SHARING INFORMATION WITH STATES THAT TORTURE An impression that international law was silent on the issue would be untrue. Apart from a number of international instruments which prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in all its forms, including by consent, acquiescence or other forms of complicity, evolving concepts of State responsibility might also show to what extent States have an obligation not to encourage or recognise as lawful torture committed overseas. Of course, any analysis is disadvantaged by the fact that much of the information on how intelligence and security agencies receive, rely on and share information is, by its nature, secret, making it difficult to define the full extent of the problem. It is not uncommon for such executive actors themselves to assert that they do not know the sources of information shared with them, and as a result, may use information obtained by torture unwittingly. After all, tainted information is rarely labelled as such, and as a result, rules conceived to regulate its use could be difficult to apply. While this may be true, the challenge should not be overstated. ‘Intelligence’, as it is, is professionally analysed by a number of executive agencies. Background information, including the source of the information and an assessment of its reliability, is known, as it must be, to be taken into account in determining its value by the executive agency which receives it. Therefore, at some level, the source of the information will be taken into account, even if such background information is not made available more widely for security reasons. Over the last ten years in the aggressive war against terrorism, intelligence and security agencies have been under extreme pressure to obtain answers and information. As a result, if they received the information they needed from foreign agencies, there has been a tendency not to raise concerns or delve too deeply into the source or its reliability. Inevitably, such practices led to some of the tragic abuses that have been widely reported. Now we should reflect on how never to repeat such mistakes in future. It should also be recognised that actors from professional police, security and intelligence agencies are recruited for their strong moral bearing, and work for worthy and important reasons, including the important task of protecting our own security. As moral actors, such executive actors do not lightly step outside the conduct expected 7