A surprising number of confessions were gotten this way.

It’s also a torture, per Geneva.

Good interrogation is a trick of empathy, and identification (which are not to be confused with sympathy, I can be really empathetic with people I detest, especially if it’s only for a little while). Once you have some idea of what motives can be exploited, the rest is easy to get.

The only way a source doesn’t give me something is to give me absolutely nothing. If they start to engage in “harmless” chit-chat, I’ll get a little something, and that little something will become something else, and I will, if I have the time, eventually get it all.

Move to harsher methods (a really heavy handed “bad-cop”, what we call “Fear-up Harsh”) have big downsides. Yes, the do sometimes work, but if they fail that interrogator is useless with that source, and it will take the next one longer to get the source to break.

Torture, just makes it worse. All the rapport building is wasted. Even if I am planning a Fear-up, I will work on some rapport. I won’t just start screaming at him and tossing things around the room. I’ll work it into a plausible bit of play-acting, something which makes it clear the problem (if he doesn’t break) isn’t with the US Army (since that was who I worked for), but with me.

If it fails, I leave. I brief the Chief on what I did, how it went, what seemed to be working, where it failed, and what I got. Then someone else goes in, and picks up where I left off.

Add torture, and that can’t happen. The nicest of interrogators will have a black cloud, because it will be impossible for the source to be sure that some answer, be it honest, or not, won’t fail to meet expectations, and cause more torture.

So the source starts trying to figure out what the interrogator wants to hear, and giving that answer.

Which corrupts the information stream. Which gets people killed. My people, your people. Because it wastes time and energy in the collection process. It might cause new plans and operations to be launched. It might move forces from a critical part of the battlespace (or investigation) to someplace the enemy isn’t.

Then, when the real attack comes, the plans are all wrong.

I am well aware of the existence of the 9th Amendment. What you seem to be unaware of is the actual jurisprudence involving the ninth, and unenumerated rights generally. Many judges have argued that it is impossible to create a ration jurisprudence that includes unenumerated rights (becuase it invites a judge to substitute his opinion or use some other arbitrary metric to find and describe such rights), and so have deferred the notion to legislatures to bound them (which is essentially throwing out the notion, since rights constrain the state; otherwise, they aren’t rights.)

The ticking bomb hypothetical requires the plot to be so far advanced only one person can inform the authorities of the needed details, the event is crititcally imminent, and that same sure and certain knowledge of the attack exists.

There is no way to have that sure and certain knowledge. Nothing stops me from informing the authorities of someone who has no knowledge. I might even inform of an attack which isn’t going to take place.

The FLN did this, a lot, in Algeria. They attacked the people who were loyal to the French, but informed on those who were in the middle. The French tortured them, et voila they (and their families) were no longer loyal.

If torture is allowed (and as soon as one argues there is utility, then the question isn’t if, it’s when. Once you say, “it works” the dickering is basically one of price), then it will be gamed. It will spread. It will stop being only the innocent.

So, even from a pragmatic point of view; and assuming it works, the costs aren’t worth the gains.

And… it doesn’t really work.

“What shall it profit a man if he sells his soul to gain the world”

I did this for a living. It doesn’t work. There is the possibiltity of a single instance working, but there is 1: no way to know in advance, and 2: no way to verify it. As a system of collecting information it doesn’t work.

As a means of solving a specific problem it requires so many special pleadings (he knows, we know he knows, the timeline is too short for other means, none of the things which made it possible for us to know were somehow inadequate to solve the problem, he tells the truth when tortured, etc.) that it’s not practical.

And it’s a slippery slope; look at Israel, which made it legal; in exigent circumstances. They outlawed it because the definition of exigent grew to cover anyone, who might know something.

But, since you know so much, and it’s easy to prove; and you asserted it, go forth and find those numerous examples.

Just look at this thread.

How guilty would you feel if that wrong guy confessessed and the kidnapping took longer to solve?

How guilty would you feel if that wrong being “tuned up” by you caused the investigation to chase false leads and your kid was never found?

Your scenario requires perfect knowledge, and perfect perception.

I was an Army interrogator for 16 years. I’ve been across the table from people who were interested in killing me. Who might have known where IEDs were placed, or when mortar attacks were going to happen, or RPG attacks.

Torturing them wouldn’t reliably get the info. It would, in fact, have made it harder to find that information. The “buried baby” is a myth.

There is a problem in the question you ask in follow-up: “If you answer “never,” I’d like you to give some alternatives — what should the authorities do instead when they quickly need information to save innocent lives?”

It is the logical fallacy of “begging the question”. As presented you posit 1: Torture will quickly gain information. 2: Save lives. 3: Is the only option.

None of these is true.

The “ticking bomb” is a flawed hypothetical. It requires a host of things to work, and the things required to make it work (i.e. justify the use of torture in limited, and specific circumstances) invalidate it. Not to be insulting, but the real purpose of the ticking bomb scenario is to make those who accept torture feel good about themselves.

Here’s why it doesn’t work:

1: The source has to know.
2: The interrogator has to know the source knows.
3: The information has to be time critical (not just time sensitive)
4: There is no other way to get the infomation, before the value of it expires

Those are pretty high hurdles. How is it we know (not suspect, know. Because this is so critical that it doesn’t allow for error. That’s why we are willing to torture)? How is it we know the source knows?

If we have that much information, we have enough to not need to torture this suspect/source.

That deals with the primary hurdles. Now come the secondary hurdles.

1: How do we corroborate the information?
2: How do we keep the source from lying?

Pain doesn’t make for honesty. The motivation isn’t telling the truth, it’s making the pain stop. The only way to even come close to having some sort of motivation to tell the truth is to have the subject lie about things for which you have the correct answer to the question. At that point, however, the system still breaks down. The subject has to make one of two decisions: There are things you don’t know, or this is all being done because you enjoy it.

If the former, he will lie.

Which brings us back to the question of time.

When the subject tells you what you want to know/hear what happens? Does the abuse stop?

It probably does. How much time? How long can he buy with a reasonable fabrication? Can he give plausible half-truths? How long does he have to hold out to win?

Because at this point, in this scenario, it runs the risk of becoming a test of will. Is his desire to see his plan succeed greater than your abiity to inflict harm?

When he gives an asnwer, how is it checked? If we have people who can verify what he says, why couldn’t they be asked in the first place?

When all is said and done, to have enough information to make it “justifiable” to torture, (and keep it clean enough in motive/result to have it be the lesser evil) there is more than enough information available to make honest interrogation just as effective.

But, one can either aspire to be better than one is, or one can accept one’s baser instincts. It says a lot about a culture that it states values and then attempts to live up to them. Arguments like this indicate whether those values are still being pursued or are shifting in another direction.