To Teddo: the coma is self-induced and thus impermanent. It wouldn’t be very useful if the operative never woke up again. The point is to provide a period of recovery should the pressures of the interrogation prove too much. And with sophisticated drugs and techniques, the operative could likely be forced out of the coma and back into consciousness. Beyond that, merely cutting the rest of the body off from the brain is only effective insofar as stopping the operative from communicating directly. Remember, that since all NH bodies are effectively semi-biological androids/gynoids, it would still be possible to interface with the brain indirectly (telepathy, for instance). Again, the implementation of Level III protocols is the result of holistic monitoring of the situation; it does not matter for what reason the threshold is reached or in what form the information will be communicated, as long as the operative will imminently be in a position wherein there is no option but to divulge information, the protocol is initiated.
To Spartan_cloned, you do mention the artificial nature of NH series, and the semi-digital nature of their brains and memories. Being in a coma merely allows the conscious awareness of the operative a measure of recovery; just as in reality, it does not mean sensory data is no longer received or processed. With, as I have described, Level III operating on such a low level as heart rate regulation, its implementation does not require, indeed specifically does not involve, conscious choice. Beyond that, I think it is reasonable to define being hooked up for a memory download as a situation where information integrity is to be imminently compromised; so, once again, Level III would implement and the memory would be “deleted” prior to loss, part and parcel of the total termination of the operative. As for deleting the partial set of critical information otherwise, the workings of NH series brains are insufficiently defined so I was left with surmising the operations from references throughout the wiki and in roleplay. My impression is that the brain of an NH series body is a bio-digital computer that emulates the functioning of natural human brains, granted with increased memory capacity and recall abilities along with greater “computational” ability. As such, the model of memory in this situation is not one of discreet sets of data for each different event and occurrence. Rather, like with natural humans, memories are a holistically distributed phenomenon, intrinsically tied, and thus located, throughout the neural functioning of the brain. So even if there is a discreet data set for the audio, video, etc. of the information, there are still fragments, impressions, emotions, a whole slew of neural features tied to that information that cannot be discreetly parsed as directly pertaining to the information, but might still provide some useful context or hints under extensive analysis by a counter-intelligence entity. To conclude, the only way to reliably ensure that the information or intelligence cannot be extracted is to physically destroy the media onto which the information and all of the related experiential data is encoded.
As a general note, I intend to place the article in the queue for approval shortly, so any suggestions about what of this discussion would be useful to include or add would be appreciated. My one caveat is that I do not want the article to turn into a wall of text. In it’s current state, it provides a summary of each level of conditioning with sufficient room for GMs and players to determine more specific details in RP. This is not a power armor or weapon; I think providing a template for interrogation situations is more useful than a strict rule or stat sheet. At the same time, I don’t want people thinking that an operative being asked harsh questions is going to immediately result in their brain melting. So once again, suggestions are welcome.