
The Reykjavik Confessions - marcopolis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_7617/index.html
======
anvandare
An example, I'm afraid, of situations that happen all too often around the
world. When we look at the justice system as any other abstract system (with
positive/negative feedback loops) we find that the actors (the judges,
prosecutors, investigators, etc.) are never rewarded for finding _the_ truth.
After all, how can you ever know that you found the truth? They are rewarded
for finding _a_ truth. For making the picture fit.

And that is why you should never collaborate with (or trust) the system. They
aren't interested in what's good for you, they are interested in what's good
for themselves: finding someone to convict and thereby pushing their yearly
evaluation into the positives.

[ed.: typo]

~~~
simonh
> ...They aren't interested in what's good for you, they are interested in
> what's good for themselves:...

Very true, but then that's why the aversarial justice system is so important.
It's ok for prosecutors and police to use every means legally at their
disposal to try and prove someone guilty, as long as that person has an
independent advocate with sufficient authority to protect the accused and
challenge the prosecution case.

The problem here is that the way these people were treated was perfectly legal
and even morally acceptable at the time. Clearly lengthy unecessary periods of
solitary confinement, drugs and agressive interrogation without an advocate
present should be completely unacceptable. They even used simulated drowning.
The paraelells to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the treatment of Bradley Manning and
CIA waterboarding are stark. It's pretty clear that these kind of abuses
simply do not work.

People subjected to these treatments will say, and even come to believe
absolutely anything, so any information that comes out of such processes is
worthless. That's completely aside from the deep immorality of using such
techniques in the first place. ALl it does is provides moral cover and
justification for oppressive regimes to use such techniques completely
indiscriminately.

~~~
threatofrain
It doesn't make sense to me to say that torture is ineffective simply because
subjects have incentive in the face of torture to say or believe anything.

For example, it doesn't matter if a person keeps on outputting contradictory
claims of reality. What matters is if this person can produce evidence of
novel knowledge. And of course even if someone delivered information in a non-
tortuous interrogation, any government would fact-check.

I also don't believe it's very easy to confuse someone's existing memories. I
don't think I can simply torture somebody, with professionals and equipment at
my disposal, and cause discrete changes in beliefs ("My real name is Reek!").

These world governments no doubt have data on varying techniques of torture,
and I have no doubt there has been a very long race, begun awhile ago, to map
out the theory of torture, and I think it is a bit preliminary to say that
torture doesn't work until we get a hold of some systematically collected
data.

~~~
brazzy
> What matters is if this person can produce evidence of novel knowledge.

Except that in most cases you can't distinguish novel knowledge from made-up
bullshit with real certainty. If you could, you wouldn't have to torture them.
And don't bother dredging up contrived ticking-bomb scenarios where it's
different - yes, they exist, but they are anything but common and even then
often not clear cut.

And that's not even touching on the fact that you almost never have 100%
certainty that the suspect actually _knows_ what you want them to tell you _at
all_.

> And of course even if someone delivered information in a non-tortuous
> interrogation, any government would fact-check.

No. Most of them wouldn't, when they've just been told what they wanted to
hear. Or (worst but common case) they'll fact-check by arresting the people
the victim just named and torturing them as well.

> I also don't believe it's very easy to confuse someone's existing memories.

Your belief is _utterly_ wrong. Read the goddamn article. And that wasn't even
using physical torture. Heck, people's memory often enough get confused _all
of their own_. People _suck_ at remembering events clearly.

> These world governments no doubt have data on varying techniques of torture,
> and I have no doubt there has been a very long race, begun awhile ago, to
> map out the theory of torture, and I think it is a bit preliminary to say
> that torture doesn't work until we get a hold of some systematically
> collected data.

Hopefully that will never happen (it pretty definitely hasn't happend so far;
some of the Nazi medical experiments may have come close but had a different
focus), the consensus among people with actual experience seems to be clear:
intel gained through torture is of worse quality than that gained through
other interrogation techniques, and employing torture has many negative
effects on your own side.

[http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/interrogation-
experts-f...](http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/interrogation-experts-from-
every-branch-of-the-military-and-intelligence-agree-torture-doesnt-produce-
useful-information/)

~~~
threatofrain
What I had in mind when I was thinking of novel data, would be someone who can
authenticate the value of their potentially false claims by stating something
that nobody else could know. Like the serial killer who states special
information. An alternative situation could be those who are looking for
cryptography keys. I still believe that the presence of novel data could help
a torturous interrogator sieve desperate lies from actionable data.

Confirmation of novel data that nobody else could've known authenticates the
value of your knowledge. Government may have been reckless before by acting
before confirming, but if they just include a confirmation step, then they
could have a means of differentiating actionable data from junk.

After looking over the site, and doing some Wikipedia searching, it does
appear that there are ways to reliably damage or confuse memory, even in
innocuous settings. Such as ads meant to manipulate memory.

The last point is the one I wanted to make, because I felt that arguments
about the efficacy of torture is similar to arguments about the financial
costs of the death penalty -- it's a highly ephemeral and gambling argument
that hinges on the state of science or technology.

So I was wondering what happens to the discussion on ethics once we begin to
accept the efficacy of torture?

------
klausjensen
The woman involved, Erla Bolladottir, was my Icelandic language teacher when I
moved to Iceland. She is an extraordinarily kind and helpful person, and it
angers and saddens me that she has been put through this nightmare because of
lousy police-work and ill will.

------
andyjohnson0
_" Geirfinnur Einarsson may have shared the same surname as Gudmundur but the
two were not related."_

Very minor nitpick. "Einarsson" is a patronymic derived from a parent's
_given_ name, not a surname or family name as is common in many western
cultures. In the case of the article, Einar is a common Icelandic given name
[1] that both victims fathers shared.

The Icelandic naming system [2] is interesting. Basically, children get a
given name plus a patronymic (father's give name with _son_ or _dóttir_
suffix) or matronymic (mother's given name with _son_ or _dóttir_ suffix). So
people two generations apart in the same family have completely different
names, and non-siblings having the same patronymic isn't an indicator of
kinship.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einar)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_name)

~~~
willvarfar
Historically it was much the same across Scandinavia.

Most surnames end in son (sen in Denmark) or dotter (daughter), although
people started using their parent's surname some time last century.

Its fun to see the tradition survives in Iceland.

In Sweden its becoming slightly trendy to give your children surnames ending
in YOUR-FIRST-NAME+possessive+son/dotter again.

~~~
Dewie
That tradition, or the remnants of it (as in retaining -sen as a family name
rather than as a patronymic) seem to have almost disappeared in my part of
Norway.

------
brohee
People confess to crimes they didn't commit all the time, yet confessions are
the end game in most judicial systems, way over hard proofs... A very sad
state of affairs...

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/why-do-
inno...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/why-do-innocent-
people-confess.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

And obligatory, Jame's Duane's "Don't talk to the cops"
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZf6_jK3Zs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZf6_jK3Zs)

~~~
andreasvc
Not talking to the police wouldn't have helped the 5 people from the article
(although having a lawyer would have helped). They would play a prisoner's
dilemma against you, or tell you "your 4 buddies confessed and implicated you,
just confess and get a lighter sentence".

------
heidar
I heard of this case growing up and it has always been considered a mystery in
Iceland. I haven't followed it closely but this is the best write up of the
case I've seen; impressive work by BBC.

While I'm not defending the investigators, a lot has changed in 40 years and
even though this might be unacceptable today it was probably different then
(as stated in the article). It's very sad to listen to these people talk about
how they were treated though.

~~~
rwmj
There doesn't seem much mystery about the first death. A drunk man walks 10 km
through freezing cold and snow late at night in winter. Didn't anyone think he
had just fallen and died of exposure, and his body was lost in a snowdrift?

~~~
deong
Had he just succumbed to exposure next to a road, they should have found the
body quite quickly.

~~~
Nanzikambe
With a metre or more of snow falling, assuming he'd be right next to the road
isn't logical, he could be any distance from it.

When I was in Iceland I was told that tarred/paved roads are a relatively
recent thing, given the volcanic landscape and the large number of fissures
and caves, it's easy to see how you could wonder away from the "road",
stumble, fall or just try to find shelter somewhere and succumb to the cold.

~~~
deong
I live in Iceland now, and while paved roads were not all that common at the
time, it's not like they were barely-visible paths through the lava fields
either.

But yes, in the area the article is talking about, the ground is a patchwork
of these fissures, which could easily conceal a body. On the other hand, there
would be almost no way to wander all that far from the road without knowing
it.

It's not impossible that he would have died of exposure and never been found,
but I don't think it's all that likely.

~~~
throwaway7767
Maybe he just wanted a nice walk through the lava field? It's a pretty nice
place (source: Icelander)

It seems pretty silly to assume a murder with no body or evidence, when
another explanation is possible.

~~~
deong
I'd agree that it's silly to assume it to the point of excluding all other
possibilities, but would also think it reasonable to think foul play was a
likely factor when someone heads home from the pub and is never heard from
again.

------
LaSombra
It seems that's the tool used by BBC.

[http://shorthand.com/](http://shorthand.com/)

~~~
sesqu
I don't know how much of it comes out of the box, but the article was
impressive in in more than just its writing. The only slight annoyances I
encountered were the way some pictures appeared too late and the videos lacked
length and subject information. Everything else was well paced, relevant and
unintrusive.

I hope Shorthand gets picked by more long-form producers.

------
jacquesm
What a story. So many lives wasted, torture and forced confessions. There are
no reparations possible for cases like this, no amount of compensation will
turn back the clock and no punishment sufficient to go after the guilty
parties (in uniform, no less), assuming they are still alive.

But when you read things like this you inevitably question if what we call
'civilization' really is all that civilized. Iceland is a small nation,
relatively few people and tightly knit. It's one of the last places on earth
where I would expect a thing like this to happen.

If this could happen there it could happen just about anywhere.

And they are _still_ at it (from TFA):

"For the past year, the 486-page report of the investigation into the original
police inquiry has been sitting on a desk somewhere inside the state
prosecutor’s office. She has to decide whether the case should be referred to
Iceland’s supreme court so the convictions can be quashed."

~~~
toyg
_> If this could happen there it could happen just about anywhere._

"Could"? This _does_ happen everywhere, routinely, every day. Most of it
happens to people nobody cares about (foreigners, displaced, lone wolfs, drug
addicts, mentally ill, smalltime crooks etc etc). Some of it is corrected with
time (which is why you have appeals and counter-appeals in most systems).
There is just no incentive for a police force _not_ to incriminate, and little
for a judicial system not to convict.

 _> For the past year, the 486-page report [...] has been sitting on a desk_

... and it will likely sit there until all the implicated people have retired
and/or they are 100% sure the Icelandic equivalent to the statute of
limitations will cover all of them. Because people with related
responsibilities know that, in a few years, the same could happen to them for
whatever reason, and then who would look after them? At the time, "persuading"
a little crook to confess a crime he didn't commit was a perfectly acceptable
standard; who knows what standards will be in 20 years time? So invariably
these institutions will "let bygones be bygones".

The whole concept of institutional policing is extremely flawed.

~~~
throwaway7767
> and it will likely sit there until all the implicated people have retired
> and/or they are 100% sure the Icelandic equivalent to the statute of
> limitations will cover all of them.

This is not an issue. The statute of limitations in Iceland depends on the
possible length of the prison sentence for the crime. The maximum is 15 years,
so that's long since passed in all cases.

------
chanks
Frontline has an excellent episode on the Norfolk Four, a similar case that
happened in Virginia: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-
confessions/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-confessions/)

------
carlob
In good HN spirit, instead of praising the great quality of the article, I'll
point out a minor nitpick:

> Geirfinnur Einarsson may have shared the same surname as Gudmundur but the
> two were not related.

Einarsson is not a surname, but a patronymic. It's weird that later in the
article it reads:

> Erla is longing for peace, so that future generations, the sons and dottirs
> of her grandchildren will know she was innocent and didn’t take part in a
> murder.

Here the author seems to grasp and even make a clever pun on Icelandic
patronymics. Weird.

~~~
vacri
A patronymic is functionally a surname. 'sur' means over- or on-; it's an
additional part of a personal name. Wikipedia puts it well: "A surname is a
name added to a given name and is part of a personal name". Surnames a
generally a function of who you were born to, rather than a choice, just like
a patronymic.

~~~
carlob
Well the comment was about people with the same surname being likely
relatives. Knowing how patronymics work you would not assume that two persons
that share the patronymic are related, just that their fathers have the same
name.

You are right in that they are actually a surname, and that they are also a
function of who you were born to, but the propagation rule means that they are
a much poorer metric for blood relations.

------
sixQuarks
I would love to have my favorite book, "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan recreated in
this same web layout. In fact, why AREN'T online books like this?

~~~
PetitPrince
There's "Snow Fall - The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" by John Branch and
published in the New York Times with a similar format:
[http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-
fall/](http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/)

~~~
mercer
I've hard this style referred to as 'Snow Fall Journalism', actually!

------
Zigurd
This is one more reason why police and prosecutors should be individually
bonded. This would pay, up front, for liability, and it would wash out the
careless and incompetent.

Without institutional incentives to produce good results, the incentives to
produce more results, faster results, and more lurid results will continue to
produce bad results.

------
stuart_v
God, this makes me so sad. Being persuaded into admitting guilt to a crime
that you have no idea about sounds bizaare but I am sure this case wasn't the
last.

~~~
Sharlin
Well, probably not all that rare in the US, for example, due to the abuse of
the plea bargain system.

~~~
tripzilch
That's the weirdest thing about US police series.

When I was younger, I never really believed that sort of thing actually
happens for real, just thought it was an over-used fictional "cleverness"
trope. I mean it's so obvious this is going to lead to abuse and false
confessions if actually used for real-life confessions, I figured it _had_ to,
because in a TV-series you can assume that the police are the smart/good guys
so they could safely use this clever (if somewhat unfair) trick to get the
(obvious) bad guys.

As I got older, and perhaps as the themes in TV series got a little more
complex, I started wondering sometimes, how are these even the good guys? For
all they know they are now convicting an innocent man or woman, by pressuring
them into confessing to a crime with the only leverage being "an offer they
can't refuse" (a much larger sentence).

------
nkoren
For a truly amazing look into how false confessions occur -- told from the
point of view of an officer who inadvertently extracted one, and took over a
decade to recognise his error -- act one of this This American Life episode is
a must-listen:

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/507/c...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/507/confessions)

------
NKCSS
Is this to showcase the article style? It reminds me of the snowy thing the
New York Times did a few months ago, but with added parallax effects

~~~
bgarbiak
This form of presentation (a specific layout for a single longform article)
got really popular recently. That "snowy thing NYT did" happened a few years
ago, if I recall correctly, and indeed, it might be considered the trend
starter.

Personally, I'm very often impressed by work of theverge.com/polygon.com in
this regard. Here's just one example: [http://www.polygon.com/a/xbox-one-
review](http://www.polygon.com/a/xbox-one-review) They perfectly handle the
toughest thing, which is the balance between flashiness and readability.

As for the BBC article: I don't like the font choices they've made. A serif
(Georgia or Cambria) for body content and sans-serif for distinctions would
work better, IMHO.

~~~
mercer
Yeah, and aside from the font I also felt that the transitions were a bit too
abrupt, like they just stitched together a bunch of (in themselves pretty)
pages.

The German newspaper 'Die Zeit' has been experimenting with this style as
well, to the point of (as I understand it) starting Zeit Online as a
completely separate department in Berlin.

For example (in German): [http://www.zeit.de/kultur/karl-marx-
allee/index.html#prolog](http://www.zeit.de/kultur/karl-marx-
allee/index.html#prolog) [http://www.zeit.de/sport/tour-de-
france.html](http://www.zeit.de/sport/tour-de-france.html)

Generally they're a little more subdued and their work, so far, is not as
technologically impressive. But I might actually prefer that.

------
warrenmiller
also on BBC radio 4
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0435jz1](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0435jz1)

------
nichochar
Hacker News is really being taken over by non hacker stuff. Interesting
article, nice design, but don't really expect things like this here

~~~
duncanawoods
I thought it was posted for its design which is a bit OTT for me. I'm
pleasantly surprised to find people talking about the content - IMHO thats
quite healthy :)

~~~
grahamel
I thought so as well(on the design) as the zooming and image changes are too
distracting when reading the content

