#75 - Mob Rules

Mob Rules

12/9/05 (#75)

When you think of "Mafia", what comes to mind? John Gotti and concrete galoshes? The Sopranos and Goodfellas? Trash trucks and Italian restaurants where your mother admonishes you for staring? (And by staring, she means momentarily looking beyond the perimeter of the dining table.) Whatever it is, I bet it's not "innovative efficiency experts" or "intelligence gathering revolutionaries." But maybe it should be.

I'm focusing particularly upon the type of information-gathering interview that takes place in a windowless room in which one of those present is drinking coffee while another is bound and gagged. If mistaken for a job interview, you'd definitely get the sensation that the person in the chair wasn't the top candidate for the job. In fact, you'd have to assume his resume was riddled with annoying typos. Some used to call this particular type of conversation "torture", but the preferred industry nomenclature is "Information Recovery".

Information Recovery used to be a service offered by a professional. During the Spanish inquisition, special rooms were designated for such activities (commonly called "The Dungeon") and clients traveled to the Recovery Specialist's office in order to divulge the information they may nor may not have had. It was an inexact science, and better left to the experts.

There's a reason that cartoons featuring medieval encouragement devices also show them being operated by a goliath of a man in a black hood, known in that century as the Floor Supervisor: torture required massive, hulking devices. Like the juicer that is considerably larger than the fruit it is crushing, most medieval recovery appliances were built for function and not form. Ancient dungeon furnishings are rarely mistaken for Ikea products.

Let's pretend for a moment that you are a Spanish Inquisitioner. This is about what you could expect from your day:

You drag the first infidel from the undersized cage and sit them down in the Torture Chair. This device is a bulky throne-like chair striped with business-end-exposed 12-penny-nail spikes (literally hundreds of them), buttressed with straps and bars and locks and levers. Such a device appears to weigh about as much as a modern side-by-side refrigerator, and its process was quite unrefined---strap the suspect into the chair, tighten the ratchets until the spikes penetrate, and wait a day or two until they confess and/or bleed to death.

You then consult the duty roster and realize it's a Monday, so you know you're most likely going to have to squeeze confessions from a motley coven of witches today. (Sunday has always been a big day for witch hunting.) Unfortunately, the Torture Chair is now tied up for two days, so you take the next heathen from the queue and attach her to The Rack, a banquet-table-sized apparatus that connects the client's feet to an immovable bar, their hands to a movable bar, and then spreads the bars apart, stretching the skeleton between the two. Mind you, this is made by the same folks who created the rest of the dungeon's furniture line, so it too is made of hardwood four by four's, huge metal cogs and bars: half a ton of hardware designed to pick the brain of a 98-pound emaciated waif. It's no wonder you are an ogre-esque specimen of a Floor Supervisor---cranking that monstrosity requires tremendous effort, only made harder when the prospect refuses to admit that the Pope could take the devil in a fistfight.

Now you've got the infidel in the Torture Chair, and the heathen on The Rack, and that's not going to change for a day or two. Now what?

The next lucky patron is treated to the Iron Maiden, an oafishly large metal sarcophagus that features spikes through the front cover so that, when the guest is entombed in the case, the spikes stab through the person and slowly drain the blood until death arrives. Easy work to get the pagan installed, but once closed, expect (again) 24 to 48 hours for optimum life extinguishing.

As you can see, this is a case study in inefficient torture. If you have a small dungeon, there will be no way you can keep up with the flow of godless savages requiring debriefing.

And that's where Organized Crime's contribution has been overlooked---responsible for many of the most significant advances in Information Recovery methodology, yet no mention of them in the prominent trade journals. (Though Bully Style did give the Cosa Nostra props in their 1964 "Hot List" issue.)

Let's take a look at some of the key elements of their worker's revolution:

1) Employee empowerment: There is no longer "a torturer"---every employee has the opportunity to demonstrate, practice, and refine their data recovery methods. Gone are the days of waiting around at the office for the specialist to finish his three-mead lunch. Need information? Begin the query immediately.

2) Decentralized org chart: Do the math on the cost of transporting every piece of pagan trash to the same location---hardly an effective business model. The Mob completely eliminated this waste by bringing the service directly to the customer.

3) Maximized cost efficiency: Have you ever priced a Rack? How about an Iron Maiden? If so, you know how much those early-information-age dinosaurs can set you back. The Mafia re-examined the process and introduced an efficiency of scale---brass knuckles and a switchblade fit neatly into the pocket, allow for impromptu intelligence harvests, and you can use the knife to open a bag of sunflower seeds. (Not true of the Iron Maiden.)

4) Turnover Improvements: By eliminating the wait for the top torture machines, more people can be questioned more quickly--where a body used to ooze life like an old balloon loses air, two caps to the dome and the body is ready for the big swim. Next!

These are pioneering advances, in an industry that had a reputation as strictly Dark Ages. I like to imagine the first guy to realize that the quick removal of the left pinky, done in the comfort of the pinky-owner's living room, yields the same results as The Rack. Did he know at the time that he was changing the Information Recovery process forever? I like to think that he did---and that his capo recognized his efforts and promoted him to the Organized Crime Research and Development division where he made great advances in the arena of non-anaesthetized dental work.

But odds are he wasn't. Even in Organized Crime, sometimes the best work slips into standard operating procedure with no credits given for the change. Typical corporate injustice---but in that corporation, it's best not to be a disgruntled employee, lest your changing role in the Information Recovery research process be the subject of the next memo---the memo you didn't get.

©2005 wpreagan