detection technology.

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The basic answer to your question is that torture is primarily about intimidation, not information. Virtually all claims about "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture) producing information have turned out to be false for precisely this reason. So using fancy technologies for "neural signal detection" would be pointless.

The process of extracting information from an unwilling subject is a very complicated one.
First, you have to realize that the subject may have information, valuable to you, that you don't even suspect that he/she/it has.
Thus, a professional starts by forcing the subject to answer questions that the professional already knows the answers to.
Any attempt by the subject to lie or to withhold information is met with a great deal of pain, inflicted by the professional. In addition, the professional tells the subject that there are several subjects undergoing questioning and that information can and will be cross checked.
Then the professional uses advanced techniques:
"Where were you born?" "Egypt."
"Where were you educated?" "Egypt."
"How and where did you earn a living?" "I was a laboror, in Egypt."
A great deal of pain follows.
"You speak Arabic with an accent that is not of Egypt. Also your body type is not that of a laboror. Shall we try again? I can keep this up a lot longer than you can."
(Gradually, the subject becomes confused. The pain and the seemingly total knowledge of the professional cause the revealing of a great deal of information, most of which is seemingly useless. However, sifting and cross checking can reveal some very useful information. Eventually, the subject will go insane. However, the ravings of an insane person get past the surface lies and into real truth, as real truth is perceived by the subject.)

Last year I was doing research about the Ripper murders, and there was a bone of contention at the time over the police refusing to offer a reward for information. It seemed like a basic investigatory tool that was being disregarded for no reason. Finally one of the relevant officials made a statement saying that rewards weren't very effective, almost always provoked tips that were wrong and worse than useless, and (this is the part I'll never forget) that a reward was nothing more than "The first idea of stupid people" and shouldn't be given much real consideration.

That phrase "The first idea of stupid people" struck me as incredibly valuable. Torture is also one of those things that stupid people will suggest immediately. Now and then those stupid people get to be in charge, and then you end up with a mess.

R. Richard said:

The process of extracting information from an unwilling subject is a very complicated one.
First, you have to realize that the subject may have information, valuable to you, that you don't even suspect that he/she/it has.
Thus, a professional starts by forcing the subject to answer questions that the professional already knows the answers to.
Any attempt by the subject to lie or to withhold information is met with a great deal of pain, inflicted by the professional. In addition, the professional tells the subject that there are several subjects undergoing questioning and that information can and will be cross checked.
Then the professional uses advanced techniques:
"Where were you born?" "Egypt."
"Where were you educated?" "Egypt."
"How and where did you earn a living?" "I was a laboror, in Egypt."
A great deal of pain follows.
"You speak Arabic with an accent that is not of Egypt. Also your body type is not that of a laboror. Shall we try again? I can keep this up a lot longer than you can."
(Gradually, the subject becomes confused. The pain and the seemingly total knowledge of the professional cause the revealing of a great deal of information, most of which is seemingly useless. However, sifting and cross checking can reveal some very useful information. Eventually, the subject will go insane. However, the ravings of an insane person get past the surface lies and into real truth, as real truth is perceived by the subject.)

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R. Richard said:

Eventually, the subject will go insane. However, the ravings of an insane person get past the surface lies and into real truth, as real truth is perceived by the subject

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TamLin01 said:

Torture is also one of those things that stupid people will suggest immediately. Now and then those stupid people get to be in charge, and then you end up with a mess.

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Yup.

Desiremakesmeweak said:

On the one hand we are consistently told how the CIA or the US government at some deep level of 'programs' and/or 'research projects' has the best science and technology around, on the other hand the first resort to fairly basic and old fashioned torture methodology runs completely off-centre from what leading science can do when it comes to determining whether people are lying or even, what they are actually thinking about.

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The government makes a good fictional bogeyman with sinister plots, big secrets, and fancy toys, but in reality the government tends to be highly inefficient, composed of people who aren't as clever as they think they are, their secrets mostly aren't that big of a deal, and their toys tend to not be anything more complex than what your average Joe with money to burn can get ahold of.

And sometimes people think that the old and simple method are better than complicated techy methods, which is sometimes true, sometimes not, and sometimes highly debatable.

CyranoJ said:

The basic answer to your question is that torture is primarily about intimidation, not information.

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If even that.

We can sit here and argue about whether torture can save American* lives, but that misses the point. If this was really about getting material results and saving lives, we wouldn't be fighting the War On Terror (TM) in the first place. We'd be throwing the money into one of these things instead. So far in the 21st century, you're 1000x more likely to be killed by a preventable hospital screwup than by terrorists.

But getting people excited about an external threat and then making a noisy show of Doing Something About It is much juicier politics, and for the purposes of security theater it doesn't matter whether the things you do are materially effective. We already know TSA's body scanners are a waste of time and money (see also the guy who built a series of lethal weapons with parts from the airport shops), but we still have to put up with that bullshit every time we fly.

Why would we expect decisions about torture to be based on its effectiveness, when nothing else in this picture is?

*substitute your nationality/religion/skin colour of preference

Desiremakesmeweak said:

It's not at all incorrect that the leading edge modern neural mechanistic techniques cannot say WHAT people are specifically thinking - they most certainly can. Down to numbers, down to alphabets.

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For ideal and willing subjects under controlled conditions with an imperfect success rate. We are a long, long way from being able to use wires to read what's in anyone's head, and given the unique nature of an individual's neural wiring, I question whether we'll ever be able to do "arbitrary read".

And I wouldn't be in a hurry to hope it changes. Imagine a technology that would allow someone to point an antenna at your brain and know your thoughts. Do you really want this power in the hands of governments or corporations? The story of the resulting dystopia writes itself.

"Thought Criminal 267367455, you have been monitored and four days ago when crossing the Square, you had impure thoughts concerning 647653732. You are judged guilty of failing at Respect For Others as well as Cruel and Deviant Sexuality... there is no need to speak, we see you acknowledge your guilt. You will now enter the Chamber of Attitude Correction...."

HandsInTheDark - where have you been?

Your confidence that 'we are a long way from being able to use...' is admirable.

I know that it seems depressing that our wonderful brains can be probed to this extent. And I know that people think that every thought they have is just so unique, so individual - and believe me, as a writer, it IS/WAS a depressing narrative.

I know, I know.

I know that the number of potential neuron connections is as large as the number of atoms in some vast space - a galaxy thereof perhaps, maybe more.

'being able to use wires...' Wires? EXACTLY how long have you been away from the planet?

Bramblethorn - 'War On Terror (TM)'.

Fuckin' brilliant. I shall be using that every single time in future.

I read somewhere that the most successful interrogations - in terms of information extracted - during WW2 was by a special unit in the British military. They "befriended" the selected captured Nazis, even pretended to be sympathetic to the Nazi cause, and spent time getting to know them, even had a "park" where they would walk them in the woods chatting. Of course there were microphones everywhere. It took time, but they got excellent info. Lets face it, when one has a secret, you have to work to keep it in. What's better than being able to chat into a friendly ear about the things you know.

Of course the Brits had far more in common with the German prisoners than the CIA have with the terrorists. Although the uber right wing fundamentalist Christian sects probably have more in common with fundamentalist Islamic terrorists than either have with the more traditional denominations of either religion, so maybe use those guys to interrogate - but those are just the people who would rather do it the "hard" way.

And lets face it, the guys doing the questioning would have more fun causing pain than actually learning what makes a guy tick, show sympathy and pretend to befriend him. They probably think it would be too difficult and take too much time to do it the Brit way.

edited. And as for torture, as has been said already, at some point the subject is going to give the interrogator what he wants to know. I heard a while back about a police detective who went back some time later over the recorded interrogation he made of a suspect in a crime. He got a confession, even the details that only the criminal would know. But he found that he had hinted, even told the suspect exactly what he wanted to hear. She was terrified, and just wanted to get out and get her child back. The detective even told her that all she had to do was confess and she'd see her child. She didn't. Lost the kid and went to prison and was later found to be completely innocent, she just wanted to get out of the interrogation room after hours of questions, and she was given all the answers.

The detective ruined her life and didn't even realize that he had told her all the hidden details of the crime that only the perp and the cops would know. The girl only got out of jail when years later another person confessed. That's when the cop went back to the tapes and found his own unwitting errors.

And that interrogation was without any actual physical torture. Just your normal police questioning of an innocent person.