Re: Idaho Killer Holds Encryption Key to Laptop Mystery

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:00:20 CDT, Dennis Henderson said:
> The random blank in a firing squad cannot even compare to the ticking time
> bomb scenario.

In both cases, you have to (in some way) come to terms with what you're
doing.

> A firing squad is an administrative task, not a preventive task. You're not
> asking someone on a firing squad to perform a task to save themselves or
> humanity. I can't believe this comparison would even be considered.

OK, so knowing that even delivering a relatively quick and painless death
is stressful enough for most people that they're provided a possibility
that they had the blank round so they can rationalize it all, you don't
think that it's going to be even *more* stressful to torture somebody?

> If you knew that someone had the combination to the stop button and that not
> knowing it would mean that you or your family would die, you better be
> "fucked up" enough to get the job done and get the information. Otherwise
> you will be (fucked up).

The problem is that it doesn't work out that way.  As one of the comments
to the article I cited says:

  "The TTB hypothetical assumes that the suspect has information sufficient to
  defuse the bomb, and that she will provide that information when tortured. It
  is at least as probable that a guilty suspect will, instead, provide false
  information intended (a) to stop the torture for the time being and (b) to send
  the torturers on a wild-goose chase long enough to allow the bomb to explode.
  The calculus looks something like this:

  1. If she provides information that allows the torturers to defuse the bomb,
  her plot fails, she'll probably be tortured about other terror plots anyway,
  and she's guaranteed to spend the rest of her miserable life in prison.

  2. If she refuses to provide the information, her plot succeeds, she'll
  probably be viciously tortured and quite possibly killed in revenge, and she's
  guaranteed to spend the rest of her (short and miserable) life in prison.

  Given these consequences, it's not at all clear that torture is more likely to
  cause a guilty suspect to divulge the information than is morally-directed
  non-torture-based interrogation. # posted by Tonal Crow : 3:30 PM"

Remember - if the guy you're torturing *has* the useful information, they
*also* know that they just have to hold out until 5:03PM Tuesday.  Torture is
*notoriously* unreliable as a method of extracting correct factual information.
It's *much* better at coercing a person to agree to some result you
previously wanted.

How many of the people the Spanish Inquisition tortured were *really* guilty,
and how many just cracked and agreed to anything the torturer wanted?  How many
of our soldiers in Vietnam cracked and divulged secret info, and how many just
cracked and "confessed" for a Viet Cong photo op?

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