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posted by
martyb
on Sunday July 30 2017, @11:28PM
from the Rosenhan-Milgram-Dunning-Kruger-research dept.
from the Rosenhan-Milgram-Dunning-Kruger-research dept.
From Wikileaks (via Vinay Gupta):
Judge rules two psychologists, Mitchell and Jessen, who made millions as consultants for the CIA's torture program can face trial.
How do you get into the business of being a torture consultant? Good question because when they started:
Neither man had ever carried out a real interrogation, had language skills or expertise on al Qaeda - the chief enemy in the war on terror - when the CIA handpicked Mitchell and Jessen to spearhead its supposed intelligence gathering program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Their psychology backgrounds were in family therapy; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure.
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Millionaire CIA Torture Psychologists to Face Trial
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Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 30 2017, @11:39PM (12 children)
Some limp-wristed SJW'er is involved in the prosecution.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 30 2017, @11:50PM
Justice is fabulous, honey.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 31 2017, @12:06AM (8 children)
It doesn't take a SJW to understand that torture is A: counterproductive and B: carried out by subhumans.
Suppose I live next door to you. My windows are broken. So, I abduct your 8 year old son, and torture the little fuck until he confesses to breaking my windows. Hey, dude, it simply doesn't MATTER that you had the kid in your car, 100 miles away, at the time that my windows were broken. I have his confession. Now you're responsible for replacing my windows, as well as the kid's medical bills. Fuck you, man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @03:46AM (7 children)
There are two ways to use torture.
1. You have a way to test the information, and good reason to believe that they have it. For example, they yanked the power to a computer with an encrypted hard drive as you raided their place. Every time they tell you a supposed password, you go test the password on a copy of the seized computer.
2. You have a way to test similar information, and good reason to believe that they have what you want. Here, you might know the answers to 90 out of 100 interesting questions. You ask all 100 questions. If you are getting mostly wrong answers for the 90 questions you know about, then you can't trust the answers for the other 10. Keep torturing until you are getting good answers.
So can we use method 1 here? No, because the confession can not be tested.
How about method 2 then? This is a possible method if you happen to know of numerous other things that he has and hasn't done. Maybe you saw him steal your junk mail to build a fire, but he doesn't know you saw him do it. Maybe you saw him slingshot a squirrel, and again he doesn't know you were watching. You'll want both positives and negatives, so also invent a few things that you are sure he didn't do. Torture the little fuck until you get 100% correct answers to the things you are sure about, and then trust what he says about the window.
I'm not saying this is friendly, but it sure does work if you aren't stupid about how you do it. Normally one would need something close to "lived will be saved" as a justification for torture, so that window probably doesn't qualify.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Monday July 31 2017, @07:18AM (3 children)
If torture is necessary you're doing something incredibly wrong. Your security services have already failed and one man withholding information is enough to bring all your plans crashing down.
If torture-obtained evidence is acceptable in court, your court systems are also open to bribes, threats and blackmail.
If torture is condoned, you're only a short step away from genocide ("Hey, it's alright if we torture the TERRORISTS, that's allowed! It's good people we can't torture!".
If you find someone willing to carry out torture, your species suck (Yep, humans suck).
This is a perfect example of the Milgram experiments.
More disgusting than that torture was ordered from above, or that it took place, is that nobody in the middle said "Hold on, what the fuck?!". Those are the people who saw a request for torture, and linked it up with the nutter willing to torture people.
Which is EXACTLY the thing we prosecuted thousands of Nazi soldiers for. Not that they were following orders. But that they didn't question those orders when it came to obvious breaches of humanity.
And, to me, even worse than that is that all those people are still in charge of places like Guantanamo, still in active service, etc. or - like here - profiting from it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Monday July 31 2017, @09:22AM (1 child)
It's not always that easy. A friend of mine was ordered to participate in death squads run by his country's military. He refused the order as being illegal, and tried to get the program stopped by taking it up the chain of command. It was only when he started talking to the media when the military refused to do anything that action was taken: He was threatened with court martial, and eventually discharged on the stipulation that he stop trying to make a fuss about it. It ended a promising military career. One of the bravest things I've seen done by a military person.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Monday July 31 2017, @11:07AM
Oh, gosh, all we have to do is put our jobs on the line for our morals, instead!
Er... yes. That's exactly why you don't tolerate this kind of stuff.
Of course you will lose your job.
But that doesn't mean you should allow it "just because you'll lose your job otherwise".
The Nazis were given a standard of "was your life in immediate danger if you refused" as to whether they were co-erced or forced to do things. "You may not work in the military again" is far below that.
Of course it's brave, too, but that's not the point (like Manning/Snowden but for something that actually MATTERED). The point is that they STILL GOT AWAY WITH IT, even with him trying to report it. It still happened. And for him to "stop trying to make a fuss about it" is basically capitulation.
No-one says it's easy to bring down a corrupt government. But if you have to fight against your own morals to go to work each day, there's something wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @07:09PM
Not that the Nazi were perfectly fine, but... you've fallen for the typical propaganda. Stalin was way worse, but he helped write history.
Every successful civilization is built upon a hill of skulls. It's easy for you to abhor genocide, demanding that other civilizations not partake of it, when you yourself benefit from numerous genocides.
Yes, you benefit. You wouldn't even be here if your ancestors hadn't won their fights. When a culture or ethnicity or country fails to acquire and defend territory, it is doomed.
Nazi soldiers were serving honorably. The winners dished out victor's justice. Note that Russian soldiers never had to face trial for slaughtering people in Poland -- winners don't face trial.
Western civilization is facing yet another battle for survival. Western civilization is currently generous to a fault, allowing in large numbers of people who will never accept western values. It will end in genocide, and western civilization will lose unless it gets over the current aversion to genocide.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 31 2017, @08:32AM (2 children)
You CAN create scenarios in which the "confession" is controlled for honesty, or for the results you want. But, they are only scenarios. I came up with the kid and the broken windows, only to make it more personal - NO ONE can justify torturing a kid for such a petty reason. No one but a very sick individual. Yeah, in that case, you can probably control for accuracy and honesty, because you probably know a lot about the kid.
Out in the bigger world, how you gonna control for honesty? You captured this guy in Outback, Nowhere, and he's not in your data sets. He's grown up with little interaction with computers, and he likes it that way. The computer systems he HAS interacted with belong to hostile governments. You can't access anything on him. You have little idea what his intelligence value is, unless someone snitched on him - and how the hell do you trust your snitches? Maybe the snitches belong to a rival tribe of people, and the snitches see a chance to get rid of a powerful person from that rival tribe.
I've read many times that interrogators almost invariably get better results when by befriend the "suspect". There's a reason they have that old reliable "good cop, bad cop" routine. Sure, you can threaten the suspect with any kind of stupid crap you like. The cops don't EXPECT the "bad cop" to get results. It's the "good cop" who extracts information after the asshole has made his threats. But, don't believe me - read the reports: https://duckduckgo.com/html/ [duckduckgo.com]
I don't think that you will find a single case in which government has made a credible claim that intelligence extracted by torture was effective, timely, and saved lives. I don't recall ever reading one single report to that effect. I believe that I have read some bullshit political excuses that attempted to justify torture, mostly by Dick Cheney and company. No credible reports from field agents though.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday July 31 2017, @08:58AM (1 child)
The moral argument is usually countered by appealing to relative levels of evil. Is it better to torture one person to get the information that will let you save 10 lives? 100? 1000? If you're confident that the person has the information that you need to save 1,000 innocent lives, is it worse to let those people die or torture someone you're 90% confident is responsible and could give you the information to save them?
There's a bunch of research on the effectiveness of torture. The basic outcome is simple: people will tell you whatever they think will make you stop torturing them. In most cases, this means that there is no pragmatic argument for torture. Unless you can instantly verify the information that you're given, people will tell you anything just for the respite while you go away and verify it. As you say, there have been no cases made public where this was the case, and the sort of situation in which it might be are pretty far fetched.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Monday July 31 2017, @09:31AM
A former neighbour of mine was part of a military unit that, uh, operated some way behind enemy lines. He mentioned on a couple of occasions that one thing they never did to get information was torture someone, because the information was useless for the exact reason you give. They used other methods, e.g. local sympathisers or just general good intel, but never torture, because all it produced was really bad intel, and one thing they were really careful with was making sure the planning was done right because if anything went wrong there was no backup or support coming. In part because of this, his unit never lost a man - specifically, they never left anyone behind, although they did take (nonfatal) casualties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @03:16PM
Braking wrists is a form of torture.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @04:53PM
The parent comment is one of the best examples for what is wrong with the general population of conservatives today. Instead of standing against torture they turn it into some political game trying to annoy liberals.
I guess it makes sense, they got their man in the white house but for some strange reason they still don't feel like they're "winning!" so they need to take their frustration out on their "enemies". It is amazing how effective the media brainwashing has been, the typical "patriot" types are now pro-torture and fascism and they apparently have zero idea that they are so far past the line of freedom as to be laughable.
Conservatives have lost their way big time as they've been hooked into a cycle of fear and hate. The fear has been instigated through economic warfare, taking away the very means of survival (good paying jobs) and then pumping people full of propaganda to make sure their fear turns into anger directed at whatever target of opportunity presents itself.
People fighting for basic human rights are now labeled SJW cucks #fakenews and offered death threats. It is astounding in a profoundly sad way.
A similar theme exists for some liberals, but thankfully the same techniques don't quite work the same on the liberal minded. Instead you have to present liberals with actual injustice, and the media does try and manipulate them that way as well. Thankfully there is less fear and hate from the liberals, otherwise we probably would be in an actual civil war right now that would ignite every city in the US.