Everyone thinks they’re a tough guy
I’m no tough guy.
However as far as I know torture does not yield results. Torture just leads the victims to tell the perpetrators what they want to hear.
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WHYAREWEALLCAPS@kbin.social 7 months ago
If they find your coded diary, they are just going to torture you until you reveal how to decipher it if they have even a remote reason to suspect you. Everyone thinks they're a tough guy until they're waterboarded or they have their fingernails or teeth pulled out with a pair of channel locks. Everyone breaks under torture. The idea that someone can last until they're killed is a Hollywood fantasy for action films.
The idea that governments are going to expend valuable resources like learned individuals or AI to crack some individual's code is just Hollywood thinking. If you're a suspect, the government will monitor you. If you do anything to make them up their suspicion, they will bring you in. They aren't going to spend untold amounts of money deciphering every suspect's diaries or writings. They'll just torture it out of you, either physically(fastest) or mentally.
And let's just put this out there - if some desperate person fingered you for being whatever, having anything written in code is as good as being guilty to them. You will not return to your previous life. At best you'll be released and monitored till the government tires of you or it falls. The latter is no guarantee it will end. Just because the government might be replaced doesn't mean that those taking over will view any more favorably. After all, if you were deemed to be a security threat before, what makes you think they won't take that to heart. Once deemed a security threat you will always be a security threat, even to those who you may identify with.
AnarchistsForDemocracy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Gork@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Let’s hope that your government has policies restricting the use of torture.
But if they are engaged in indiscriminate mass surveillance and are a heavily authoritarian police state… they might not care.
AnarchistsForDemocracy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
How do you define torture is also tricky, some nations only consider putting you on a rack and using thumb screws to be torture, while waterboarding and rape is considered enhanced interview-techniques.
Others are even more ruthless like the gulf monarchies that will blatantly subject you to medieval torture.
However the surveillance capeabilities give opportunities for torture that fly under the radar. For example the eastern german dictatorship used a wide network of spies/human intelligence and paid snitches to gather information that was then used to desintegrate a person, by manipulating their life through orchestrated social and professional failures. Spreading rumors that are not easily disprovable. And so forth. Knowledge is power and I suspect that while the eastern german stasi methods would not be used in a democracy. I also suspect that these methods once developed wont go away as easily. I also suspect that more nefarious methods exist that we the public haven’t caught on to yet.
AnarchistsForDemocracy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I am specifically talking about not posing a security or any otherwise threat. I am only talking about free speech/thought/and so forth in line with basically any constitution.
Just because you are innocent doesn’t protect you from punishment