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In the UK, Possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook Is Terrorism
Anonymous Terrorist writes "Back in the midsts of time, when I was a lad and gopher was the height of information retrieval I read The Anarchist's Cookbook in one huge text file. Now it appears the UK government considers possession of the book an offense under the Terrorism Act 2000 and is prosecuting a 17 year old boy, in part, for having a copy of the book. 'The teenager faces two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000. The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year. The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.'"
Watch as some people get upset about this but still go on to say why we need to "prevent" terrorism and other crimes.
Watch as they call me an extremist for suggesting that crime prevention is an absurd attempt to trade freedom for security and will *never* work.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Having read the Anarchist's Cookbook, I'd say anyone actually attempting to use the "recipes" to make explosives should be considered suicidal rather than terrorist.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism
Doesn't this mean they can pretty much charge anyone for having any kind of information relating to Bus/train/airplane times? Software Vulnerabilities? Google Earth? The Location of the White House?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Hmm, didn't know the exact text. So, in short:
People should have rights, except for when they don't
Nice.
Knowledge has become illegal.
Could someone try to explain why knowing something is a crime? I know how to build bombs, I know how to create LSD, I have done neither. Why do I know it? Same reason man flew to the moon: It's there, and I wanted.
Did he build a bomb? Did he threaten to use it? Did he do anything resembling a crime besides wanting to know something?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're getting to where Pol Pot wanted to be: The dumber you are, the better citizen you are. We're really where it is becoming dangerous to know too much. Now you don't only get to be liable for something happening to you if you ought to know what you're doing, now knowledge itself is becoming illegal.
I, for one, don't welcome our new stupid overlords.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's not even the point. The point is that knowledge itself is never dangerous. It's dangerous, though, to start labeling knowledge as dangerous.
Because the core question of the problem is, who gets to label? Who gets to dictate what knowlege is harmful and which is good? Who may know what and why? Do you want a system in place that limits what you may learn and to what extent?
Do you think it would stop at explosives? I'm fairly sure the next thing banned would be books on the creation of drugs and medication. Close behind is pretty much anything dealing with biochemistry. Not far behind there will be knowledge for exploiting security flaws in real life locks, as well as computer programs. "Hacking" guides and tools (Germany leapt there already). Manuals explaining how fireworks and firearms work.
And so on. Where do you think it will stop? I doubt it will. After all the "dangerous" things are forbidden, companies will muscle in and do their worst to get all the knowledge outlawed that's required to escape their stranglehold, to protect their IP and markets.
Bottom line, when you open the door for outlawing knowledge, you'll soon only be permitted to know what's necessary to do your job and nothing else.
And, personally, I could rather live with 17 year olds reading the AC and getting a virtual boner over the (partly phony) "cool things" they could cook up. Knowledge alone has never hurt anyone. What it comes down to is the question how the knowledge is applied. If anyone, blame the person using it if he uses knowledge to commit a crime.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Aaarrgh.... too much paranoia.
It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you.
As the current administration has so capably demonstrated, it has no qualms about going after anyone. There was a story just last week about armed police taking two disabled guys down to the station and questioning them because they had the audacity to sit outside their local pub having a drink, open an item of mail, and look at the (heavily armed) police officers nearby. They were just outside the Labour Party conference — the same event, IIRC, where an 82-year-old, long-time member of the party and Holocaust survivor was forcibly ejected a couple of years ago for daring to heckle the man who took us into a highly dubious war, and then preventing from re-entering under the same Terrorism Act referred to in this story, and the following day an elected MP's camera was wiped because he had taken pictures of the queues to get in. Apparently that individual has enough backing that the people are willing to elect him their representative and let him make law on their behalf, yet he can't be trusted with a couple of photos of his own. Was that security, or just trying to prevent politically damaging material leaking out?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The police, the military, and my parents are terrorist organizations too. Not saying that in a provocative way either (except in the case of my parents ;) )- terrorism is a tactic, not a moral position. You scare the shit out of your adversary, in order to get your way while minimizing or avoiding direct confrontation. Remember shock and awe? That the heck do you think that was? Operation 'Terrorize the Iraqi Army' wouldn't have been so politically correct, but we wanted to scare them so they gave up.
Police live by this tactic, they don't call it that but they know they can't catch everyone so they grab someone and throw the book at them once and a while to send a message.
And take nuclear terrorism, we (the US) INVENTED it. We didn't have enough bombs to level Japan, but we acted like we did and pretty much everyone turning blue in the face over 'the terrorists' these days would say it was a good thing (it probably did save millions of Japanese lives, you have to admit that- they weren't exactly ready to give up). Of course, that wasn't the only city we leveled. Some we leveled more or less to send a message. Some cities weren't great military or industrial centers and were relatively untouched in targeted bombing, so they just made that much more of a statement when the whole thing burned to the ground one night in a massive firestorm.
At any rate, someone in the government needs to look up 'moral superiority' in a dictionary fast. All this emphasis on 'Terrorism (tm)' just makes us look like hypocrites, when we, in strict numerical terms have killed far more old men, women and children than Al Queda ever has (not that they're not working on it...). That's just a fact. Americans have killed lots of innocent people and when you look at the justifications, you cannot deny that many of these people were killed simply to scare, demoralize and disorient our enemies. Sure we were fighting Nazis, but we forget sometimes 'the good war' was pretty much the most unholy fucking disaster to ever befall mankind. Taking the lesser evil, even the far lesser one, requires one to do evil, and we only came out 'clean' by comparison. Al Queda are horrible people and they need to die, but just saying they're terrorists and we're not isn't going to convince anyone other than ourselves.
Al Queda chops people's fucking heads off if they shave or sneak a sip of whiskey. It should NOT have been hard to convince the Arab world these people are a dead end. You see, it's a simple (but not easy) war to win- the moderates who make up the majorities of these countries turn against the extremists. We just had to help them- and yet we couldn't even do that. It was a PR war all along and we lost it so fast no one noticed. We've been so determined to hunt grasshoppers with our howitzers, we missed a pretty obvious point: the average modern war, even one conducted with restraint, is a absolute PR nightmare. So much so, I often wonder if Al Queda WANTED us to invade Afghanistan.
Soft power used to be our greatest asset, you know, the Statue of Liberty, Elvis records, cheeseburgers. That's what really brought down the Iron Curtain, enough people finally saw us and said, 'screw this, we're doing it their way'. Our enemies were dying to hang themselves and when they had enough rope the alternative for their oppressed people was obvious.
Nowadays in the Muslim word, seeing your broken Government and thinking it would be great to do things the American way is a good way to get your head chopped off. So if they fall, it sure won't be the democratic types taking over.... We've conducted the worst advertising campaign for democracy in the history of democracy and are clearly our own worst enemy.
You do realize that this means he had a pound of fertilizer, half a pound of ice-melter, and some gross but widely-distributed web videos? Oh, and he visited a country that is supposedly our closest ally in the "War On Terror."
Nice sensationalism there.
I would rather be killed by a terrorist than enslaved by my government.