Heartland

OK, lets add some plausible reality to the cynicism. Of course this is a little too slick to be truly real, but bear with me.

I especially want the answers from those whose gut response was that torture is wrong, and the use of evidence extracted under torture is also wrong.

Imagine it's July 6, and you're a senior figure in the Met Police. MI5 forward you a memo they have received from the secret service of a middle-eastern ally with a dubious record in extracting information.

The memo tells you that four men are planning suicide attacks on public transport in London the following day, according to information received from a terrorism suspect in the middle east. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of this claim and the source has been good in the past. The men are identified and it is possible for you to go and arrest them overnight, scuppering their alleged plans.

However, if you arrest them and a case comes to court, you will walk into a human rights s**t as the defence highlights the use of third party evidence which can reasonably be believed to have been extracted under torture in a state of questionable legal practise. The extensive press cuttings about suicide bombers, the Al-Qaida videos and the signed photos of Osama Bin Laden found in the flat where your suspects were staying can all be dismissed as circumstantial, as can the web links to sites about explosives on their laptops. Unless the bombs are found on site, or can be incontrovertably traced to the quartet, you don't have a case and you have created yet more unhappiness in the Islamic community, acting as a recruiting sergeant for radical Islamic groups.

Alternatively you can massively increase police and security measures in London on the basis of this intelligence. Unfortunately most of the Met's resources that evening are coping with the large gatherings around the capital waiting for news of the Olympics. Cancelling leave at this notice will result in tired, anxious officers - many of them armed - patrolling the streets and stations. There is also a huge financial cost in terms of overtime, and the knock-on effects on other policing will be considerable, especially if the heightened alert lasts for more than a day or two. The population at large will be frightened, perhaps needlessly and in a worst case scenario intelligence failures or poor communications could result in the police killing innocent travellers who match the description of the suspects.

Finally you can do nothing, because it would be morally wrong to act on information which you believe may have been obtained through torture. As a result of this decision people may well be killed, in large numbers, and fear will spread through London as a result. Large swathes of the city will have to be closed down to control the situation, prompting transport chaos across the entire area within the M25 - and beyond. Last, but not least, you will have to get on the tube at 8.30 to get to your office, knowing that you may never make it. You also know that if you survive the attacks and it is later revealed that you knew it was going to happen, the court-case s**t-storm in the first scenario will seem like a cooling summer's breeze compared to the 'fiddling while Rome burned' s**t-storm due to follow.

What do you choose to do?

And, to make it more interesting, does your answer change if there are to be:
1 - no fatalties, but huge disruption;
2 - about a dozen fatalities;
3 - the 50-odd fatalities we actually had on July 7;
4 - 500 dead;
5 - 5,000 dead.

At what number, assuming you could know in advance, would you conclude that using torture to prevent this happening was justified?

Are you still surprised that 30% of people - in non-American countries or otherwise - are prepared to accept the use of torture to protect themselves.

Keep thinking .....

[maybe a mod could set this as a poll?]

My original argument wasn't about the morality of torture, but about its utility. I remain to be convinced that useful information can be garnered through torture. However, for the sake of argument...

You've neglected other possible courses of action; you're forgetting that, in the situation you describe, if it's possible to go and arrest the suspects overnight, then we know where they are.

If I were "in charge", what I would do is to have the suspects under 24-hour surveillance. Four suspects, each requiring three 8-hour shifts of two operatives watching and following them; that's only 24 people tied up in the surveillance, not a "massive increase" in police presence.

OK, there is a possible danger that they'd notice and escape the surveillance but if the information is correct then there will be a point at which the suspects will be in possession of the explosives. Then arrests can be made; hearsay and circumstantial evidence is somewhat academic if our suspects are carrying bombs.

Obviously this scenario relies on the competence of the security services, but I'd guess that if our suspects noticed that they were being tailed, they'd bail out thinking that their operation was hopelessly compromised.

Also, at the point where the UK security services receive the information, the torture (if torture has happened) has already been done; refusal to act on received information solely on moral grounds is perverse when you know that such a refusal has the potential to cause a much greater harm.

If our suicide bombers - who, let's face it, aren't planning a luxury cruise to recover from this gig - do realise they are being tailed, what's to stop them detonating the bombs earlier? OK, it might not bring the underground to a halt (though it probably would given the anxiety around this issue at the moment) but it would still make a nasty mess of whatever location they happened to be in.

If you're going to wait until the bomber has the bomb, there's a real risk that anyone who tries to interfere will prompt an explosion.

At which point hearsay etc remain irrelevant, but your arrests aren't exactly useful. And you'll enjoy explaining to the spouses and children of your staff precisely how this came about, I'm sure.

As for the point about the possible torture having already happened: if you use that information (because the torture cannot be undone) are you not setting a precedent which implicitly tolerates future torture? It sounds a bit like you're saying it's OK for someone else to go and torture an arab, so long as it might help me stop Brits being blown up. Pragmatic and realistic, if a little cynical, but hardly a shining beacon of public morality.

As an aside, would you accept torture if it could be demonstrated that the information produced was always reliable? (I know that's impossible from a practical point of view, but if we're bouncing hypotheses around we can try this one as well!).

andymackem wrote:If our suicide bombers - who, let's face it, aren't planning a luxury cruise to recover from this gig - do realise they are being tailed, what's to stop them detonating the bombs earlier? OK, it might not bring the underground to a halt (though it probably would given the anxiety around this issue at the moment) but it would still make a nasty mess of whatever location they happened to be in.

If you're going to wait until the bomber has the bomb, there's a real risk that anyone who tries to interfere will prompt an explosion.

What else can you do? Our legal system relies on evidence; and as you point out, hearsay and circumstantial evidence tend not to count. You need to provide clear evidential links between our putative bombers and the actual bombs, or the legal system can't touch them (assuming the arrests can be made).

In fact, IIRC didn't a similar situation occur with some people who were alleged to be attempting to make ricin weapons who blew themselves up rather than be arrested?

andymackem wrote:At which point hearsay etc remain irrelevant, but your arrests aren't exactly useful. And you'll enjoy explaining to the spouses and children of your staff precisely how this came about, I'm sure.

Well, yes, but if we're being realistic, better two dead coppers than 50 dead civilians. Oof. Nasty decision to have to make though.

andymackem wrote:As for the point about the possible torture having already happened: if you use that information (because the torture cannot be undone) are you not setting a precedent which implicitly tolerates future torture? It sounds a bit like you're saying it's OK for someone else to go and torture an arab, so long as it might help me stop Brits being blown up. Pragmatic and realistic, if a little cynical, but hardly a shining beacon of public morality.

Heh. True enough. I know there isn't really a moral distinction between using torture and benefiting from someone else using torture. But if someone else has made the decision to use torture and I'm unable to dissuade them (what effect has the opinion of anyone outside the US ever had on the Bush administration's policy?) do I not have a duty to act on the information, no matter what moral opinion I have of the methods by which it was obtained?

andymackem wrote:As an aside, would you accept torture if it could be demonstrated that the information produced was always reliable? (I know that's impossible from a practical point of view, but if we're bouncing hypotheses around we can try this one as well!).

No. I think it's morally repugnant. But like I say, even though I fundamentally disagree with the methods by which this information is obtained, it would be foolishly dangerous not to act on it.

markfiend wrote:What else can you do? Our legal system relies on evidence; and as you point out, hearsay and circumstantial evidence tend not to count. You need to provide clear evidential links between our putative bombers and the actual bombs, or the legal system can't touch them (assuming the arrests can be made).

But isn't that why the police would argue we need to amend our legal system, prompting the new anti-terror legislation and the on-going human rights argument that has provoked? An argument, where I suspect (since I can't remember for sure) you're not really supporting the police or government for widely recognised reasons relating to civil liberties?

markfiend wrote:Well, yes, but if we're being realistic, better two dead coppers than 50 dead civilians. Oof. Nasty decision to have to make though.

You pre-suppose that no other civilians would be affected by the blast in these circumstances. You also overlook the fact that, in the circumstances we are discussing, these are two dead colleagues, possibly two dead friends of yours. Against 50 dead civilians who have no connection with you. Very tough choice.

markfiend wrote:Heh. True enough. I know there isn't really a moral distinction between using torture and benefiting from someone else using torture. But if someone else has made the decision to use torture and I'm unable to dissuade them (what effect has the opinion of anyone outside the US ever had on the Bush administration's policy?) do I not have a duty to act on the information, no matter what moral opinion I have of the methods by which it was obtained?

If you're not concerned how other people get their information, why should you be concerned about how you get your own data? Why not authorise torture yourself?

Dontcha just love a festive ethical conundrum? And since everyone else has given up and gone away, can we at least agree that torture, however despicable, may still have some sort of unattractive place in keeping the general public safe? Along with our other friends, hypocrisy and double standards

Next week: is Christmas, paradoxically, the ultimate communist festival and should the churches be closed down to prevent the spread of virulent red idealism across our green and pleasantly capitalist land?

can we at least agree that torture, however despicable, may still have some sort of unattractive place in keeping the general public safe? Along with our other friends, hypocrisy and double standards

I agree.

I was watching the latest series of 24 last night. Apart from the fact that it contains more scenes of torture than anything else I've ever seen, and that it is at the same time quite silly, rather entertaining and somewhat more amusing, it made me think of this thread...

An individual who is in theory against torture could find himself in a position where he has to reassess his morals. If the extraction of information that could save a large number of lives can only be realised through the torture of one person, then it could be argued that the more immoral course of action is to put the human rights of that one person ahead of the lives of many. Are those the actions of a hypocrite or a humanist?

On the level of the decisions of individuals, rather than on the level of state policy, I fear torture is inevitable under certain circumstances. And there starts the slippery slope.