Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2011 10:57 AM

@ Paul,

“But that leaves a huge range of wiggle room that experienced liars will have no problem exploiting.”

Firstly never answer questions if you can avoid it no matter how good a liar you are, if you don’t talk you cannot make mistakes…

But if you have to, try to get a second person in you can trust such as a lawyer who is known personaly to you. Don’t go for an appointed representative, as the saying goes “you get what you pay for” and if appointed they will do the minimum they can to get rid of you. Which as many in US prisons know includes selling you down the river.

If you have to put up with an appointed individual, each time a question is asked, ask to speak privatly with the legal representative away from the questioners and any microphones etc. Don’t stop no matter how pissed off the appointed representative gets, it’s in your interests to say nothing, if the representative then “leads you” you have a better case to retract anything you are forced to say.

If you cann’t have a representative of some type and have to talk (unfortunatly the case in the UK these days), this is where you will have to start lying.

And as I have observed on this blog a number of times the best liars don’t lie.

What they do is take the facts as known and put a little twist on them, but in slightly random ways to shift the perception of the listener to their way of thinking (the way a group of colaborators often gets caught out is their rehersed story is to much the same in detail and lacks “colour and variance”).

Further a good liar knows how to deal with such things as “Did you do this?” style yes/no answer questions they simply react with some feeling with another question such as “What on earth makes you think I would do that?”, or “What sort of sick mind could possibly think that?” then goes into a long moral tirade and refusess to come back on topic and gets steadily more animated and calls the questioner’s own morals into question untill the questioner either gives up or backs down.

A simple technique to show outrage non verbaly is to tighten your stomach muscles to make your face go red and open your eyes wide and stare directly at them right in the eyes. Leaning forward and make your voice first loud then low and quiet, if you can spit words out, it will make the questioner move backwards, clenching and unclenching your fists will make the questioner uneasy. Which is the point a nervous person is entering into the “flight” mode as you appear to rouse up to “fight” mode, and is nolonger in control of the situation.

Importantly never answer a question with a yes or no only some kind of ambiquity or by asking another question. You can answer with known facts but keep them uncertain, this has a dual purpose in that it confirms you are speaking the “truth” but importantly have little memory of the issues in question. Use expressions like “It’s difficult to tell because it was…” dark / the light was bad / it might have been / etc (what you call wriggle room).

When you get good at it often you can get an awful lot more information out of the questioner than they get out of you. And you can catch the questioner out when they start inventing things (ie lying) to try to get information out of you.

If they make the mistake of saying “We have evidence…” invariably what they actualy have is nothing of the sort, just some vague facts that they think tells them something. Don’t hesitate to call it into question and laugh at them with “you call that evidence, what are you…?”. Contary to what you see on CSI / NCSI / etc all physical evidence is at best an effect from an unknown and thus open cause, observations by witnesses are compleatly unreliable even trained observers are lucky to get close to 50% of stuff right two or three hours later unless they are making a record at the time.

The ultimate responses to some styles of questions is another type of accusation at the questioner to simply state “You are on a fishing trip stick to specifics” or simply state at someone making an accusation at you “Is why are you lying to me?” then refuse to elaborate and refuse to speak any further with such a duplicitous person.

The important point to remember if you wish to be a good liar is never never alow some one to develop real empathy with you, as that is when they effectivly control you. Likewise don’t alow them to keep control of the conversation, throw in irrelevances in detail and refuse to be put back on the rails with a statment such as “As I was saying before you so rudley interupted…” and when the questioner gets going on some point interupt them with “is this nonsense relavent to anything in particular?” and if they say yes then say “In what way” and keep questioning their responses.

Oh do the oposit of what the questioner wants, so keep folding back the conversation so it does not move forward with things like “as I’ve already told you it went like this…” and start from an irelevant point in time long before the supposed incident. Likewise if the questioner trys to fold it back start by saying “I think you will find I’ve answered that, why are you wasting everybodies time?” and don’t budge. Get up and move around when they try to order you to sit down refuse say you’ve got cramp are not feeling well or need the toilet etc.

Also refuse any food or fluid unless you personaly get it out of the tap / machine etc, if they push it at you push it back and say “You eat it” if they refuse simply say “why have you druged it”, even throw it on the floor or at them if they are persistent.

Oh and remember the “two questioner” routien they are their to give each other thinking room, which you don’t want to alow them. When one asks a question occasionaly speak to the other questioner with things like “Is your colleague always…” a liar / a bully / rude / moraly degenerate / etc. You need to break up any flow or patern they have not just that of the questioner.

Oh and long before you get tired start to nod off and show signs of becoming compleatly disconnected and ask questions like “what time is it”, “is it raining”, start long rambalings about “did you see XXX on TV the other day?”

As I was once told “A good liar can talk all day and say nothing.”.

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2011 12:44 PM

@ Natanael L,

“That makes me wonder if we can figure out a way to “encrypt” our minds. Our brains are remarkably “plastic” already, so why not?”

As far as I remember the human brain is most plastic around the age of two and then goes down hill from there. Around about 21 it’s down to something less than 10% of it’s ability to absorb raw information in a way that modifies it’s structur in significant way. Thus adults tend to to be a lot less able to adapt to the loss of limbs etc than children.

Also our ability to learn significantly new methods or tools tends to go down with age, admitadly a large part of this is laziness, in that people don’t want to significantly “slow down” to learn and then come to speed with a new tool, unless the motivation is significant (see London Ambulance and their sacking of staff that could not learn to type quickly enough when they went to a computerised system).

Objectivly I can see no reason why people could not be taught to thing in obsficated ways, but how would they learn, normaly learning progressses as a feedback process, without suitable feedback they could end up doing the opposit.

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2011 10:06 AM

@ Curious,

“I am concerned that he is fascinated about the notion of reading peoples minds, as if reading the mind has to be possible somehow. Succombing to the lure of the prowess of science and technology”

I think you are the person we should have concerns about as you don’t appear to understand what the issues are.

For many people on this blog including I suspect Bruce, is the notian that the likes of the DHS and others spending tax pays money on “magic boxes” that absolve them of any responsability.

We know that various organisations especialy governmental ones put great store in the myth and magic of things like the polygraph despite all rational science simply because it gives the illusion of scientific method in determaning truth (something humans are realy quite bad at).

As long as there is money to be made by quacks from the deep pockets of (apparently) gulable politicos and their servants then people need to draw otheres attention to it, simply because for the average person it’s difficult to fight what you are not aware of.