Professional Standards in the Aftermath of Torture

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-252
Author(s):  
Stephen Soldz ◽  
Steven Reisner
Keyword(s):  
American Psychological Association ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Professional Organization ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
Independent Review ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
Ethics Guidelines ◽  
Enhanced Interrogation

In addition to direct effects on detainees, interrogators, intelligence agencies, and law, the U.S. torture program had additional corrupting influences on other aspects of society. This chapter explores the effects that the torture program had on civil society by exploring its effects on the profession of psychology and on the largest U.S. psychological professional organization, the American Psychological Association (APA). We briefly summarize public knowledge regarding the involvement of psychologists in the CIA and DoD "enhanced interrogation" torture programs. We then describe the public response of the APA as news of this knowledge emerged. However, the public response did not match the APA’s behind-the-scenes actions, as was revealed by a 2015 Independent Review of APA leaders' potential complicity with the torture program conducted by Chicago attorney David Hoffman. The resultant Hoffman Report found a pattern of backchannel collaboration ("collusion") to ensure that APA ethics guidelines on psychologists' interrogation support did not constrain psychologists beyond permissive DoD rules. We then put psychology's interrogation controversy in the context of broader issues regarding the ethics of “operational psychology,” that is, the use of psychological knowledge and expertise by psychologists to further military and intelligence operations. We argue that certain operational psychology applications conflict with the ethics of the profession, and question whether practitioners of such applications properly belong to the profession of psychology. We conclude with a call for a Truth Commission to document the involvement of psychologists in post-9/11 detention and interrogation processes, and to focus on lessons learned regarding professional relations with the security sector, so that future generations of psychologists are less likely to repeat post-9/11 mistakes.

scholarly journals Trusting the Corona-Warn-App? Contemplations on trust and trustworthiness at the intersection of technology, politics and public debate

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110283
Author(s):  
Judith Simon ◽  
Gernot Rieder
Keyword(s):  
Technology Development ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Moral Duties ◽  
Moral Demands

Ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, questions of whom or what to trust have become paramount. This article examines the public debates surrounding the initial development of the German Corona-Warn-App in 2020 as a case study to analyse such questions at the intersection of trust and trustworthiness in technology development, design and oversight. Providing some insights into the nature and dynamics of trust and trustworthiness, we argue that (a) trust is only desirable and justified if placed well, that is, if directed at those being trustworthy; that (b) trust and trustworthiness come in degrees and have both epistemic and moral components; and that (c) such a normatively demanding understanding of trust excludes technologies as proper objects of trust and requires that trust is directed at socio-technical assemblages consisting of both humans and artefacts. We conclude with some lessons learned from our case study, highlighting the epistemic and moral demands for trustworthy technology development as well as for public debates about such technologies, which ultimately requires attributing epistemic and moral duties to all actors involved.

scholarly journals Citizen views on genome editing: effects of species and purpose

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gesa Busch ◽  
Erin Ryan ◽  
Marina A. G. von Keyserlingk ◽  
Daniel M. Weary
Keyword(s):  
Disease Resistance ◽  
Product Quality ◽  
Genome Editing ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Perceived Risks ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Us

AbstractPublic opinion can affect the adoption of genome editing technologies. In food production, genome editing can be applied to a wide range of applications, in different species and with different purposes. This study analyzed how the public responds to five different applications of genome editing, varying the species involved and the proposed purpose of the modification. Three of the applications described the introduction of disease resistance within different species (human, plant, animal), and two targeted product quality and quantity in cattle. Online surveys in Canada, the US, Austria, Germany and Italy were carried out with a total sample size of 3698 participants. Using a between-subject design, participants were confronted with one of the five applications and asked to decide whether they considered it right or wrong. Perceived risks, benefits, and the perception of the technology as tampering with nature were surveyed and were complemented with socio-demographics and a measure of the participants’ moral foundations. In all countries, participants evaluated the application of disease resistance in humans as most right to do, followed by disease resistance in plants, and then in animals, and considered changes in product quality and quantity in cattle as least right to do. However, US and Italian participants were generally more positive toward all scenarios, and German and Austrian participants more negative. Cluster analyses identified four groups of participants: ‘strong supporters’ who saw only benefits and little risks, ‘slight supporters’ who perceived risks and valued benefits, ‘neutrals’ who showed no pronounced opinion, and ‘opponents’ who perceived higher risks and lower benefits. This research contributes to understanding public response to applications of genome editing, revealing differences that can help guide decisions related to adoption of these technologies.

scholarly journals The Ancient Walls of Damascus and the Siege of Mouaddamiyya: A Historical and Spatial Analysis of Bounded Place and Cultural Identity

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nour Halabi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Syrian Crisis ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Vast Area

Throughout the Syrian crisis, the presence of material and symbolic boundaries to culture became a particularly salient element of the continuously unfolding political turmoil. As one terrorist group, Daesh, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, seeks to unite the vast area of the Middle East under the political, religious, and cultural administration of a “Greater State of Syria,” or “al-Sham,” this article revisits the historical spatial organization of Damascus and the construction of city boundaries and walls as factors that contributed to the cultivation of spatially grounded cleavages within Syrian and Damascene identity. In the latter section of this article, I reflect on the impact of these cleavages on the Syrian crisis by focusing on the public response to the siege of the Mouaddamiyya neighborhood.

scholarly journals Continuity, focus and impact: a commented historical perspective on Embrapa Vegetables' extended Capsicum breeding program

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco JB Reifschneider ◽  
Carlos A Lopes ◽  
Cláudia SC Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Breeding Program ◽  
Germplasm Bank ◽  
The Public ◽  
Continuous Activity

ABSTRACT The article describes the origin, development and main results of Embrapa Vegetables' Capsicum breeding program, a continuous activity for more than three decades. The article points out and highlights how partnerships, both in Brazil and abroad, both with the public and the private sectors, were vital to the success of the program. The article also glosses over the development of the Capsicum germplasm bank and its importance to the breeding program, concluding with a set of faced challenges and lessons learned which might be of interest to other similar programs.

Introduction: Criminal Law

1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Justification Of Punishment ◽  
Criminal Conduct

It is hardly surprising that philosophers have long regarded the criminal law as fertile ground. As the most visible application of state power, the criminal law raises issues of the first importance to political philosophy: issues of liberty, justice, and the common good. In announcing and enforcing rules of behaviour the criminal law connects with the concerns of moral philosophers, who have paid particular attention to the justification of punishment and the moral basis of criminal responsibility. Lastly, since the criminal law is typically concerned with the actions of human beings, it raises issues in the philosophy of action. Philosophers have devoted much attention to such central criminal law concepts as voluntariness, intention, and causation.The essays collected here explore topics which fall into three broad groups: the interests protected by the criminal law, the relation of agents to outcomes, and defenses to otherwise criminal conduct. Criminal law protects certain types of interests against certain kinds of invasions. Not everything that sets back a person’s interests is subject to legal sanction. Among those interests that the law deems worthy of protection, only certain kinds of invasions merit criminalization. The papers by Marshall and Duff, Hampton, Lacey, and Brett all touch on issues of the moral basis of criminalization. Marshall and Duff focus on the general issue of criminalization, arguing that crimes merit a certain kind of public response because they are attacks on the public. Drawing out the implications of the familiar fact that the state is a party to a criminal proceeding, they argue that the criminal law appropriately addresses wrongs that are shared by the wider community. For Marshall and Duff, criminalization is about deciding that a wrong against one person is serious in a way that makes it a wrong against everyone in the community, and demands a collective response.

scholarly journals The General Characteristics of Extremism and Analysis of the Current State of the Fight Against Extremist Crimes

Legal Concept ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Svyatoslav Biryukov ◽  
Mikhail Bobovkin ◽  
Mikhail Shmatov
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
General Description ◽  
Public Response ◽  
The Public ◽  
Current State ◽  
Quality Of Protection ◽  
Natural Tendency ◽  
The One

Introduction: the Constitution of the Russian Federation and other Federal laws in this country guarantee the protection of the population against crimes, including criminal attacks of extremist orientation. However, recently there has been a steady trend towards an increase in the number of committed crimes of extremist orientation, which determines the need to improve the quality of protection of individual rights, and along with them, the constitutional framework of the state, since demonstratively committed extremist crimes cause a great public response and contribute to the undermining of state power. The crime statistics show a significant increase in the number of extremist crimes; there is a natural tendency to spread the ideas of extremism among the population. Unfortunately, only some of the extremist crimes are counted as such in the official statistics. The crimes of this category are often registered without taking into account the qualifying feature – the motive of national, racial, religious hatred or enmity, and, as a result, are not considered in the group of crimes of extremism. Another reason for not fully accounting for these crimes is their latency: not all victims of such criminal actions declare this for various objective and subjective reasons. The public danger of crimes of the group in question is due, on the one hand, as usual, to their group character, and on the other hand, such illegal actions incite interethnic and other hatred, which is very harmful in the context of the efforts being made to build a civil society. Currently, the legislative bodies do not clearly pay enough attention to the organization of counteraction to extremism as an anti-social phenomenon. For example, over the past ten years, the problems of countering extremism have been resolved through the adoption of only four normative legal acts of a national nature. In this regard, the authors aim to give a general description of such a phenomenon as extremism and the state of the fight against such crimes. Methods: the methodological framework for this research is a set of methods of scientific knowledge, among which the main ones are the methods of information processing and logical analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction and generalization. Results: the authors’ content of the general characteristics of extremism and analysis of the current state of the fight against crimes of extremist orientation actualizes the problem of the need to improve the state of the theoretical base, prepare recommendations based on it, which would contribute to improving the efficiency of the state authorized bodies in the fight against various manifestations of extremism, and primarily in order to solve and investigate crimes of extremist orientation. Conclusions: the study has given the general characteristics of extremism and the analysis of the current state of the fight against extremist crimes in order to inform law students, and the teaching staff of law schools and practitioners to better understand the characteristics and dangers of this phenomenon.

scholarly journals RESOURCE SUPPLY AN ACCESSIBILITY OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

YMER Digital ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 446-455
Author(s):  
Eshetu Mathewos Juta ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Transportation ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Assessment System ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Urban Mass Transit ◽  
Transportation Accessibility ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Transportation Facilities

The term “urban mass transit” generally refers to scheduled intra-city service on a fixed route in shared vehicles. Public transportation is an important contributing factor to urban sustainability. Effective transportation networks that incorporate public transit livable by easing commute and transportation needs and increasing accessibility. To assess public transportation accessibility in metropolitan networks, two indices are used: the supply level of urban public transportation facilities resource and the public transportation-private automobile traveling time ratio. As the research in the Wolaita sodo town region and the assessment system, an evaluation technique for urban public transportation facility resource supply is developed based on accessibility. Accessibility is a representative indicator for evaluating the supply of bus system. Traditional studies have evaluated the accessibility from different aspects. Considering the interaction among land use, bus timetable arrangement and individual factors, a more holistic accessibility measurement is proposed to combine static and dynamic characteristics from multisource traffic data. The objective is to highlight the main lessons learned and identify knowledge gaps to guide the design and evaluation of future transport investments. Moreover, studies looking at ways to improve the operational efficiency of systems and those seeking to promote behavioral changes in transport users offer great potential to generate learning that is useful for the public and private actors involved.

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