On Monday, October 22, 2001, at 07:33 PM, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Mon, Oct 22, 2001 at 09:13:51PM -0500, measl@mfn.org wrote:
It seems that in todays hyper-"patriotic" environment, this is would be not only an "accepted practice", but even a _preferred_ one by many Amerikans :-(
Yep. It's going to be a hard political sell to insist that yes, this indicted hijacker who was caught trying to bring down another plane and was captured with detailed plans of a planned nuclear bomb attack in the next three hours shouldn't be, um, strongly encouraged to turn over the passphrase to "nuke-location-gps-coordinates.txt.gpg"
Yes, but this is one of those manufactured, utterly implausible situations. I cannot think of a single instance where a suspect had this kind of knowledge, with this kind of stakes, and with this kind of "next three hours" timetable. Even relaxing each item by a factor of 10...I can't think of any such examples. However, I _can_ think of cases where cops believed a suspect knew the location of a kidnapped child, even someone buried alive a la some of the famous kidnaps of the past. Should torture be used in cases like this? The Israelis routinely torture suspects, as news articles over the past dozen years have reported (confirmed by Israeli intelligence on "60 Minutes"). Of course, this might have something to do with their upcoming problems. Given that the scenario Declan describes is unlikely, how might torture or drugs be used? To go after organized crime, obviously. And drug dealers. And money launderers. And pedophiles. "But if it helps to catch just one terrorist!" If the U.S. abandons the standard that no person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself--something the "truth serum" drugging option would of course imply just as surely as torture would--the end times will be upon us. --Tim May, Corralitos, California Quote of the Month: "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes; perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks." --Cathy Young, "Reason Magazine," both enemies of liberty.