Before anyone gets into the morality of torture. Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence that shows that torture yields good human intelligence?
I'm not sure this is the right question. Even if torture worked 100% of the time, and by "worked" I mean:
* provided the intelligence quickly
* was 100% accurate
* and significant
Even then, it's not fucking worth it. There's simply no possible intelligence that can outweigh the disadvantages. We stop some roadside IED maybe... and what do we pay for that? We lose the moral high ground, we teach our enemies (not even sure that word is right) that they have nothing to lose by being suicidal in their attacks, that there's nothing to lose in torturing Americans that they themselves capture, and we create 10 more "terrorists" in all his cousins and brothers that arguably have an excuse for what they do.
That's not a sustainable model of terrorism reduction.
And that's supposing that the intelligence is good. So there's no point in asking whether it works or not.
Of course, people sometimes miss the forest for the trees and forget about the obvious.
Torture is very effective when you are certain the subject actually knows the target information and the information is easily verifiable.
For example, I have a copy of your encrypted hard drive (a copy to prevent self-destructs) and I beat you with a rubber hose until you give me a password that works. This is pretty simple and obviously effective. The ease of verification and quick consequences eliminates the value of lying. If I'm mistaken and it isn't your hard drive, this is treated as a separate failure.
I can even see (a very small number of) morally justifiable situations in which this is acceptable.
There's a difference when you can't be certain the subject knows the information you want – or if that information isn't easily verifiable. (Where's the leader of your cell going to be next Thursday?)
It's often the case that being nice to folks is a whole lot more effective. Especially with the "death to America" kinds of subjects. Kind words, a soft bed, and a hot meal given to a person who was raised in an environment where Americans were believably depicted as monsters can do a lot to make a person cooperative. Especially if you show it as an opportunity to 'get out'. You can hear compelling stories to this effect in many places.
> beat you with a rubber hose until you give me a password that works
And if you actually don't know the password? No organisation wants to be public about torturing a good person, so they get stuck in a black site for years because they can't be easily released / reported on anymore. (this is actually what's happening - not regarding passwords, but "terrorists with intel")
1. Is not helpful or useful even if, by chance, accurate information is given [1,2].
2. Hurts our national security [2].
3. Is unnecessary. Given that torture is one of the most harmful options to pick from, it's likely there are other, less harmful options available, and if so, the logical and ethical action is to pursue those instead.
On that third point I challenge you to prove me wrong. You won't be able to, however, because we have no meaningful oversight of these practices.
In the vast majority of cases I have no argument. In both cases which have come public and those which have not. The support by both the executive and legislative branches as well as military and intelligence is not only morally abhorrent but both in the grand scheme and in small scales is in practice ineffective. The price, that is, is not worth paying.
But I am also practical. Looking at the big picture in the long term, I recognize that people in power will face very difficult decisions. I recognize that the world is an ugly complicated place and the best leaders making the best decisions will have to take morally reprehensible actions.
If you rally against it, make absolute laws against it, enforce them perfectly with the most terrible punishments – it's still going to happen. People are still going to make those choices.
But if you are capable of even the slightest sympathies to the realities of the world – you might be able to minimize the damages.
Moral absolutes and prohibitions don't work. You don't design bridges and airplanes not to fail, you design them to fail well.
It is not a defensive of horrible acts, but a recognition of the tiniest exceptions. The arts and literature are full of these topics probing questions about ethically wrong actions being the right decision, and they have a point. Rarely, but surely. There's a wide gulf between never and almost.
I don't have an answer to the specific question but there are many people, specific to the case(s) surrounding the original 'justification' for using torture, that say just the opposite.
Edit 2: warning on the Frontline doc, it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful.
> it is almost vomit inducing to see the powers that be continue systemic torture when every shred of evidence (sometimes blocked or destroyed to continue the program) says it is useless, in fact harmful
It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know.
> It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it.
I think people have very strong convictions (maybe even inborn in us) about how the society should be organized, that contradict empirical evidence.
One example is emphasis on punishment, rather than on consensus or other form of persuasion. There is just another article on HN about how psychotherapy may be a better tool for young criminals than putting them into jail. Torture falls into a similar category, IMHO.
From evolutionary standpoint, this is perhaps understandable. Punishment is good enough strategy and evolution probably didn't have time/resources to come up with something better, such as more complicated systems of therapy and intelligence gathering and whatnot. Huge societies of today can however afford such advances and don't have to rely on these crude methods.
It is one thing to torture bad guys to save millions of lives. It is quite another to accept that you have crushed the testicels of five year old boys for no reason.
> It is one thing to torture bad guys to save millions of lives. It is quite another to accept that you have crushed the testicels of five year old boys for no reason.
I asked when torture has ever saved "millions of lives"? It hasn't. Ever. Period.
I also questioned your simplistic view of the world with "good guys" and "bad guys". I ask do the "good guys" not become "bad guys" the moment they torture the "bad guys"? Or do they have some inherent "good" that prevents them becoming "bad guys".
> It would be nice to know why they're so intransigent about it. Do they believe the evidence is wrong? Or perhaps they only use intelligence gathering as a pretext, and they really use it for punishment. Despicable, either way, but I'm curious to know.
Some people really are sadists and derive pleasure from the suffering of others. Others are fools or are too apathetic or cowardly to do anything about it. This may very well be the reality of our government. Signs seem to point in that direction.
> Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence that shows that torture yields good human intelligence?
No, of course not.
The thing that governments find desirable about torture is that you can make anybody say anything.
That way you can get 'proof' to support your systematic (and highly profitable) murder of people around the world.
USA's various drone program is ~4000 lives and counting!
We are now having entire generations of people across the world whose sole experience of the USA is the image they seen on a regular basis as children is USA drones terrorizing their country. Not through television or images on reddit, but in the skies above their home towns.
I think that intelligence gathering is just a cover, or a rationalization, for something more base: some nasty muslim guys killed 3000+ Americans on 9/11, so let's get some revenge on another set of muslims and torture them. It's tit for tat.
While I admire and am grateful for your sentiment on this, if torture did yield "absolutely vital information", the party that uses it would vanquish those who didn't.
The fact that we still wonder about this question may indeed prove that it's wrong from a utilitarian point of view.
That assumes that torture which reveals reliable information doesn't have significant bad effects. For example the police could put away more criminals if they could just torture anybody, but then nobody would ever risk talking to the police, which might mean crime would go up.
Torture is by definition neither open (you're not going to tell the public "Oh we just tortured X") nor idependently verifiable (for this multiple entities would need to torture the same person for the same information), so this kind of evidence would be really hard to obtain.
Also given the fact that you can't know whether the person you're torturing for intelligence actually knows anything, they might (and probably will) eventually tell you "something" you want to hear, just in order for the torture to stop. At this point though, you'll don't know whether the information is actually viable, you still have to confirm it somehow, which might be difficult depending on what kind of information it is. In case of "The weapons are hidden at X" this is relatively easy to do, you send some agents to check that place out. In the case of "Who do we need to drone strike?" it's not as easy, because you can either kill them or not.
Back in Roman and Medieval times, torture was not considered inappropriate. There was no need to conceal it. Typically the accused was assumed to be guilty, and torture was a just a way to get him to confess to what the court already "knew" was true. Otherwise the trial could not proceed.
I'm willing to grant that torture will get you some mix of true and false utterances, and then I'd very much like to get into the immorality of torture.
Well, they've done trials of torture (as the article points out).
Maybe he should survey those who were tortured?
"I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering."
>Can anyone even point to open, independently verifiable evidence
What do you want? Some twins studies where one is tortured and the other isn't? Maybe look in Mengele's papers. And why do you want to know? Would it be okay if torture "worked"? It's an immoral question if the answer is Yes, let's torture people. Because it does "work". People will tell their secrets, the practical problem is that people who don't have anything to tell will do their best to make up a convincing lie in the hope that the torture will stop.
Giles Corey - tortured by peine forte et dure to extract a plea of "innocent" or "guilt", but only responded with "More weight". Margaret Clitherow in the UK also failed to admit guilt or innocence under the same torture.
Rebecca West - under torture admitted she had 'carnal copulation with the Devil'.
You are right. I was thinking the torture was to extract information of a guilty/innocent plea. I see now that it was because the court system required that the defendant "submit to it by entering a plea seeking judgment from the court". (Quoting Wikipedia). By not entering a plea, the person has not entered the court system and no judgement can take place.
