Schneier on Security

Curious • February 27, 2020 7:26 AM

I think I remember some US people opining that ‘torture’ doesn’t work (a statement which obviously can’t be true, or wouldn’t make any sense given how torture can’t be a selective characterization as if all things torture was simply based on intent or policy). I am here also skeptical to the very idea of thinking surveillance being useless. I think one can generally say that the idea of useless surveillance programs is by its own merit something of an oxymoron (an idea with inherent contradicitons), given how people actually performed surveillance in the first place. I am ofc not endorsing surveillance programs, but just saying that if somethings’ usefullness is more of an anachronism (something immediately historical, as if lying in the past), then one might overlook what one might describe as being the epitome of a police state, the surveillance. Once a police state, always a police state? I mean, even having a policy (“Patriot act”) for presumably warrantless but limited surveillance, then apparently James Clapper still had to lie to congress about it in having answered “not wittingly” to a question about this surveillance collecting any data about practically any and all people in USA. At the risk of not knowing enough about this subject, it still sounds like the patriot act wasn’t what it was purported to be, ergo, any idea of sanctioned or limited surveillance would be a moot point in that regard if they just did whatever they wanted and maybe surveilled all people.

I can see how one would want to view a surveillance program as being seemingly ineffective at achieveing something in particular (investigations and maybe prosecutions), but I would question the forgiving sentiment of things involving generic surveillance. I think I like ‘monitoring’ better, as monitoring imo doesn’t imply an interest in any discriminate collection of information, thus a more crude way of surveillance like a camera that is always on. This type of problem where I live has been characterized as “making ordinary people into suspects” (suspects of crimes obviously).

I wonder, how much of any surveillance (rationalized with or without the existence of US Patriot Act) can be said to be perpetual or intermittent, but still being a form of mass monitoring? I guess it would be meaningful to qualify the scope, like recording of car movement in ways, telephone calls obviously, internet use and internet browsing history, friends list, government personal dossiers, video and audio recordings, monitoring of bank accounts, any form of black list, or other lists to categorize types of people and personal activity/interests innocent of crimes,

Another aspect I think would be important to take into account, is expunged or perhaps anonymized records (imagine a technical or a legal loophole of simply anonymizing records and thus avoiding regulations that was intended to control deletions), stemming from monitoring and surveillance. Because, just because such records doesn’t exist today, wouldn’t mean they never did. Weird thought: Maybe anonymized records wouldn’t even qualify as records anymore, as a matter of policy, or epistemology. A potential technical and legal loophole?

Curious • February 27, 2020 9:03 AM

@MarkH

You seem to ignore what ought to be obvious, that torture is still torture. Making instances of torture a relativistic concept as such, so as to negate the possibility of having an intent to torture, really seems wrong, if not something outright criminal by what is blatantly obvious (the torture). I think you instead of being able to evaluate torture, as a means of extracting information based on stated purposes, you would instead attest to committing torture as opposed to simply legalizing acts or policy that would normally be deemed torture. In other words, hermeneutics shouldn’t save anyone from criminality involving torture, especially not attested acts that in turn is normally thought of as torture. Why else would they have this term “enhanced interrogation” if not being another word for torture? I mean, it is tempting to conclude that “enhanced interrogation” is a practical euphemism for torture. I suppose it is entirely possible that ‘enhanced interrogation’ could be synonymous with prolonged interrogation, but I’ve read stories about at least one Iraqi officer dying in Iraq, having been trapped in a sleeping bag with an interrogator sitting on to of him, or, people that are simply water boarded, or tortured if you will. I am sure there are worse stories that I’ve forgotten about.

Simply referencing things like false confessions and the rest you listed, makes your statement disingenuous and false, because such things as you indicate, obviosly are things that by your own statement would conclusively make torture not work for interrogation (what you wrote), so that, you can’t really argue the way you do, that torture doesn’t work for interrogation in this way by statistics, by using a word like “effective” but also implied as having the opposite meaning. You are obviously doing this type of argument, but it is disingenuous, because of how you are obviously referring to real torture as recent past events, it happened. Whatever idea one has of ‘effectiveness’ of torture is thus for all practical purposes (no pun intended) something wholly arbitrary and irrelevant to whether or not they would torture anyone in the first place. I will argue, there is NO reason to think that torture won’t happen again, just because policy and ‘theory’ changed. This type of theory talk is imo just bs, and isn’t convincing for much if anything to do specifically for how effective or ineffective torture is. I also suspect an obvious failure of such type of theory, is that imo one can easily see how by torturing lots of people, you can get to work with cross checking the feedback (presumably, interrogators are neither in the business of asking questions in liue of chinese proverb of only asking questions you already know the answer to, nor necessarily fact checking everything, and presumably anyone resisting some torture aren’t treated better becasue they appear unaffected). I think torture this way, torturing lots of people, might as well be thought of like working a slot machine over and over again, just waiting for when certain things match up among serveral people questioned by torture or otherwise.

I think I have this “doesn’t work” part from the media opining on “enhanced interrogatinos” and torture. The important thing is the general idea, the opinions of whoever does or support any torturing is of no interest to me, because their opinion just isn’t interesting given that: 1) torture already happened 2) torture might as well happen again 3) Torturing someone is despicable to say the least.

Curious • February 27, 2020 10:09 AM

@MarkH

I supposed you don’t want another explanation from me, but basically, I would say you are apparently referring to real things (the practice of questioning and also torture), but in form of a theory (how to understand and explain and also a practise), this should give a clue as to how I find it very inappropriate to sort of defending or even understanding such a theory, but obviously it being based on real events, not being simply something academic (teachings) and thus would be clearly void of realities of morality for anybody other than people involved or supporting torture.

I have an example to perhaps better illustrate how wrong it is to trying to argue for something to be basic knowledge: Consider a man on tv, attributed with the title “professional bank robber”, no idea if he is in jail or not or what he ever gained from working in his profession, now imagine him saying “bank robbery isn’t an effective way to get rich”. Would you really believe that statement, or find it sincere, or even meaningful given the potentially dire aspects to bank robbery in general?

Curious • February 28, 2020 3:28 AM

@MarkH

I already explained the problem of the inappropriateness of having abusers or those that support abusers, dispense institutionalized knowledge about a practice that also is basically something criminal if involving torture, and thus shouldn’t be trusted or be even be deemed meaningful when one would be getting your information from basically criminals or those dispensing forms of abuse/violence. The bank robber metaphor was meant to show that. This is ofc not a game of logical word substitution and wasn’t intended to be a trivial analogy. Context rules.

Curious • February 28, 2020 2:25 PM

Correction: The fallacy I referred to is actually known as “Begging the question”, not “Begs the question”. People tend to say this other thing often, and I got things mixed up unfortunatly.