How should we respond to the moral dilemma? We may be presented with an impossible moral conundrum: What would you do, if you would save countless lives threatened by a real and immediate threat by using the fruits of torture?20 This moral dilemma, which is in almost every case a fictional collaboration between impossible circumstances, is in large part a distraction from the absolute prohibition against torture, which does not allow actors to weigh the morality of their actions. As noted above, such information is likely to be untrue, and to act on such information would waste resources and legitimise the abuse. Importantly, such ‘moral dilemmas’ also ignore the preventive approach, which encourages the use of practices and procedures which safeguard against the wasteful situation of relying on information obtained by torture, and instead promotes the sharing and use of reliable information, obtained through effective noncoercive techniques of intelligent investigation. Through effective practices of prevention, such moral dilemmas lose much of their cache. We can’t stop executive actors acting on information which could save lives (and nor should we, as every State also has a fundamental duty to protect life and security). For this very important reason, it would be impossible to implement an absolute prohibition on the use of torture-tainted information, particularly where the stakes are so high. Instead, executive agencies might reconsider how such information is treated, and reflect on the active information-sharing relationships with States who have a long and shameful record of systematic torture. 20 This scenario is often retold as a ticking-bomb scenario, which has now been thoroughly rejected by experts examining the issues from legal, political and moral perspectives. See for instance APT, Defusing the Ticking Bomb Scenario: Why we must say No to torture, always (2007), available at http://www.apt.ch/content/ files_res/tickingbombscenario.pdf. 19