In the Australian Conduct After Capture (CAC) model, Foreign Government Detention means detention by a foreign government organisation, such as a border security force, police force or intelligence agency. The context includes government custody with or without an armed conflict between Australia and the detaining country.
Government detention and protection of military information
A foreign authority can detain and question a service member and seek to exploit their military knowledge. This CAC context connects protection of that information with survival in custody and conduct towards foreign officials.
Within the same Australian model, Military Exploitation means detention by a foreign state's armed forces, while Hostage Survival means detention by hostile groups.
The conflict and the prisoner's status
The legal status of a prisoner of war depends on an international armed conflict and membership of a protected category in enemy hands. A state security authority can therefore also detain someone with prisoner-of-war status. A POW's obligation to provide identity information is limited to surname and first names, rank, date of birth and service or personal number, or equivalent information. This particular rule belongs to prisoner-of-war status; it is not a general rule for answering questions in every case of detention by a foreign authority.
A government captor can also use the person to exert pressure on a third party. Threats of injury, death or continued detention, with release or safety made conditional on a demanded action or omission by that third party, constitute the coercive mechanism of hostage-taking.
The narrower peacetime term
Within the multinational personnel recovery framework, peacetime government detainee is a distinct captivity context for mission-specific CAC instructions: a person detained by a government in peacetime. The Australian Foreign Government Detention context explicitly includes detention during an armed conflict between the two countries.
An earlier US SERE model prepared personnel to resist exploitation even during detention by friendly governments.