Alan Turing Gets an Apology From Prime Minister Brown

99luftballon writes "The British government has officially apologized for the treatment of Alan Turing in the post war era. An online petition got more than enough signatures to force an official statement and Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued a lengthy apology. 'Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better.'"

Comments

It's about damn time.

[bezking]

If only Alan was alive today...

Re:It's about damn time.

[Hatta]

As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

Re:It's about damn time.

[postbigbang]

It also apologizes for the discrimination he faced. A small, but meaningful token is this.

Consider that today, you can be gay and a programmer, and nobody cares except the bigots. That's as it should be-- except we need fewer bigots.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Aliotroph]

It doesn't benefit him, but it potentially benefits thousands like him who would suffer similar fates. It helps provide in some small way a defense against more of the same towards others. It's just the correct thing to do, even if it took them too damn long to do it!

I find it extremely offensive that any state would worry about that type of morality over the scientific/technological progress offered by such a man. Of course, in my world view, even if it was wrong or evil to be gay, I'd keep him around and happy just for the potential contributions towards turning humanity into an all-powerful machine society!

Re:It's about damn time.

[calmofthestorm]

Britain was involved in the settlement and creation of modern-day Israel. Israelis and Palestinians often kill each other. It's not a real connection but I think this is what he's going for.

Re:It's about damn time.

[novakreo]

As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

They also say, "better late than never".

Re:It's about damn time.

[Brian Gordon]

I find it extremely offensive that any state would worry about that type of morality over the scientific/technological progress offered by such a man

Sounds good but on the other hand living in a world where our deepest-held moral convictions are set aside for technological progress sounds like a nightmare scenario.

Yes their convictions were way off the mark (our mark, not theirs) but it makes the world sane in a way to know that society's mores and taboos will be enforced. It's not a part of ourselves that we like, but nevertheless that instinct is a very important part of how we interact as social creatures. Like, probably the most important.

Re:It's about damn time.

[tverbeek]

It doesn't help Turing.

But it helps me, just a bit.

I genuinely appreciate it.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Keen Anthony]

The formal apology actually does extend to the many other homosexuals who suffered liked Turing. From the actual statement:

I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alanâ(TM)s status as one of Britainâ(TM)s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.,

But yes, we do tend to only apologize for the most famous examples of society's cruelty to its own members. I think we have a basic need as humans to create symbolic icons. In Britain, Turing was just that. It was in no way a suggestion that his suffering was worst, or that his story alone was regrettable. Oscar Wilde is another example, though I don't think he was castrated. In America, Americans use Rosa Parks as an icon of the civil rights struggle, though she obviously did not endure the worst simply for the fact that she survived.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Fael]

There's a Turing machine for that.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Kratisto]

Yeah, Hitler was more the case where, the enemy of my enemy is FUCK IT INVADE RUSSIA WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Re:It's about damn time.

[Don_dumb]

It's not so much about making the past right as much as a full official acknowledgement that the behaviours displayed and actions taken were wrong and they are no longer acceptable.

If apologies are not significant, they wouldn't be so difficult to give. - That is as true for us on a personal level as they are on a national level.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Thomas M Hughes]

Plato said that there is no true measure of justice, but it is important for a government to give the appearance of justice to society. This is a textbook example of that in action.

What? Plato didn't say that. That's completely wrong. Plato explicitly defined justice in the Republic. I quote:

we affirmed Justice was doing one's own business, and not being a busybody

Citation: http://books.google.com/books?id=50SqFuH-4jQC&lpg=PA126&ots=O96UUppWV1&dq=justice%20not%20being%20a%20busybody%20republic&pg=PA126#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Don't just make up quotes and attribute them to Plato. It makes philosophers really angry.

Re:It's about damn time.

[afaik_ianal]

And while it doesn't help me directly, it helps a number of my friends just a bit.

I genuinely appreciate it too.

Re:It's about damn time.

[grumbel]

I can cite three sources after just a few minutes of research which seem to indicate anywhere from a 25% to 65% chance of severe defects in father/daughter-brother/sister offspring.

So in other words a 35%-75% chance of having a normal baby, thats more then good enough for me, especially since we have the tech to screen for defects pre-birth. But if you look at the law (64,65), thats not even what is outlawed, there is no mention of making babies, what is outlawed is having sex, even if its the oral or anal or two brothers or two sisters that have no chance of ever making a baby.

Re:It's about damn time.

[damburger]

Indeed, they have a potent weapon called 'postmodernism'. They say a bunch of words and sentences to you, and even though these sentences parse correctly and sound like they are dripping with meaning, they are actually void of any meaning whatever. They are the memetic equivalent of mangled packets, which needlessly tie up your mental facilities, and any brain that hasn't received the postmodernism-is-bullshit patch is susceptible to attack.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Chrisje]

You bet your sweet ass I'm bigoted against bigots. And I can tell you why. Bigots and Zealots won't let other people go about their business. If I like taking it up the tail pipe, I don't see how this should be anyone's business.

And you bet your sweet ass I hate Christians. But then I don't admire other religions, because anyone who tends to believe in imaginary friends also thinks they're the coolest and only friends *anyone* should *ever* admire, so at the end of the day religion serves as a petri dish for growing whole cultures of bigots.

Five will definitely get you ten if you say I'm pro choice but against the death penalty. If I have to explain the morals of that one to you, this post would take more bandwidth than a Stevie Wonder discography so I won't bother. Suffice it to say that while I do think abortion is a question that deserves serious thought and shouldn't be considered trivial, the effects of legalize it on society are measurable (Crime rate, New York pre-Guiliani). Furthermore it is a statement about how far women's rights have progressed in any given society. The Death penalty on the other hand is barbaric, and cannot safely be executed (no pun intended). Just the other day, two men that were in the slammer for 10 years for a murder were acquitted in Holland because an error was made and the guilty party was found. In Texas, you couldn't release those innocent men, you'd have to send a posthumous apology note to their families. That possibility alone should prevent anyone from such a penalty.

With the whole brown good, white bad, men bad, women good you're just being silly. No "liberal" will say that, that's just bone-headed.

Stupid Southerners. They exist. As do oppressed blacks. And criminals. There is a correlation between stupidity, oppression, a lack of education and crime. Maybe y'all should legalize abortion, so that women (who are generally not that stupid, given the choice) can make some decisions that would curb that trend.

Now don't start about rural folk. The first thing I ever learned to drive was a Massey Fergusson from the 1950's, followed by a fork lift. I harvested potatoes on my knees on my uncle's acre and I cleaned tulip bulbs when I was 12 while listening to Tom T. Hall. So you may call me a flaming liberal, but you can't call me a city slicker.

Having said that, clinging to guns and religion is plainly unintelligent, whether you're from a city or a farm, the North or the South, black or white. By the sounds of it, you're a somewhat unintelligent gun lover with a homophobic streak and a chip on his shoulder because the US doesn't consist of only your kind right now, looking at the balance of power. "Him liking it up the butt would have been puzzling to me" already gives it away. It's a good demonstration of how one sentence transforms you from a liberal into a bigot if you repeat it at a 50 year interval.

Turing died, and people then were obviously not enlightened enough to distinguish jack shit, because otherwise they wouldn't tell a war hero and a brilliant scientist to choose between chemical castration and hard time for having a boyfriend.

Re:It's about damn time.

[terjeber]

To put it another way, do you support two people having children if there is a 90-100% chance of having a "flipper" baby?

The problem with your argument is that we are drawing an arbitrary line that is squiggly as all hell, in other words, it hits some people randomly but equally problematic situations are allowed. Lines must be straight (no pun intended) and they must not be arbitrary.

Examplification
What is "disadvantaged"? We know that a lot of people will, based on their current life-style, statistically (within 80% chance or so) have disadvantaged children one way or another. This includes, but is not limited to, people living in specific locations (some rural places have statistically terrible results), people with certain levels (or lack of) income, people in certain locations with certain cultural or racial backgrounds (for example there is a high chance that inner-city African-American children will be disadvantaged due to their parents actions or lack of such. Is it OK to make a law that says they need their tubes tied, at least until they're 25?

Where do we draw the line? Can a woman past 40 be allowed to produce children? It is far more likely that she has a downs-syndrome child than that a brother-sister relationship ends up with a disabled child. Do you want to tie the tubes on large numbers of inner-city Hispanic girls (and perhaps untie those tubes once they are past 25 or so)? What standards do we follow and why? Oh, and if you think I sound racist, please go and get your tubes tied before answering, you're already severely mentally deficient.

Consenting adults is a nice, straight line. It doesn't hit randomly. It doesn't hit some people who have "bad" children and not hit others with a similar profile. It allows for stuff that most people can not easily swallow today, but so what. Law isn't about morality and the government should not be in the business of enforcing any particular moral code.

You want to marry your sister - and she agrees, fine with me. Daughter? Ah, I'd like to see a competency test on her first. You want to marry a very young person? Well, not until we are sure that "consenting" is something that individual can actually properly do "informed" is an important part of "consent". Today we mostly say that consenting is something you are unable to do until your're 18. Fine by me. 16 is OK to, which is the case in other places. 13? Nah, nobody would agree that that is an age of informed consent.

You want to marry a same-gender person? Fine. You want to marry two or three people. No problem. As long as everybody is capable of "informed consent". You want to marry your dog? Sure, when he can prove he is capable of informed consent.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Xiph]

And while it doesn't help me directly, it seems this phrase will get modded up.

I genuinly appriciate it too.

ps. i prefer insightful over funny, i'm not just a joker, i'm a karmawhore too!

Re:It's about damn time.

[terjeber]

living in a world where our deepest-held moral convictions are set aside for technological progress sounds like a nightmare scenario.

Sounds like paradise to me. A society governed by reason rather than moronic superstitions.

it makes the world sane in a way to know that society's mores and taboos will be enforced.

Quite the opposite. Societies taboos should be shunned on principle. Mob-mentality instituted into law. Moronic superstitions codified and enforced by people in uniform. What makes the world insane is that our morals (which I assume is what you meant) and taboos are enforced.

that instinct is a very important part of how we interact as social creatures.

Instincts are what makes us animals. Reason is what makes us human.

Re:It's about damn time.

[Maximum Prophet]

Sounds good but on the other hand living in a world where our deepest-held moral convictions are set aside for technological progress sounds like a nightmare scenario.

Welcome the the real world then. Wernher von Braun and his crew had their crimes overlooked so that we could win the space race vs. the Soviets. After 9/11, Dick Cheney said in an interview that we would have to make deals with some very bad people to stop the terrorists. In the real world, countries often overlook their morality to get ahead.

Hmmm!

[resistant]

It's nice to see a politician who can actually pass the Turing test.

Re:Hmmm!

[eclectro]

I'm sure the apology caused Alan Turing to halt for a moment.

Re:Hmmm!

[russotto]

I'm sure the apology caused Alan Turing to halt for a moment.

You'll never prove it.

Proud to be sorry, an odd concept

[Derekloffin]

Don't get me wrong, I feel the statement is fine and all that, just strikes me as weird to put those two concepts together.

Re:Proud to be sorry, an odd concept

[segedunum]

You're obviously not familiar with Gordon Brown as a literary wordsmith.

Re:Proud to be sorry, an odd concept

[sbeckstead]

No, Mr. Brown is being proud to be the one apologizing. A politician's way of bragging to the other politicians that he got to do it and they didn't. Peacocks are all the same.

Re:Proud to be sorry, an odd concept

[CowboyBob500]

And you must have missed an awful lot of education if you think that Gordon Brown is anything to do with liberalism.

Not forced

[CarpetShark]

An online petition got more than enough signatures to force an official statement

Bullshit. The British Government happily ignores these online petitions whenever it doesn't suit them to agree. It's simply a matter of them saying something like "We expect the results of an investigation into this matter. We will make a decision in due course. Thanks for playing." They normally rephrase that last part though.

Re:Not forced

[99luftballon]

Well, not exactly. Once the petition is signed by more than 500 signatures the government has to make a response. However, you are right in that the response is usually worthless.

Re:Not forced

[sjames]

Actually, that's where the 2nd amendment was supposed to come in to play.

Re:Online petition

[sbeckstead]

I'd say since about 24 hours ago or however long it was. Seems to have worked.

Not really...

[Auraiken]

Humility is an honourable trait.

Re:Not really...

[Darkness404]

Its easy to say you are sorry for something that you didn't do and weren't accused of doing.

Better late than never.

[WiiVault]

Despite the awful treatment he was exposed to at the time, it is comforting to see him finally recogonized for what he really was.

Right On.

[beej]

This was long overdue, to be sure, but even now it means so much to so many people. I believe we all owe Turing, whether we know it or not.

Any time a government admits, "Ok, we screwed up," it's a big deal, and it's usually a sign of change for the better.

Re:Right On.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "we screwed up", it's "our predecessors, who are long dead, screwed up".

And it's ridiculous to blame the British government exclusively for what happened to Turing. Anti-gay sentiment was not merely endemic, it was part of the everyday background social noise in almost all levels of society. The government of the day was just reflecting the morals of the day.

If anything, it's not the government but the people of Britain who owe Turing an apology. As such, it should probably come from the Queen, not Gordon Brown.

(Arguably, the peoples of the rest of Europe and America owe him just as much, but that's a separate issue. And they didn't actively persecute him, although doubtless they would've done so like a shot if he'd tried to take refuge there.)

An Easy Apology

[thechanklybore]

I suppose we should be pleased that Brown has issued this apology, just a shame he's part of a government that knew about torture of terrorism suspects under interrogation. I don't think chemical castration is any worse, and it was even legal at the time. How times have changed eh? Now the government only does awful things to you without evidence and when you've not even had a trial.

To stop this turning into a rant though, I salute you Alan Turing for bringing philosophy into Computer Science through all your pioneering AI work. You deserved far better.

Re:An Easy Apology

[alexborges]

"I suppose we should be pleased that Brown has issued this apology, just a shame he's part of a government that knew about torture of terrorism suspects under interrogation. I don't think chemical castration is any worse, and it was even legal at the time. How times have changed eh? Now the government only does awful things to you without evidence and when you've not even had a trial."

Well yeah. The thing is, Turing's contribution to the great britain shouldve made him a hero. INstead, he got castrated.

The cases you point to, at least, were against "enemies" (however true that is). What they did to Alan was against a war hero, perhaps the most important life saver in the retake of europe from the nazis as his work allowed the allies to gather the information they needed to get the nazis out the countries they had invaded.

Not to mention, for christ sakes, that he was the inventor of computer theory. Not just europe or the brits owed things to him: my job and life revolve arround what he started because I work in computing. The computer revolution would not have been possible without his mathematical work (and that of many others like Von Neuman).

Re:An Easy Apology

[thechanklybore]

I agree with you. We English have a history of persecuting our great men based on their sexuality (Oscar Wilde for example).

Still, hero or nobody I imagine that goverment will have a constant supply of things to apologise for in 50 years time to which they will say "I can't believe the abhorrent and barbaric treatment of people in those times".

Swings and roundabouts.

Doesn't do him justic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shame they didn't at least pay passing tribute to Turing's full accomplishments. Cracking Enigma and "quite brilliant mathemetician" don't do the man justice. I like Wikipedia's "often considered to be the father of modern computer science" as a starting point.

That's not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

What they did to a human, let alone him... no, a simple apology just won't do.

Re:TL:TL

[nbates]

"Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly."

It is not too late. Homosexuals still exist, even homosexuals that were alive back then.

Too bad things didn't happen Greg Egan's way

[JoshuaZ]

There's an excellent short story Oracle by Greg Egan imagining what would have happened if Turing's life had gone slightly differently. Egan portrays a very interesting world with heavy emphasis on how Turing might have interacted with C.S. Lewis. See http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/MISC/ORACLE/Oracle.html.

Re:Online petition

[Tumbleweed]

Since when is an online petition worth more than a squirt of piss?

I'm pretty sure aiming a quart of piss at PM Brown wouldn't have gotten the same response.

Pretty sure, anyway. Ya never know with those Brits...

Official Skinflint Act

[epine]

I read Spycatcher a long while ago. Wright seemed like a guy who made many solid technical contributions to the geekdom of spy craft. Clearly, later in life he had some axes to grind. One of which is the terrible way the Official Skinflint Act was used to deny benefits to long serving members of the secret service. Like what they say about Area 51: the only secret there is the massive waste of taxpayer dollars.

Peter Wright - Wikipedia

Because of the interest and because of the rancour following the pension, in 1985, he decided to publish his memoirs in Australia in order to make ends meet. The British government did all it could to suppress publication, under the pretext that such a publication would be in violation of the Official Secrets Act. They brought an injunction against Wright in Sydney. The Australian court, however, ruled against the British government, thus turning a book that might have had moderate success into an international best seller. Furthermore, the verdict not only vindicated Wright but also represented a victory for press freedom. The publication of Spycatcher temporarily unlocked the doors of official secrecy as far as former intelligence officers were concerned. With the enactment of the 1989 Official Secrets Bill, an absolute prohibition on revelations by serving or former intelligence officers was imposed.

The British governing class always seemed to care a lot more about that stiff upper lip thing, than rewarding those who toil in mandatory obscurity.

The other aspect that boggles the mind is the "gays are communist pinkos" circularity. If you castrate your war heroes, I think you might just be priming the pump for defection. It's not gays as such who are unreliable, but anyone who fears arbitrary persecution by their own government.

Another thing I've sometimes wondered: notwithstanding the official secrets act, where was Churchill when Turing could have used a solid character witness, such as "the official secrets act prohibits me from discussing the details, but in my opinion, if you do this, you'll shame the British empire for 100 years" or some distinctly British harrumph to that effect.

The real shame here is the amount of power held by the people who knew better.

Why geeks don't care about homosexuality

[trout007]

Feel free to add more. 1. We are happy when anyone gets laid 2. The heterosexual geeks aren't threatened. I mean if we can't get girls to find us attractive no gay guy would. 3. Decreases denominator in available (girl/guy) ratio.

Re:Congratulations, I guess

[NotBornYesterday]

You are completely right. Well, almost completely right. The only worse thing would be letting history roll on without even so much as an empty, belated, politically opportune token such as this apology. When an injury is done to someone that is beyond repair or restitution like this, even moving mountains won't fix things. But silence becomes an accomplice to the original act, and at least speaking out serves to break it.

Re:TL:TL

[mdwh2]

There's an interesting point - is there anyone still alive today who was prosecuted under the laws? Could they get any compensation, or will they only get just words too?

Still, Brown's tolerance for LGBT people and their sexuality probably doesn't extend as far as the Spanner case, where gay sadomasochists were imprisoned for consensual S&M. When the Labour Government passed the recent law on "extreme" consensual adult images, they cited the Spanner case as justification for the new law. I'm bisexual, and masochist - but despite the welcome improvements to gay rights on the one hand, overall I can't say Labour have made me feel better regarding my sexuality over the last twelve years.

On the one hand, they propose laws banning hate speech that could cover accusing gay people of being child abusers; but on the other, they themselves compare "extreme" adult images to child porn, and sadomasochism to pedophilia.

Knighthood

[(void*)cheerio]

Nice gesture. Now they should give him the honour he deserved while he was alive. Considering his contributions to the war effort and Computer Science, he should be knighted.

Re:You do the crime, you do the time.

[rsilverman]

You're missing the point. Brown is not apologizing for Britain having behaved *illegally*, or for having prosecuted Turing. The law was applied as written at the time (I'm assuming; I haven't checked). He's apologizing for Britain's treatment of Turing, period. The law was unjust, and the results horrific. Britain is recognizing this and doing the only thing it can at this point: express its regret.

I'm glad to see that apology

[Shlomi Fish]

I'm glad to see an apology for Turing's treatment being set straight. Alan Turing definitely didn't deserve the bad treatment that was inflicted upon him for his sexual orientation. He certainly deserves this apology.

One historical note is that several models of computers (or actual computers) preceded the more formal computer science, but naturally, the theoretical work of Turing (and related early CS pioneers such as Alonzo Church), and their rigour should also be highly regarded.

Re:Online petition

[Idarubicin]

...a quart of piss...

You crazy Yanks and your bizarre 'English' language. The correct UK spelling is B-U-D-W-E-I-S-E-R. And it comes in pints, not quarts.

Robert Oppenheimer

[chrisdotwood]

Obama should do the same for Robert Oppenheimer

Overdue, but still meaningful

[Nitewing98]

As a gay programmer myself, it often amazed the people I worked with that the two parts of my personality weren't in conflict. I very seldom ran into predjudice, though. In fact, often I was recognized as a good teacher and the other employees felt free to come and ask my help when they had a tough coding problem.

Alan Turing has been an idol of mine for a long time, and he was treated badly, yes. But more important than the apology is the recognition that there have been contributions of significance to the world by gay men and women and transgendered persons. Our history has been actively suppressed for centuries, but we are finally being recognized as having value in the modern age.

God bless Alan Turing, and Gordon Brown. Every little bit of kindness and generosity makes the world a better place for all of mankind.

Re:TL:TL

[nbates]

S&M is relevant to straight people too.

The problem is some people have a hard time understanding the concept of "consenting adults".