Intelligence and Interrogation Processes

By: Master Of Impact and the Legion Of Hackers

INTRODUCTION

Doing what we do best always carries the risk of someone, somewhere, wanting to hold you for questioning. In this article I hope to give those persons who that are in use (and are in no ways happen to be all new), that can give you the edge you need to come away "sin faulta". In fact, these interrogation practicies are used a lot by teachers, local police, the FBI and Secret Service girlfriends, wives, parents, etc. to obtain information from you that you probably don't want to give out.

Interrogation is the art of questioning and examining a source in order to obtain the maximum amount of useful information. The goal of any interrogation is to obtain useful and reliable information in a lawful manner and in a minimum amount of time. The goal of any source is to deceive or hinder any attempts of the interrogator to get information out of him.

This article will deal primarily with the principles, techniques, and procedures of intelligence interrogation. By reading this article, one who runs the risk of being interrogated can build countermeasures for common interrogation techniques. This article has some paraphrased material from a government interrogation manual but the majority of the information was from personal experience and prior knowledge of the subject.

You cannot hope to defeat interrogation techniques unless you first know what they are. The ones listed herein are the most commonly used. After reading this article, you should be able to tell when you are being interrogated by people, and what technique(s) they are using when you probably would not have known before. Once you know what they are up to and how they are going to TRY to accomplish it, YOU have the initiative!

INITIATIVE

Achieving and maintaining the initiative is essential to a successful interrogation just as offense is the key to success in combat operations. The initiative in any interrogation must rest with the interrogator throughout the entire interrogation. He will have certain advantages at the beginning of an interrogation which will enable him to grasp the initiative and assist in maintaining the initiative throughout the interrogation.

The interrogator has a position of authority over you. You realize this fact, and in some cases, believe that your future might well depend upon your association with the interrogator. As in the case of police questioning, "cooperate and we will go easy on you". Like hell they will.

The interrogator knows the purpose of the interrogation; the source does not necessarily know the exact reason, but can generally assume (especially in the case of a computer hacker or phone phreak, which is what the term "source" will be referring to during this article) because he or she is most usually conscious of horrible and nasty wrong-doings he or she may have been responsible for. Unfortunately for the source, he is generally very much in the dark about what's happening to his life while it is, in fact, crumbling around him (temporarily, anyway). This gives the source a not-so-illusionary behavior pattern of the proverbial chicken who's had its head chopped off.

Having gained the initial advantage which is quite an understatement, seeing that, although the risks to the source during the perpetration of a crime are quite obvious, the possible realistic results of being caught aren't quite as impressive while one is getting away with a crime than when one's home is invaded by the JC Penny-suit men wearing mirrored sunglasses, the interrogator must strive to maintain the initiative applying appropriate interrogation techniques through the exercise of self-control; by taking advantage of the source's weaknesses as they become apparent; and by continuously displaying an attitude of confidence and self-assurance. The interrogator, however, is 'supposed' to never take advantage of your weaknesses to the extent that the interrogation involves threats, insults, torture or exposure to unpleasant or inhumane treatment of any kind. Remember, the keyword is supposed.

It is possible for the interrogator to lose the initiative during the interrogation of a source. If this should occur, he will probably postpone the interrogation and reassess the situation. If the interrogation is resumed, a different interrogator will probably be introduced. Following are some examples of loss of initiative:

PHASES OF INTERROGATION

Approach Phase

Regardless of the type of source you are and your outward personality, you do possess weaknesses which, if recognized by the interrogator, can be exploited. A human being is likely to:

TECHNIQUES

File and Dossier

The interrogator prepares a dossier containing all available info obtained from records and docs concerning you. Careful arrangement of the material with- in the file may give the illusion that it contains more data than is actually there. The file may be "padded" with extra paper, if necessary. Index tabs with titles such as "education", "employment", "criminal record", "bulletin boards", "violated computer systems", and others are particularly effective for this purpose. The interrogtor will confront you with the dossier at the beginning of the interrogation and explain that "intelligence" has provided a complete record of every significant happening in your life; therefore, it would be useless to resist interrogation. The interrogator may read a few selected bits of known data to further impress you. If the technique is successful, you will be impressed with and more importantly, terrified by the "voluminous" file, conclude that everything is known, and resign to complete cooperation.

We know ALL

This technique may be employed in conjunction with the above or by itself.

The interrogator must first become thoroughly familiar with the available data concerning you. To begin the interrogation, the interrogator asks questions based on his known data. When you hesitate, refuse to answer, or provide an incomplete or incorrect reply, the interrogator himself provides the detailed answer. Through the careful use of the limited number of known details, the interrogator may convince you that all the info is already known; therefore, your answers to the questions are of no consequence. When you begin to give accurate and complete information, the interrogator interjects questions designed to gain the needed info. Questions to which answers are already known are also asked to test you and to maintain the deception that all the info is already known. A VERY effective technique I might add.

Rapid Fire

This approach technique involves a psychological ploy based on the principles that:

This technique may be used with one, or simultaneously by two or more interrogators in questioning the same source. In employing this technique the interrogator asks a series of questions in such a manner that you do not have time to answer a question completely before the next question is asked. This tends to confuse you and you are apt to contradict yourself, as you have little time to prepare your answers. The interrogator then confronts you with the inconsistencies, causing further contradictions. In many instances you will begin to talk freely in an attempt to explain yourself and deny the inconsistencies pointed out by the interrogator. In attempting to explain your answers, you are likely to reveal more than you intend, thus creating additional leads for the interrogator.

Mutt and Jeff

This technique involves a psychological ploy which takes advantage of the natural uncertainty and guilt which a source has as a result of being detained and questioned. Use of this technique necessitates the employment of two experienced interrogators who are convincing as actors. Basically, the two interrogators will display opposing personalities and attitudes towards you. For example the first interrogator is very formal and displays an unsympathetic attitude. This is to make you feel cut off from your friends. At the time when you act hopeless and alone, the second interrogator appears (having received his cue by a signal, and is hidden from you), scolds the first interrogator for his harsh behavior and orders him from the room. He then apologizes to soothe you, perhaps offering coffee and a cigarette. He explains that the actions of the first interrogator were largely the result of an inferior intellect and lack of human sensitivity. The inference is created that the other interrogator and you have in common a high degree of intelligence and an awareness of human sensitivity, above and beyond that of the first interrogator. You are normally inclined to have a feeling of gratitude towards the second interrogator, who continues to show a sympathetic attitude in an effort to increase the rapport and control for the questioning which will follow. Should your cooperativeness begin to fade, the second interrogator can hint that since he is of high rank, having many other duties, he cannot afford to waste time on an uncooperative source. He may broadly infer that the first interrogator might return to continue the questioning. When used against the proper source, this trick will normally gain complete cooperation for the interrogation.

Repetition

Repetition is used to induce cooperation from a hostile source. The interrogator listens carefully to your answer to a question, and then repeats both the question and answer several times. He does this with each succeeding question until you become so bored with the procedure that you answer the question fully and truthfully to satisfy the interrogator and to gain relief from the monotony of this method of questioning. The repetition technique will generally not work when employed against introverted sources or those having great self control.

Pride and Ego

This technique works effectively on many phreaks and hackers due to the fact that many are so damn egotistical. The strategy is to trick you into revealing desired information by flattering you. It is effective with sources who have displayed weaknesses or feelings of inferiority. The interrogator accuses you of weakness or implies that you are unable to do a certain thing. The proud or egotistical source will jump to the defensive. An example of an opening question for this technique may be: "Why would you own a blue box when you have absolutely no idea how to use one?" or, "Why do you hack VMS systems if you can't do a damn thing once you're inside of one?" It provides you with the opportunity to show someone that you have "brains" and in doing so, you give the interrogator more information than you should have.

Silent

The Silent technique may be successful when used against either the nervous, or the confident-type source. When employing this technique, the interrogator says nothing to you, but looks you squarely in the eye, probably with a slight smile on his face. It is important for the interrogator not to look away from you, but force you to break eye contact first. You will become nervous, begin to shift around in your chair, and look away. If you ask questions the interrogator probably will not answer them until he is ready to break the silence. A source may blurt out questions such as, "What the hell do you want with me". When the interrogator is ready to break the silence, he may do so with some quite nonchalant questions such as, "You've been logging on to our system for a long time now, haven't you? Did you hack the passwords yourself?".

In some cases the interrogator will use several approach techniques concurrently, or in succession.

QUESTIONS

There are various questions that the interrogator may ask you:

Prepared questions
When the topic under inquiry is very technical or when legal aspects of the interrogation require preciseness, the interrogator will have a list of prepared questions to follow during the interrogation.

Control questions
To maintain control and to check on the truthfulness of a source, the normal questions will be mixed with control questions-those with known answers. If you fail to answer these questions, or answer wrong, it will indicate that you are either not knowledgeable in the topic or that you are lying.

Nonpertinent questions
Sometimes it is necessary for the interrogator to keep the true objective of the interrogation from you. By carefully blending pertinent questions with nonpertinent questions, the interrogator can conceal the true purpose of the inquiry.

Direct and leading questions
The manner in which the questions are worded has a direct bearing on your response. A question may be posed in a number of ways:

PSYCHOLOGY IN INTERROGATION

The interrogator will watch for various psychological responses from you during an interrogation. Some of these are:

Of course when being interrogated, you should remain as emotionless as possible and never show anger, or get upset (NEVER inflict physical abuse upon the unsuspecting interrogator. This only creates tension between both the inter- rogator and yourself). Your every move, every response, every action is noted and used by the interrogator to get you to screw up and give him what he wants. There can be two main objectives that you can obtain when being interrogated. The first is to find ways to force the interrogator to lose his initiative. You can do this in many ways. A few that come to mind are: Repeat everything the interrogator says. Mimic the interrogator. Laugh at the interrogator. Basically piss the interrogator off and make him so mad that he loses sight of his objective. This may however, get you in deeper trouble, but it may give you extra time while another interrogator is found.

Lie like hell to the interrogator and piss him off. Such as the pathological liar gimmick: "I broke into the NSA's computer, yeah, and then used their network to get into the presidents private computer yeah that's it, the password was uh...Bonzo, yeah, and then used it to take control of a satellite used for Star Wars, and made it land right on top of the Kremlin, yeah that's the ticket!" You can also change the subject over and over again to totally unrelated things such as: its a nice day out today, hows the wife and kids, how about some food, who do you think is going to the superbowl, etc. The other and probably better objective is simply to pretend to fall for any of the various techniques used against you and feed the interrogator more and more bullshit, of course being very sincere. This way he gets totally bogus information while thinking you are cooperating fully.

Well, I hope you never have to put this article to use in a legal manner, but you would be surprised how everyday you are interrogated without even realizing it by normal people who probably don't realize they are interrogating you!

As stated in the other articles, you can reach me for comment via the staff account.

MofI (LOH)