Hart of That Hero muses on the few remaining techniques available to the CIA now that guns, power drills, and family death threats are off the table for interrogating terrorists.

The thing is, direct inquiry isn’t the ONLY way to get people to give up secrets they shouldn’t. Consider some other possibilities:

“The comfy chair?”

* “I’m from the New York Times, and this is totally off the record.”

* Nigerian spam scam

* Ebay/PayPal spoofs

* Reality show “confession booths”

* Your “anonymous” blog

* $3 discount bin diaries with “locks” on them that pop open if you look at them cross-eyed

* “We’ll just make this video for ‘fun’. No one else will ever see it, and I *promise* to erase it tomorrow”.

* A bottle of MD 20/20 & a harmless game of “Truth or Dare”.

* “Don’t worry. Our ‘privacy policy’ strictly prohibits sharing of information with third parties. You COULD read the whole boring thing if you want, or just click ‘I agree'”.

* Victoria’s Secret 44DD underwire digital mp3 recorder.

Any other ideas for information extraction?