Gina Haspel addresses The Office of Strategic Services Society in 2017.
OSS Society
A new head could help repair the president’s relationship with the spy agency, but only if leaders stop playing politics with intelligence.
Indian Imperial Police, 1908.
There is something disconcerting about the Western move to denounce the human rights records of post-colonial states.
Unsurprisingly, the Jason Bourne films won’t tell you much about ASIO.
Bourne Supremacy screenshot/Universal
James Bond and Jason Bourne have little to tell us about modern spycraft.
Slipping backwards.
EPA/Mike Brown
Torture is the ultimate abuse of state power over the individual. If the US returns to using it, all hell could break loose.
Keeping it clean.
EPA/Dennis Brack
The UK has yet to properly grapple with its past complicity in prisoner abuses and torture.
mikegi/pixabay
Time is fixed, but people experience hours, months and days in very different ways. One researcher has spent decades exploring this universal phenomenon.
The Libyan rebel leader Abdel Hakim Belhaj who has won the right to sue former British foreign secretary Jack Straw.
Mohamed Messara/EPA
Three key rulings by the UK Supreme Court and their legal implications.
Trump: ‘I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.’
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Donald Trump says he supports torture. Can political leaders change his mind?
Human rights activists demonstrate waterboarding on Capitol Hill in 2007.
MATTHEW CAVANAUGH/EPA
Psychologists have developed evidence-based interrogation methods that could be used as alternatives to torture.
usaghumphreys/flickr
A Canadian police force on Prince Edward Island is threatening drink drivers with Nickelback – continuing a tried and tested method of punishment.
Sonic weapons usually leave no physical marks but can be devastating psychologically.
Vikash Kumar/flickr
From Long Range Acoustic Devices used to disperse protesters to ear-splitting military drones to songs blasted on rotation to prisoners, ours is an age in which sound has been repositioned as a tool of terror.
The indefinite ruler: Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.
EPA/Ria Novosti
Tajikistan, a longstanding human rights violator, has been cracking down harshly on what’s left of its political opposition.
The ABC’s Four Corners program revealed dismaying scenes of detainee abuse from the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.
AAP/Four Corners
What’s shocking about the treatment of detainees in youth detention is not so much the treatment of those vulnerable people, but that it is happening in a wealthy country like Australia.
A blueprint for ISIS – and for a video game? Camp Bucca, Iraq.
Atef Hassan/Reuters
Does including torture or other human rights violations in video games trivialize the actions? Or might it force us to think more critically about them?
The images broadcast on Four Corners of a hooded figure sitting strapped to a chair are difficult to erase.
AAP/Four Corners
What was shown on Four Corners was cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment – if not torture.
Artyom Anikeev/Shutterstock.com
The War on Terror-era programme of clandestine abductions and detentions wasn’t just an American initiative.
Poor knowledge of mental illness and lack of access to mental health care lead many families in Indonesia to chain mentally ill people in shackles.
Reuters/Beawiharta
Thousands of people with mental illness are shackled in Indonesia even though the practice has long been banned. Why does the practice persist and how can we eliminate it once and for all?
Will Trump’s exploitation of fear work in the general election?
Reuters/Ricardo Arduengo
GOP primary voters view Trump as a strong leader. Will general election voters see things the same way?
EPA/Shawn Thew
How did Washington get its hands on Guantánamo Bay – and why does its presence there still cause so much trouble?
U.S. soldier keeps watch over detainees in Iraq, 2009.
Atef Hassan/Reuters
The ACLU describes the release of photos of DoD detainees as an important victory for the cause of transparency, but are they?