MI5 cover up torture

[Walsingham]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ter...e-cover-up.html

 

I'm not 100% certain that this is the worst torture imaginable. But nonetheless it is worrying. Very worrying.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Next time I suggest you invite him for tea and crumpets, old chap.

[BicycleOfDeath]

Sleep deprivation is a terrible form of torture. Just ask those that genuinely suffer from chronic insomnia.

[Pidesco]

How does an intelligence service work if it can't torture people once in a while?

[213374U]

Huh? Not even waterboarding?

 

FAIL

[kirottu]

How does an intelligence service work if it can't torture people once in a while?

 

Yeah, it

Edited February 11, 2010 by kirottu

[Darth InSidious]

Do you want to make Santa sad?

Yes.

[Guest The Architect]

Then in the name of Santa, you will be tortured.

[Gfted1]

How does an intelligence service work if it can't torture people once in a while?

 

 

While Im sure you're being sarcastic, its a good question. Asking nicely doesnt work and with every form of inconveniencing them being classified as torture, we're left with few option until reliable chemical or mechanical forms are discovered.

[Gorgon]

Just ask Jack Bauer. He doesn't care about silly do gooder liberal rules either. There are terrorists to stop.

[Pidesco]

Actually, I wasn't being sarcastic, even if everyone thought I was.

 

 

It's like demanding the army not to kill anyone. It's missing the point.

[Oblarg]

Information extracted under torture is notoriously unreliable.

[Moose]

I'm sure SIS never break international law either.

 

It ain't cheating unless you get caught, I'm sure that's on their crest.

[Gorgon]

The world is not going to end because we insist on civil rights at all levels of government, including the secret ones, quite the opposite. Who decides what is national security and warrants the use of torture and what is merely national interest.

 

All braches of government serve the people, and none of them are above the law.

Edited February 11, 2010 by Gorgon

[Walsingham]

How does an intelligence service work if it can't torture people once in a while?

 

 

While Im sure you're being sarcastic, its a good question. Asking nicely doesnt work and with every form of inconveniencing them being classified as torture, we're left with few option until reliable chemical or mechanical forms are discovered.

 

 

*sigh* Not this again.

 

While the desk jockeys at MI5 may occasionally hold the occasional torture party for the odd Yankee Walter Mitty the simple 'fact' I've absorbed from every experienced soldier I've ever spoken to is that torture doesn't extract useful information. I mean just think about it. If torturing people worked then there would have been zero resistance movements against the nazis. Instead of a bazillion.

[Moose]

Sounds like more research is needed.

[213374U]

*sigh* Not this again.

 

While the desk jockeys at MI5 may occasionally hold the occasional torture party for the odd Yankee Walter Mitty the simple 'fact' I've absorbed from every experienced soldier I've ever spoken to is that torture doesn't extract useful information. I mean just think about it. If torturing people worked then there would have been zero resistance movements against the nazis. Instead of a bazillion.

Nazis didn't really bother with torture. Not very methodically, at least. They either shipped you off to a labor camp to work you to death, or lined you up with a few hundred others and shot you in the back of the head. That tends to make folks restless and encourage armed resistance. Which worked just fine for them, as "removal" of the native populations in conquered areas was part of their war plans - but that way they could write it off as "fighting partisans".

 

As for torture itself, I think the point isn't so much that torture doesn't extract useful info (which it can do), but rather, that unless that info can be verified, it cannot be consistently relied upon. This severely limits its usefulness as a method for intel gathering. If it had been scienfically established that torture does not work as a method for extracting information, there would be no debate. Anecdotal evidence goes both ways, though.

Edited February 11, 2010 by 213374U

[Aram]

Rest easy knowing America is the only one who actually sodomized their prisoners. We still have the patent on that.

Edited February 11, 2010 by Aram

[Sand]

Never torture an individual unless you are willing to go through that torture yourself.

[Aram]

So it's okay for sadomasochists?

[Gorgon]

Masochists would have to undergo being locked in a room with cute puppies and an agent who would utter a random confidence building compliments every 2 minuites.

[Orogun01]

Never torture an individual unless you are willing to go through that torture yourself.

Thanks for giving me the heads up. England here I come!

[RPGmasterBoo]

Every intelligence service tortures people and occasionally kills individuals. To presume otherwise is foolish and naive. Obviously they don't do it officially, their field agents do.

 

I have in my possesion a KGB agent manual, (released publicly in Russia after the fall of the USSR) there is an entire chapter dedicated to torture methods. CIA and MI6 are no different.

[Orogun01]

Every intelligence service tortures people and occasionally kills individuals. To presume otherwise is foolish and naive. Obviously they don't do it officially, their field agents do.

 

I have in my possesion a KGB agent manual, (released publicly in Russia after the fall of the USSR) there is an entire chapter dedicated to torture methods. CIA and MI6 are no different.

Well the KGB is still pretty old, perhaps there are better ways to extract information nowadays that have made torture fall into disuse by first rate intelligence agencies. What has been said before is true; information acquired by torture is unreliable, specially from agents that are trained to give out false or minimal information when broken. Also the KGB had a reputation for being brutal (as everything in Russia does) so there is also a difference in methods used by the agencies.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

TBH, I'm sure they know torture isn't the most reliable way to get info and probably don't use it all that much, especially when there are other more efficient options.

 

But it might just be wishful thinking.