Some Rights May Have To Be 'Eroded' For Safety

Turn-X Alphonse writes "The BBC is reporting on a speech given by the head of MI5 in the UK. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller claims in the future some civil rights may have to 'erode', in order to keep everyone in the country safe from terrorism." From the article: "MI5 has recently let it be known that it is in favour of making telephone intercept evidence admissible in court. Previously the intelligence and security services had expressed concern such that evidence might reveal operational details. Meanwhile, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has been calling for EU states to keep mobile phone and e-mail records for longer, to help fight terrorism and crime."

Comments

V for Vendetta

[infonography]

Yet another great one from Alan Moore, soon to be a disowned waterdown hollywood lackluster (he's already disowned it). However the actual comic is exactly what this so-called erosion of rights is all about. If your going to allow this in the UK or anywhere else you need to do two things;

Bring your own KY Jelly.

Grab your ankles really really tight.

and I want you to know speaking as a life long leftist, I have NO SYMPATHY FOR YOU.

Where's the courage?

[cryptoluddite]

People used to die all the time. And they still do, in car crashes and victims of poverty or drugs. It was 3k people that died here and what a couple hundred in britain? It's small potatoes. Maybe that offends somebody that knows somebody who died but people die all the time regardless.

An exploding subway is annoying and scary, but it's not a serious threat to our way of life. But taking away our democracy is a serious threat to our way of life. The only actual solution to a biological or nuclear threat is to restructure our society into islands with less interaction. Kinda like a jail with a village in each cell. You might know your neighbors too and you wouldn't even have to rat on them! It might be a good thing, if only that's what we were talking about instead of more politburos.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[iminplaya]

My father grew up within a society that valued "being a man": being responsible for your own station in life...

Would this be the same times when a woman "did what she was told", "children were seen, not heard", or when civil rights for minorities were but a pipe-dream? Would this be the time when McCarthyism was running rampant out of control? Or while Hoover was "dressing up"? Maybe it was while the Americans were fulfilling their "Manifest Destiny". Maybe it was during the depression...oh, those were the days.
And you knew who you were then... Girls were girls and men were men...

Whatever happened to "there's no time like the present"? We only have two things that we didn't have in the past, easy travel(made needlessly difficult by bureaucracy) and instant communications. Other that those, very little has changed in 5000 years. War, famine, and disease have not diminished much. They simply relocate.

Irish Terrorism vs. Muslim Terrorism

[billstewart]

I've been appalled, but not surprised, that the British Government has been calling for radically reducing civil rights to deal with Muslim terrorism, given that the current levels of civil rights are what they had left after dealing with Irish terrorism for decades. It's not like this is a brand new threat they've never had before.

Admittedly there are differences - most of the struggle against the IRA was carried out in Northern Ireland and occasionally the Republic, and they did things there like death squads and imprisonment in inhuman conditions that they didn't do much of in England, whereas now the threat is dispersed around the world in places that are no longer British colonies, so they're doing more in England itself. But it's still appalling dishonesty on the part of the politicians.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[dada21]

Huh? If I loan you, $100, you have $100 to stimulate the economy or generate more money/happiness for yourself.

You can spend $100 on Marx's books (stimulates the book industry)

You can spend $100 screening your own Che T-shirts to sell for $300.

You can spend $100 on buying your marijuana, stimulating the drug economy or reselling it for $200.

You can spend $100 on posters and signs for your Vote Nader rally, stimulating the paper industry.

You can spend $100 on your porn sites, stimulating yourself and the internet industry.

And my post gets modded troll. My post had nothing but one ad hominem, but the socialist high school mods here don't agree with me, so I'm a troll.

Re:Personal Responsibility

[Pig Hogger]

This all boils down to one thing: lack of personal responsibility.

Give us a break. "Personal responsibility" is only used as an excuse by the conservatives to allow them to blame the poor for their plight and sleep at night.