penny wrote:BTW, if the Alignment knows about the truth sensing abilities of Treecats, they can refuse to be around them. They can always state that there would be a danger of a "primitive species" getting loose and ruining the food chain or introducing diseases. Treecats are probably not accepted as a sentient species on Galton.
"You are not going to question anyone in this system in the presence of a lion."
tlb wrote:When would this ever come up in a situation where the Malign had the right to refuse? Galton has been conquered, so NO ONE there has the right to refuse.
ThinksMarkedly wrote:And no one outside the GA top government knows that they can at all. The fact that some treecat is being allowed near the suspect does not mean the suspect is being told of the abilities of the treecat. The treecat does not even have to be in the same room; just use those one-way mirrors that cop shows like to use. That doesn't block the treecats' abilities.
When they were present during questioning, the treecats weren't using their hand signals to communicate. They know better. They just sit there pretending to be dumb (and playing dumb), and give a few underhanded signals like a card player would with their partner. Add to that something to keep the suspect's attention away from the treecat, like a major distraction in the form of a gaudy or boisterous investigator, and the suspect will never notice the treecat's subtle signs of "nope, that was a lie."
Is it legal to subject a suspect to a non-invasive truth detector without their consent or awareness? I don't know. My guess is this would be no different than bringing an expert in facial tics and cues, except that the treecat is near 100% infallible. What I do know is that there has been no time to rule on the legality of using treecats like this in the few years since they've come out and shown they can, indeed, communicate and detect lies.
I do not believe that the knowledge of the tree-cats abilities is limited to the top levels of the Grand Alliance. Starting in
Mission of Honor we have reports of POW's being interrogated with a cat present. Later we have immigrants to Torch being scanned by a cat. Then cats were assigned to all the top people in the GA. Knowledge of such widespread use cannot be contained. In any case we know that Mesa did have control of a cat, which died before they could get useful biological information. Here is one scene in MoH:
Chapter 2 wrote:"Thank you for coming, Admiral," she said out loud, and this time there was nothing halfway about his smile.
"I was honored by the invitation, of course, Admiral," he replied with exquisite courtesy, exactly as if there'd been any real question about a prisoner of war's accepting an "invitation" to dinner from his captor. Nor was it the first such invitation he'd accepted over the past four T-months. This would be the seventh time he'd dined with Honor and her husband and wife. Unlike him, however, Honor was aware it would be the last time they'd be dining together for at least the foreseeable future.
"I'm sure you were," she told him with a smile of her own. "And, of course, even if you weren't, you're far too polite to admit it."
"Oh, of course," he agreed affably, and Nimitz bleeked the treecat equivalent of a laugh from his perch.
"That's enough of that, Nimitz," Tourville told him, wagging a raised forefinger. "Just because you can see inside someone's head is no excuse for undermining these polite little social fictions!"
Nimitz's true-hands rose, and Honor glanced over her shoulder at him as they signed nimbly. She gazed at him for a moment, then chuckled and turned back to Tourville.
"He says there's more to see inside some two-legs' heads than others."
"Oh?" Tourville glowered at the 'cat. "Should I assume he's casting aspersions on the content of any particular two-leg's cranium?"
Nimitz's fingers flickered again, and Honor smiled as she watched them, then glanced at Tourville once more.
"He says he meant it as a general observation," she said solemnly, "but he can't help it if you think it ought to apply to anyone in particular."
"Oh, he does, does he?"
Tourville glowered some more, but there was genuine humor in his mind glow. Not that there had been the first time he'd realized the news reports about the treecats' recently confirmed telempathic abilities were accurate.
Honor hadn't blamed him—or any of the other POWs who'd reacted the same way—a bit. The thought of being interrogated by a professional, experienced analyst who knew how to put together even the smallest of clues you might unknowingly let slip was bad enough. When that professional was assisted by someone who could read your very thoughts, it went from bad to terrifying in record time. Of course, treecats couldn't really read any human's actual thoughts—the mental . . . frequencies, for want of a better word, were apparently too different. There'd been no way for any of the captured Havenites to know that, however, and every one of them had assumed the worst, initially, at least.
And, in fact, it was bad enough from their perspective as it was. Nimitz and his fellow treecats might not have been able to read the prisoners' thoughts, but they'd been able to tell from their emotions whenever they were lying or attempting to mislead. And they'd been able to tell when those emotions spiked as the interrogation approached something a POW most desperately wanted to conceal.
It hadn't taken very long for most of the captured personnel to figure out that even though a treecat could guide an interrogator's questioning, it couldn't magically pluck the desired information out of someone else's mind. That didn't keep the 'cats from providing a devastating advantage, but it did mean that as long as they simply refused to answer, as was their guaranteed right under the Deneb Accords, the furry little lie detectors couldn't dig specific, factual information out of them.
That wasn't enough to keep at least some of them from bitterly resenting the 'cats' presence, and a significant handful of those POWs had developed a positive hatred for them, as if their ability to sense someone's emotions was a form of personal violation. The vast majority, however, were more rational about it, and several—including Tourville, who'd had the opportunity to interact with Nimitz years before, when Honor had been his prisoner—were far too fascinated to resent them.
