
The Dark Science of Interrogation - blago
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dark-science-of-interrogation/
======
pluma
The essence of the article:

"He found that the most productive interrogations in terms of information were
those in which interrogators essentially acted like therapists. Investigators
in Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom are
now trained to focus not on extracting admissions of guilt but on gathering
evidence. That information can back up an innocent suspect’s story, or it can
be used to nail a guilty one."

"Hartwig reasoned, the typical interrogation room—claustrophobic, locked,
austere—was exactly the wrong sort of space to get someone to divulge
information. In a yet unpublished study, she redesigned the space around the
theme of openness: open windows, an open book on the table, open desk drawers,
“a picture of open water under an open sky,” as the paper describes it. She
found that subjects provided more detail when questioned in the redesigned
interrogation room."

In other words, "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar". If
only we had known this before Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. /s

~~~
rdtsc
> If only we had known this before Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. /s

Somehow I suspect they didn't really want to get more info. They wanted to
punish, and to instill fear, mostly because deep down it felt good to them.
Officially there was an excuse "War on terror". But it could have been done
just as easily under another slogan, maybe "War on Drugs" or "War on
Communism" and so on.

Going a back a step, I also believe there is a high number of psycopaths who
rise to power in intelligence agencies. Even if you look at something silly
like reliance on passing polygraphs, for entering and staying in the
organization. Psycopaths would do much better there. After many iterations,
shit like that rises to the top.

~~~
leereeves
After 9/11, a lot of Americans wanted to see "the terrorists" suffer, but
there may be something dangerous about a person who can bear to personally
inflict the torture.

Just having people in power who are willing to order torture worries me.

~~~
afarrell
More than being able to order thousands of men to storm a beach or an entire
city of wood and paper to go up in a storm of fire? Being a head of a state
has always required making decisions about using force in horrific ways.
Torturing O(30) people is dwarfed by that.

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InclinedPlane
Shocking, more evidence confirming what we already have known for decades (at
least since WWII), torture is one of the least effective methods for obtaining
reliable information from suspects.

Sadly, I wish the debate about torture didn't focus as much on effectiveness
instead of morality and legality (since it is neither moral nor legal).

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nl
It's bizarre.

Pretty much everyone understands that better information can be extracted by
gentle methods than by harsh techniques.

That's not why the harsh techniques are used. In the second paragraph of this
article it give away the real problem:

 _Sometimes I got to the point where I had to literally order them to stop.
Even then there was surprising blowback. People thought I was coddling
terrorists._

The priority of those harsh integration techniques isn't to get information.
It's a form of punishment, and a threat to stop others acting against US
forces.

One needs to understand that frame of thought before one can stop the
techniques.

~~~
digi_owl
Seems to sum up the whole mentality of the US system. And i find myself
wondering if it can be traced to the background of the original colonies.

~~~
nl
No, that's not it! The bizarre thing is the reaction on HN, not the US system.

The US system functions exactly as intended, assuming you realise that it is
_designed to punish suspects_.

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
But how could anyone think that _punishing_ in itself is helpful in any way
whatsoever? This is an honest question, I really don't get how the American
system could have been designed the way it is.

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afarrell
Folks interested in an intro to the history and law surrounding interrogation
should check out The Illustrated Guide to the Law, drawn by a NYC defense
attorney.

Here is where the relevant section starts:
[http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2282](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2282)

It also has sections on a bunch of stuff like...

* Probable Cause and Arrest: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1789](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1789)

* traffic stops, searches, and consent: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1859](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1859)

* self-defense: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=864)

* entrapment: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=633)

* memory and eyewitness identification: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3044](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=3044)

* A flowchart for the 4th amendment: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256)

* A flowchart for the 5th-amendment: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2897)

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s_q_b
For anyone interested in modern interrogation techniques, I'd recommend the
book "How to Break a Terrorist."[0]

[0] _How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not
Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq_ [http://www.amazon.com/How-
Break-Terrorist-Interrogators-Brut...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-
Terrorist-Interrogators-Brutality/dp/B0085S1S5K)

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coldtea
The dark side of the press trivialiasing an issue, opening the Overton
window...

~~~
nl
One doesn't _open_ the Overton window, ones _widens_ it. It's a window in the
"range" sense.

But I don't think one can blame the press. There are plenty of people outside
the press who believe the Geneva convention doesn't allow "sufficient
flexibility". One can't blame the press for reporting that.

~~~
coldtea
Well, one can still blame the press for trivializing that with articles like
this.

What happened to the CRITICAL press?

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
It got bought long ago by the people in power?

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angersock
Is there a lighter side, one wonders?

~~~
gjm11
The actual title is "The dark science of interrogation", which makes rather
more sense than "The dark side of interrogation" which is the current HN
title.

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hiroprot
The title of the article is "THE DARK SCIENCE OF INTERROGATION", not "Dark
Side".

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the title.

