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FBI Wants To "Advance the Science of Interrogation"
coondoggie writes "From deep in the Department of Creepy today I give this item: The FBI this week put out a call for new research 'to advance the science and practice of intelligence interviewing and interrogation.' The part of the FBI that is requesting the new research isn't out in the public light very often: the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which according to the FBI was chartered in 2009 by the National Security Council and includes members of the CIA and Department of Defense, to 'deploy the nation's best available interrogation resources against detainees identified as having information regarding terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies.'"
They had it pretty much perfected during the Inquisition. We've slid backwards since then.
Hey guys I heard the ministry of love in 1984 had some pretty sweet ideas on interrogation. Perhaps you guys can take a look at those for inspiration.
Just in case.
Yes, I'm sure that those people tortured back then really did practice black magic with the Devil.
Or maybe torture just gets confessions whether they're factual or not.
"against detainees identified as having information regarding terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies."
or
"against hacker"
or
"against protestors"
or
"against any person we deem not conforming for normal standards"
If your interrogation program includes torture, you've already failed.
You mean forcing them to listen to Kanye West's 'Gold Digger' for the 1000th time isn't as effective as it once was?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
"Uh, we know what we want to do isn't legal and isn't morally acceptable in a civilized society,...
Interrogation and intelligence interviews certainly are legal and morally acceptable in a civilized society. Do you think we're supposed to catch bad guys and then say "you sit over there, we aren't going to ask you anything about what your friends are planning because someone told us it wasn't morally acceptable to interview you"? Do you think that other civilized societies don't interrogate anyone?
What isn't legal or acceptable is torture, and if you read the fine article you'd notice that nothing at all was said about coming up with new and better torture methods, only evaluation existing interrogation methods to see how those could be improved.
Classifying this as "department of creepy" displays the author's bias. That it comes from NetworkWorld makes as much sense as the Zimmerman story that appeared in slashdot recently. Neither one has any special relevance to nerds or networks.
And that is one of the problems with it. If you ask any question in the right way you can get any answer.
So basically it's about the method of interrogation that determines the result. So if they want someone to admit to being a terrorist they could get 99% of people to admit that if they used the right interrogation methods. This is the problem with "enhanced" interrogation. It's asking someone a question while in the backround applying coercion tactics so they answer it the way you want them to.
So the question stands why do we need to have this capability in the first place? Who exactly is it for? Every human is going to break under interrogation, and that break will be psychological, physical, or both, so whats the point?
If the goal is just to break people then why help them advance the science of destroying people?
No, no. That's old school. They want new, advanced techniques. Perhaps they can start using a fuel cell in place of a car battery . . .
They aren't trying to cause pain
You have to keep in mind that there are many people working under them. Some of them may very well want to cause pain to the enemy. Torture is evil and should never be used even if you're 100% certain the person has useful information. I don't care how effective it is.
First off, Godwin's Law. I think it's pretty disrespectful to lump the FBI and Nazi Germany together.
Secondly, if they were just abusing absolute power and intended to strong-arm everyone, then why bother studying the science of interrogation? You clearly missed my point. The fact that they want to study the science of interrogation pretty much speaks to the opposite of your suggestion.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp19qiash2U
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
And that is psychological analysis using facial expressions and language used.
See the TV series 'Lie to me' which is based on an actual psychologist Ekman.
It's known from analysis of police interrogations here in NL that being friendly in interrrogating gives most results. Even if they are totally oncooperative you can talk in such a way that people want to tell you something, because they want to brag or show how clever they are.
But I guess the FBI hasn't learned that lesson yet...
Btw., I think such analysis should also be applied to all politicians. It would prevent getting sociopaths like George Wanker Bush becoming presidents, but in lower positions too, such a-holes do enormous damage to society.
Would you like the red pill.... or the blue one?
why does the government need "interrogations" when they know practically everything about anyone?
Despite the popular paranoia, the government knows very little about anyone; and what it does know is largely noise. Big Brother may know where you had been with your car, and it may know what you bought at a corner grocery store. But the government doesn't know what you are thinking, what you are planning, what - among gigabytes of miscellaneous data that your browser downloaded from the Internet is important and what is not. As an old but still good example, the government does not know which one poem out of a fairly thick book on the shelf acts as the encryption key today.
In other words, the government (or any observer) cannot know anything that a regular Joe hasn't expressed in a public or a semi-public environment. Of course if that Joe becomes a target of very close surveillance then even walls of his home are not strong enough to hide his actions. But even then the walls of his cranium remain strong - and that's when you break out the rubber hose.
And how does the interrogator tell the difference between withholding information and ignorance?
They don't, of course. So they apply increasing amounts of pain until they get the answer they want. And you're right back to square one, with the victim saying whatever he things his captors want to hear.
Because technical measures don't provide everything you might want to know. Because the government can't see everything. Because it is often easier, cheaper, and more effective to simply ask questions.
The bartender might remember what my favorite beer is. I suppose the bar could invest in computers and data mining software to analyze my past purchases. Or the bartender might take a few seconds to ask me what I'd like. Sometimes human intelligence works better than technical means.
Keep in mind that most interrogation isn't about you. They want to know what you know about someone else. The police might want to know if you saw or heard anything before your neighbor's wife disappeared. How they ask, what they ask, makes a difference in the quality of the data you provide. For example, witnesses should be separated before they can talk to each other, and they should be questioned separately. That's not just to prevent conspiracy, it's mostly because they want to know what *you* saw or heard, not what you remember from talking with the other witnesses. Memory is funny. Our memories of actual events are much dimmer than our memories of discussing those events. If you thought you saw a white Camaro, and Fred thought he saw a silver Mustang, the cops want to know that. They don't want to know that you and Fred talked about it and agreed that it must have been a white Mustang.
You want to know how drug dealers get caught? Usually, it's because somebody talked. Small dealer got a lighter sentence, or got off completely, in return for fingering his supplier. Yeah, sometimes a dog might sniff out drugs. Yeah, sometimes a wiretap might reveal something. But most police work amounts to talking to people, and knowing how to talk to people more effectively is a worthy goal.
Back in world war II Britain found out and proved torture technics DO NOT work. They tried this on German Officers and solders only to find out either they knew nothing or were pissed off at the way they were treated and flat out lied to watch Britain waste there time and efforts to supply false recon or intelligence to there own troops. They realized this was not working. and figured out something different. They offered them immunity and placed them in a government building which looks more or less like a mansion, wired the building for eavesdropping on there talks, they gave them the luxuries like cigars, alcohol, ect... Allowed them to parade around or dress in there uniforms. Sure enough they started mouthing off over positions of there troops, what ammo, artillery, tanks ect.. each group had. They did this in a much shorter time, or quicker then the info they got from torture. You see these same tactics used by police officers, detectives, and the FBI to get a suspect to open up and talk, they even watch what words they use, and act like they are sympathetic to the suspects upbringing. They also do simple things like ask his side of the story or ask if they know this or that person, leave the room for an extended time (on purpose) then come back and say, this person knows you and you lied about not knowing them. This same person claimed you were talking about that night, or they know you were involved, BLA BLA you see a pattern.. They also watch body gestures, eye movement, there posture, this however really does not prove or show anything, they could be nervous or they could be involved with something else, IE be in a gang and by them just getting arrested they will have to answer for to the gang, or it something else illegal and not related to the crime they are being interrogated for.
5th ammendment applies to US citizens/residents.
Really?
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
It doesn't say citizen. It doesn't say resident. It says person. That's everybody not otherwise exempted by the war clause.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
LEO's in suspect interrogation often use a method called the Reid Technique. It usually starts with several hours of questioning and rapport building to wear down a suspect (fatigue plays a HUGE factor in our ability to deceive). At some point the interrogator will begin moving to a "help us out here, we want to understand" kind of attitude.
One facet of the technique is to identify the individuals values and priorities (kids, job, etc) and offering up potential explanations of the crime that implies they are a bad father, husband, employee etc. If the person is sufficiently fatigued and has built some kind of rapport with the interrogator, the idea is that they will offer up a full confession as a means of explaining why what they did makes them a good father, husband, employee, etc.
Military interrogation is more about general information gathering. Like you describe, a lot of that experience comes out of WWII where we would collect simply vast amounts of information from POWS that individually is largely meaningless, but in aggregate is informative.
Current research with body language, eye tracking, etc indicates most of that is junk. An increase in activity can identify when an individual is nervous about something, but it doesn't necessarily indicate deception and is incredibly sensitive to gender, culture, and (interestingly) language background. The literature talks about these kinds of things as Pinnochio's Nose; some behavior that manifest only when the person is lying, and every time the person is lying. Unfortunately this singular diagnostic behavior doesn't exist.
Source: Worked for a couple of years as a deception researcher, exploring various methods of deception detection.