They come all the time, the emails from some lame website trying to get me to show interest in some lame post so that I’ll link to it.  It used to be sham 100 top criminal law blogs, with a badge that linked back to the offending site, but even the dopiest bloggers finally figured out that they didn’t win a prize. (A lot of bruised egos were scattered across the blawgosphere).

So now it’s this:

I came across your site as I was searching sites related to an article I wrote called ” 7 Ways to Interrogate Using Electricity ” posted on my blog  I thought I would reach back out to you to let you know about the article and to see if you would be willing to share it with your site’s readers.

Thank you in advance for your consideration!

Katherine Tworsey

Say what?  Okay, you caught my interest with this one.  This can’t really be true, can it?

Yes.  Yes it can.

The focus here is the use of electricity in interrogation; some of the methods mentioned here also qualify as means of torture, while others spark controversy over just what constitutes torture.

Have you really come to this in your desperate quest for links on the internet?

1. The Electric Chair – Since 1890, when the electric chair was first used for capital punishment, the threat of its use has served as an interrogation ploy.
   
2. White Noise – White noise, produced electronically, is basically a combination of all sound frequencies and is used to disorient a subject.
   
3. Car Battery and Jumper Cables – A favorite of film makers, this is what the Police Inspector used on Jamal, in Slumdog Millionaire, and has also been called the “Jack Bauer (24) Technique”. This type of interrogation is assailed on many fronts, including that of effectiveness; a subject may give false answers just to please the interrogator and to stop the torture.
   
4. Hypothermia – A prisoner is literally chilled to the bone in a refrigerated room, while being constantly doused with cold water. This is one of the methods approved for C.I.A. And military use in “enhanced interrogations”, and it was utilized at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
   
5. Light Control – Lighting, often hot and harsh, is used to upset the body rhythms of a detainee, disrupting usual day/night cycles, and weakening resistance. Old-school movie detectives were especially fond of sticking desk lamps into the faces of their prisoners.
   
6. Audio and Video Recording – As well as serving documentary purposes, recordings can be reviewed to check for consistency in witness accounts; sometimes to jog the memory of a subject, and sometimes to catch lies and misstatements. Polygraph tests have been used by the police since 1924.
   
7. Computers – Computers allow interrogators to almost instantly check the veracity of a subject’s story, from GPS information to personal data that can be verified on the Internet.

This is perverse.  Yes, you included some wiggle room to note that, oh, the car battery and jumper cables might not be a particularly effective method, but are you really so desperate for an easy link that you would offer it as a use of electricity in interrogation?  That’s sick.

Whoring about the internet for links has become the norm.  I get it.  But in the process of trying to hype a website whose ostensible purpose is to “compare electricity rates,” this is just so far below bad taste that it’s disgusting.

Every day, I wonder how low can it go.  I’ve come to realize that even my fertile imagination isn’t up to the task of  accepting how disgraceful, how disgusting, people are willing to be for a link and the potential to make a buck.

The only thing missing is pictures of Britney Spears naked.  Don’t get any ideas.