Slashdot Mirror
British Civil Liberties Film Released
An anonymous reader sends us to a BBC article about a British film likely to attract the attention of civil liberties supporters. The film, Taking Liberties , is a documentary about eroding civil liberties in present-day Britain. It will be showing in cinemas in major cities across the UK starting next weekend. From the article: "Director Chris Atkins wants Taking Liberties to shake the British public out of their apathy over what he sees as the dangerous erosion of traditional rights and freedoms. 'This film uses shock tactics. We needed to be unashamedly populist... Once you give up traditional liberties such as free speech and the right to protest you are not going to easily get them back,' says Atkins."
Yes, but if you overdramatize it people will say "it's not that bad - most of those laws will never negatively affect my life" and whenever they hear about the issue in the future they'll think "Oh, I've considered that - I even saw a film about it once - but I've decided it's not really a problem".
The UK is worse. Get back to me when there are talking CCTV cameras in New York and DC.
We are headed there too, but they're one step ahead of us.
"Banned in all the cinemas, NOW!"
I'm pretty sure I already saw this movie when it was called V for Vendetta. Or was it Children of Men?
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
It's not that people are necessarily more "afraid" of dying in a terrorist attack than a car accident. In fact, I think this whole idea that (most) people are "afraid" of terrorists (any more than anything else that can kill them) is pretty much a straw man. People die every day from all manner of accidents and disease. Some preventable, and some not.
The problem, however, is that many kinds of individual accidents can't all be prevented, and thousands of people will still die from them. We can come to terms more easily as humans with someone dying from an accident, like falling off a ladder while cleaning your gutters, no matter how meaningless or even preventable. It's a part of life.
What we don't deal well with is knowing that there is a group of people who - for whatever reason - deliberately plan to kill as many innocent Americans as possible, at the same time causing billions upon billions of dollars of damage to the US economy. The whole idea is to terrorize and paralyze people in the hopes of getting some of your own demands met.
The other issue is that incidents of mass casualty - plane crashes, natural disasters, Virginia Tech, mine collapses, etc. - generally hit humans harder and make the national news. Whether accidents or not, 10 or 50 or 300 people dying at once is an "event" and resonates with people, no matter how unlikely it is in comparison with the things that are (sometimes preventably) killing people every day.
Still another issue is that things like obesity, smoking, etc., that someone is bound to bring up when talking about the "fat and lazy Americans" don't kill a person right away. A big plane crash or bus fire does. In an instant. It's not just "terrorism"; it's mass casualty. The additional problem people have with "terrorism" is that it's another person or group of people plotting harm or death for others. And in the case of non-domestic terrorism, people not even from within our own borders. That's why so many see it as a military, foreign policy, and critical national security issue, not a simple civil or criminal law enforcement issue that we shouldn't take any specific or particular action to stop.
Even better. Here in Birmingham (central England) we have Policeman and Traffic Wardens equipped with cameras in their hats/ helmets. Seriously.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Do you recall if it was like that there before cameras were installed in the surrounding area?
-Peter
The actual problem is the competence of the police, or lack thereof. They've become over-reliant on the law bullying the populace. Since the beginning of the year littering has become an arrestable offence and if Tony "Uncle Joe Stalin" Blair has his way before he leaves we'll have the "Suss laws" returning: police can arrest and question you on suspicion of doing something.... no evidence, you just have to look a bit shifty, in the police's opnion.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Who's going to go watch a documentary about civil liberties when Big Brother's on TV?
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
You're absolutely right.
And yes, we all understand that there are more cameras, modifications of laws to account for acts of terror, etc., but people simply can't see the application of technology or updates of laws for what it is: for the most part, a genuine, honest attempt by persons within free governments in free societies to protect that system that are no more sinister than the police or the state adopting any other new technology that makes its charge from society easier, or an update to any other law, which we ostensibly value in societies that are based on rule of law.
Are there people with ulterior motives and are people in power looking to stay in power? Sure. Absolutely. But the CCTV systems in the UK aren't a part of some larger plot to create a secret police state and keep "the people" down. I find it humorous that the people who live in what are essentially the freest, richest nations that afford them, in general and on balance, the widest variety of personal freedoms coupled with the rule of law required to maintain order and stability in society for all, seem to think they're living in rapidly degenerating 1984-style police states.
We are certainly not perfect. But to paraphrase Churchill, the general systems of what we loosely call "democracy" are a hell of a lot better than any other systems we've seen tried over the centuries. We have the freest flow of information ever, the ability to communicate and share ideas across the globe to nearly anyone instantly, and the ability to produce alarmist films like this without retribution (save by others who disagree with you, which it is also their right to do).
Sure, be vigilant. Be watchful. But this idea that society-at-large is nothing but consumerist sheep who have been brainwashed into complacency by corporations and government, and only the truly enlightened who see the "truth" that we're in a rapid decline to totalitarianism - and I don't care if it's the US, the UK, or EU in general - are going to save us all is just garbage, and these people really need to get some perspective on things, and perhaps a healthy grip on reality at the same time.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.
It is intresting because the words in bold are not usually included. Watch the excellent british series "yes minister" ("the right/need to know" I believe) for why these words are so fucking important.
In that episode it is the word "significant" wich is added to a sentence to make it into weasel language.
Yes, if this quote above is correct, then Benjamin Franklin was a weasel.
After all, just what do you classify as essential or for that matter tempory. The right to travel outside your own country is hardly essential for the majority of us, and if a sacrifice would grant you a million years of security by the age of the universe that would still be temporary.
They are weasel words, words that can be used to, well weasel out of commiting yourselve to anything firm. Franklin by including these words could always claim that he never meant for something to be considered an essential liberty or that security measure in his eyes was not temporary.
The world changes. Take travelling, pasports have been known for a long time and used to be documents that merely asked of friendly powers to let this person pass unharmed. The dutch pasport at least still has text that asks friendly powers to allow the owner of the pasport to free passage and any aid or assitance necesarry. Officious language from an age when the vast majority of people never travelled from their place of birth.
Nowadays you can easily find a job were you pass several borders each and every day. Taking a long weekend on the other side of europe is common as hell and airports handle millions of people everyday.
Obviously then a passport today is much different then it once was. More and more info linking the intended owner to the document is included. Loss of an essential liberty? Providing temporary security OR the price for a liberty that gives us some security. Discuss, but know that Benjamin Franklin's famous quote does NOT take a firm stand against any amount of biometrics to be included on your pasport, not even if it was to be injected in your body. "Essential" and "temporary".
Liberty is a noble goal. Just go ahead, disable the traffic lights on a busy intersection, see how well people cope with liberty. The simple fact is that for instance speed cameras do have a positive effect, areas known to be heavily controlled show a drastic reduction not only in the speeding itself but also in accidents. The essential freedom of being able to speed sacrificed for the temporary security of not being killed by some idiot who thinks he is Michael Schumacher?
Play an MMORPG for a while, say WoW and see what a world looks like when the police and the state are essentially absent. It ain't pretty. Yes it is freedom, but at what price?
We should always be wary of what is being done in the name of security, but next time someone quotes Benjamin Franklin and leaves out the two weasel words take note of it. These words were included by a smart man for a good reason, why did they choose to leave them out?
...but not necessarily because of its content. No, what is interesting is how the film maker will decry the loss of liberties, the encroachments of freedom, and the institution of censorship -- in a film openly distributed and marketed to the general public, and all without the government shutting him down. Nice strawman, but he was warning against the destruction of civil liberties, not claiming that Britain was a police state yet."Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Personally, I don't trust the current government very far, but if I did, the same principle applies. I find it humorous that the people who live in what are essentially the freest, richest nations that afford them, in general and on balance, the widest variety of personal freedoms Yep. You're damn right that I enjoy and want to keep those freedoms. Are there people with ulterior motives and are people in power looking to stay in power? Sure. Absolutely. But the CCTV systems in the UK aren't a part of some larger plot to create a secret police state and keep "the people" down. Perhaps not. But does it carry the risk of being abused for the purpose you describe? Yes? Are there sufficient measures in place to prevent this? No? Then please excuse my scepticism, but I don't trust any system that is reliant upon the goodwill of the people administering it. But to paraphrase Churchill, the general systems of what we loosely call "democracy" are a hell of a lot better than any other systems we've seen tried over the centuries. What is your point here? That because these moves have been carried out by a democratically elected government, that they're beyond criticism? Nope. Democracy does not mean being unable to point out the flaws of our elected leaders plans; on the contrary, what's the point of democracy if we're not free to criticise and suggest that things might be done differently, by different people?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
So all you have to do is rob people there, since nobody around here is fool enough to intervene
Ahh. there is your problem. People in that nieghborhood don't give a shit. How did nieghborhoods ever have low crime rates before CCTV? Because they stood by their nieghbors and acted in their own best interest by actually doing something about it themselves. By hiding behind closed doors pretending not to see, they are getting the shitty neighborhood they deserve. Act like a victim, get treated like a victim. I have more than once come out of my apartment into the street and made my presence known, when there is a disturbance on my street.(I live in New York City) Guess what happens when I walk out and look them in the eye? Well usually it's some arguement that is starting to turn physical, but when suddenly there is a witness threats go back to being just words. The one actual mugging that I encountered the guy just ran away.
We are all just people.
It's not so much a matter of Police competence as it is paperwork. Twenty years ago, the Police didn't have to fill in an hours worth of paperwork for an arrest for a minor offence which is why they were on the streets doing their job in the first place. For each minor arrest, a copper can be kept off the streets for a minimum of 1 hour documenting every detail of the incident. If a kid vandalises a car, robs someone and is picked up on a description the reaction is more likely to be "fuck off you can't prove it" than "I won't do it again".
And there's the truth of the matter. Everyone in the UK knows their rights but too many have no sense of responsibility and they are fully aware of the fact that some smart arse lawyer who doesn't give a shit about truth because that's not what he's paid for will get them off on some minor procedural technicality. And the worst part is that it's a small section of the Police that bought this situation about. Remember the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad that caused as much crime as they stopped? The Birmingham 6 & Guildford 4 convictions, the Special Patrol Group etc. Normally, when things get out of control there's a swing back towards the other side five years down the line only in this case, the swing has continued to the point where your average thug has the same immunity to consequences that the above had in the 70's and 80's.
CCTV should not be a necessity. Unfortunately, in this "have your cake and eat it" society it is a sticking plaster over the gaping wound of idiot thuggery that seems trendy at the moment. If you can work out how to make being an evil little tosser uncool then you may have a chance of improving things but sadly it seems to be evil little tossers that run this country seem happy to put up more cameras.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
...but not necessarily because of its content. No, what is interesting is how the film maker will decry the loss of liberties, the encroachments of freedom, and the institution of censorship -- in a film openly distributed and marketed to the general public, and all without the government shutting him down. Yessireee...a police state! That's what we're living in for sure. The jackbooted thugs will be here any minute now...any minute now...I'm sure they're almost here...somewhere. Well, maybe their black helicopters broke down or something, but I'm sure they're on their way!
I see someone has already pointed out your strawman argument, but think about this for a moment. If someone were to prevent distribution of the film, Britain still has enough of a free press (and enough freedom of speech) to kick up a major fuss. On the other hand, if it's distributed, so what? A few people who already agreed with it get their views confirmed, people like the AC and the public dismiss the message and use the film's existence to reassure themselves that we have free speech, and the Government is unaffected. You're looking for the wrong kind of censorship in the wrong place.
Furthermore, not one British citizen on 10,000 would want anyone to have such a right. the other 9,999 are 100% behind the full enforcement of 7 years jail for anyone posessing a weapon, legally or otherwise. The American right to bear arms is seen as the reason why American deaths from gunshot wounds run at around 100 times the rate here, adjusted for population size. In short, almost everyone in the UK sees weapons as the problem, and none see them as the solution.
A few criminals have guns, and probably a similar number of country dwellers have them, and perhaps a few who shoot competitively as a sport, but carrying guns is not something many in the UK would consider. Those with a sound legal reason for carrying a gun have very little support here.
Our police dont normally carry guns, but have still managed to shoot more innocent people than guilty ones. Each time a policeman is shot by a criminal, there is a clamour to arm the police, but I do not recall any incident where this would ahve prevented the policemen being shot. AFAIR 75% of American polise shot are shot with their own gun, or by a colleague.
How about a right to bare breasts? Now that really would be popular!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I just got done sitting on a jury for a drug trial. It was a frightening experience. The evidence was so weak and indirect that I couldn't even believe they had charged these two people with a crime. One of them was a transsexual prostitute who was clearly (to me) just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, when the jury started to deliberate, there were four of us who all thought it was going to be an open-and-shut not guilty verdict, but we ended up with a hung jury, 8 voting guilty and 4 not guilty. This is the kind of offense that can easily land you in prison for life under California's three strikes laws. And no, you don't have to be a career criminal to fall under three strikes. The prostitute was charged with three felonies from the same night, and that's enough. There's a guy who's in prison for life under three strikes for stealing four chocolate chip cookies. After the trial was over, I visited the place where the cop claimed he'd conducted surveillance from using binoculars. Well, you absolutely cannot see the stuff he claimed to have seen from that location. There are buildings, trees, and walls in the way. I hope these defendants don't have to go to trial again, because next time they might be unlucky in the jury they get.
Find free books.
"If by "never" you mean "in the last 100 years" and by "arms" you mean "guns", I think you'll find that the restrictions were very different pre-WW2, definitely pre-WW1."
You're pretty much correct. The first British gun licensing laws were enacted in 1870, but they were essentially a revenue generation tool. You had to pay ten shillings for the right to carry guns around in public places, but could keep as many at home as you wanted without one, and the licenses were handed out at post offices to anyone who could pay for them. The first actual control legislation was in 1903, when certain classes of pistol could only be sold to people who produced a valid game or gun license, although once again such licenses were extremely easy to obtain, and any other sort of gun could be bought without them. True gun control didn't happen until 1920, and was largely a reaction to the 1917 Russian Revolution, where private gun ownership played a significant role in overthrowing the Czar, and the British government feared that the millions of recently demobbed (and therefore extremely cheap) weapons from WWI would be used to start a massive armed revolt.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
No, what is interesting is how the film maker will decry the loss of liberties, the encroachments of freedom, and the institution of censorship -- in a film openly distributed and marketed to the general public, and all without the government shutting him down. Yessireee...a police state! That's what we're living in for sure. The jackbooted thugs will be here any minute now...any minute now...I'm sure they're almost here...somewhere. Well, maybe their black helicopters broke down or something, but I'm sure they're on their way!
That's how the modern police state works, you see. Freedom of speech is still allowed, dissent is still recorded, and people thus think they aren't really living in a police state.
However, start organizing against the state and see just how quickly you can get shut down. Your activist groups will be infiltrated, investigations into your personal life will begin, and at the slightest hint of significant success at changing the status quo you will be arrested and charged with a bogus crime to end your career as a political radical. Web sites will describe your fate and complacent onlookers will marvel that in their free society -- which is clearly free because people can read these stories -- some people can still go crazy about such fringe political topics.
We've never had them in the first place, Mr Atkins. In order for there to be inalienable rights like freedom of speech, there must be constitutional limitations on the power of the state, legislature and judiciary, all three of which needing to be subject to the rule of law.
WTF are you talking about? The UK is a constitutional monarchy. Our constitution is not a written document, but rather spread across several laws. There are indeed limits on state power and recognition of natural rights, going back all the way to the original Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta. Since we joined the EU last century, we have further restrictions on state power.
WE DON'T HAVE SUCH A DOCUMENT. WE DON'T LIVE IN SUCH A STATE.
50% right, 50% wrong. We do live in such a state, it's just that there's no one singular document that we can point to and say "that's it". It's way more complex than that, mostly because the UK is comprised of a mixture of constituent countries that are a thousand years old.
I'm getting really fed up with people spouting off these misinformed "factoids" that they heard somewhere, like "Oh, Brits aren't citizens, they are subjects". Nonsense. Don't repeat somebody else's opinion you heard on Slashdot as fact. Not only are you wrong, you are actually spreading ignorance.
Free speech: a) "free speech zones" so that he needn't be bothered with people confronting his policies. Anyone wanting to protest (a freedom of speech issue) can only do so some blocks away in a cordoned off area. b) muzzling the heads of NASA, EPA, etc and telling them all publications have to be proofed by the White House so they can limit any voices that present information counter to the Bush mandates. c) monitoring phone calls and internet traffic which puts the brakes on many people expressing their views. Monitoring: a) illegal wiretaps with no court oversight. (the wiretapping has not been found to be legal - in fact, the FBI was crawled on the carpet for not following even the laws that do still exist) b) wholesale monitoring of internet traffic. c) requiring ISPs to keep records on what websites their customers visit, what they post, etc. Hiring: a) litmus tests for all key positions Imprisonment: a) Gitmo b) Gitmo c) Gitmo It's obvious you would kiss Bush's butt were he to bare it for you...