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Alan Turing Pardoned
First time accepted submitter a.ferrier writes "Today's computing would be unthinkable without the contributions of the British mathematician Alan Turing, who laid down the foundations of computer science, broke Nazi codes that helped win World War II at the famous Bletchley Park, created a secure speech encryption system, made major contributions to logic and philosophy, and even invented the concept of Artificial Intelligence. But he was also an eccentric and troubled man who was persecuted (and prosecuted) for being gay, a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of 42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by his side. He is hailed today as one of the great originators of our computing age. Today he received a royal pardon."
Charges should have been dropped. A pardon implies that he was actually guilty of something worthy of criminalization .
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Now he can start enjoying life, oh wait, we're just trying to make people feel good. move along, there is nothing here
Charges should have been dropped. A pardon implies that he was actually guilty of something worthy of criminalization .
The poor bastard had to deal with the horseshit while he was alive. This pardoning and whatever long after he's dead accomplished nothing.
It's just PR for little political people that want to pander to the Gay and Lesbian community.
Lots of men were charged with these insane laws. Why aren't they all pardoned? I see it as nothing more than a cute gesture. Everyone persecuted under these bullshit laws should be given full pardons.
Agreed! Other countries like America, Russia or Nigeria would never persecute people just for preferring to drive up chocolate lane.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
An abject apology would be a good start.
The then prime minister made one four years ago. I remember at the time that people were complaining that it wasn't enough and a pardon should be issued.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
She's still alive!
The decoding operation at Bletchley Park became the basis for the new decoding and intelligence work at GCHQ. With the cold war this became an important operation and Turing continued to work for GCHQ, although his Manchester colleagues were totally unaware of this. After his conviction, his security clearance was withdrawn. Worse than that, security officers were now extremely worried that someone with complete knowledge of the work going on at GCHQ was now labelled a security risk. He had many foreign colleagues, as any academic would, but the police began to investigate his foreign visitors. A holiday which Turing took in Greece in 1953 caused consternation among the security officers.
Turing died of potassium cyanide poisoning while conducting electrolysis experiments. The cyanide was found on a half eaten apple beside him. An inquest concluded that it was self-administered but his mother always maintained that it was an accident.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Turing.html
http://www.turing.org.uk/bio/part1.html
What Mr Turing pled guilty to is not a crime.
No, it's not. But it was back then. Rightly or wrongly, it was a criminal act.
Come back in fifty years and see what's legal by then.
Anyone ever treated this way deserves a pardon and more, our most humble apologies.
It's all very well saying that, but morality is relative. You might well find our ancestors look back on us with much the same disgust.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
by the grace of god, of the united kindom, the queen, pardoned Alan Turing has, hmmm?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
The thing that bugs me about this is that all you fuckers on the band wagon saying he should be pardoned in 2013 would be the first to call for his castration if you had been living in the UK in 1950. Seriously people are just as prejudiced now as they were 50, 100, or 1000 years ago.
The boogey man just changes. Today it is (Nazi|pedophiles|Muslims) , before that it was homos, before that it was commies, before that it was Jews, a long time ago being a Canaanite could get you killed. I think the apology / pardon is utter bullshit, when people are treating others like shit and continue to treat each other like shit, and apology is just a way to make people feel better about themselves, and say hey 'We are better than those assholes living 50 years ago.' Well you aren't. Sure you would not castrate someone today for being a homo, but you would surely say that pedophiles need to be castrated. Yes that is right an 18 year old man having sex with, or even seeing a naked 17 year old girl has committed a sex crime and is considered by law to be a pedo. Most people would have no problem whatsoever killing / locking up pedos.
Human nature does not change. It cracks me up when every generation thinks they are better more tolerant than those racist thugs who polluted society 20 - 30 years in the past. Those racist thugs that you hate so much are yourselves.
You know what's *really* perverted? All those disgusting heterosexual couples having sex for reasons other than procreation. We should lock them all up, along with everyone involved in the birth-control industry who are responsible for promoting such perversions and undermining God's will.
That's the problem with attempting to legislate morality - who gets to decide *whose* morality makes the cut? Even in a democracy, who defends the morality of the minority who don't have enough votes to defend themselves from the tyranny of the majority?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
...Turing complete?
Don't worry, I believe the rules are very specific that it's your actions that condemn you - after all your desires were put there by God (or was it the Devil? Folks can never seem to agree). So by acting without lust you should get a free pass into Hell, without having to worry about any annoying last-minute reprieves due to supernatural influences.
Of course there are other paths as well, for example eating a nice shrimp dinner while wearing a wool suit and cotton undergarments. IIRC the Bible condemns both the eating of shellfish and the simultaneous wearing of clothing made of different fibers even more strongly than it does homosexuality. Odd that you never hear of the brave crusaders attacking such filthy degenerates, there's certainly enough of them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The reason they can't just drop the charges and offer regret is mainly political.
Turing was in violation of the law at the time. The law was definitely unjust, but he was in violation of it.
Dropping the charges or showing remorse would open up a can of worms regarding liability. Doing so would create precedent and a mechanism for descendants to air grievances over historical wrong doings - it will never end and may be costly.
Practically, this is the best they will ever dare do.
Regardless of what you think about homosexuality, he behaved against the law that was in place at the time.
It's a shame we lost a great man because of this, but law is arbitrary, and sometimes it destroys some people.
He wasn't wrongly accused or anything. This is only being done out of pressure to make a statement. It is legally entirely stupid.
Thanks for linking to the Royal Pardon - just the wording of that made my day.
Fuck the British government of Christmas past for what they did to him. Here you have a genius, a war hero, one of the greatest people of the twentieth century, and your fucking idiocy runs him straight into the ground. Fuck you forever.
He isn't the first great person to have fallen, and he won't be the last. One thing to keep in mind is.... not everyone gets the message about such things. He may have been a genius, and a great war hero: but the legislators don't know about it; heros are often modest and unlikely to boast about it, and the courts at the time weren't even allowed to consider it, anyways.... at the end of the day, all the heros are just average people that have to live by the same rules as everyone else, or their future will be wrecked.
Think of the government, and the justice system like a "machine"; the courts operate in a mechanized fashion to implement the law and standards that have been put to them. Only the highly influential and powerful people can bend the machine, adjust the cogs, or cause it to act differently; Usually by AVOIDing the "Input" chute of the criminal justice machine altogether (Alan and partner were arrested after he and his mate were the victims of a robbery, and he reported the robbery - and admitted the relationship) - if the officers recognized him as a hero, and he had a powerful family, he could have probably escaped arrest, or at least gotten charges withdrawn --- Alan was neither well-known nor powerful at the time.
He just had a reward for military service. The criminal conviction also made Alan immediately stripped of his security clearance and ineligible for any further government/ top-secret work --- his consultancy with the GCHQ on signals intelligence and cryptography was terminated (probably to their great detriment); he was also Denied Entry to the United States based on the criminal record --- so you can't fault the UK alone; there, see, you have a conspiracy ----- the US customs will mechanically treat a UK conviction as a fact, and not doubt that justice has been done.
Take Hypatia --- killed by a mob of christians.
Petrus Ramus -- executed in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre Giordano Bruno --- burnt alive due to the roman inquisition for heresy; cosmological theories going beyond the copernican model, the sun as one of many stars, and inhabited alien worlds
Siger of Brabant, Socrates, Anaxarchus, Seneca, Boethius, Judah Halevi, Jan Hus, Thomas More, Galileo,
The pages of history are written in blood ---- people that could have done so many more great things for humanity, but whose work got redirected to the industry of war, or their lives got cut short by violent acts or lawful abuses and miscarriages of justice of the government.
For every time a major new level of enlightenment is reached ---- the pattern seems to be someone has to suffer and die at the hands of unjust suppression or unjust laws deemed just at the time the events transpired
The criminals in the case of Alan Turing were the various government minions who kidnapped, imprisoned, and poisoned him.
You can disagree as vehemently as you like with the way he was treated, but none of the authorities' actions were illegal at the time. It's all very well us looking back at the horrible things our ancestors did with repugnance, but our descendants will probably do exactly the same to us.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Governments as an organisation should reflect on the decisions made by people sitting in the same seats around the time they were born. The "right thing to do" is often diametrically opposed to the "popular thing to do". An official apology is a good thing, it's much more important to a large proportion of victims than you seem to think. Especially when the "problem" is something innate to the individual such as skin colour, sex or sexual preference. An apology is akin to official acceptance (back) into society. I know for a fact that the nationally broadcast apology to the native population here in Oz meant a lot to my aboriginal friends from the NW, particularly those in my age bracket (50-something).
So here's the thing, Turing's was an extraordinary man and their is no dodging the fact he was betrayed by society and his government. So my question is was the previous (Gordon Brown) apology addressed to Turing or did it include the other 100,000 anonymous victims of that barbaric policy, has anyone said sorry to the survivors? - Yes I've googled it to confirm my recollection, and you should too.
John Graham-Cumming: On behalf of all decent slashdotter's I wish you a very merry xmas.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No, but she could have pardoned Turing a long time ago.
When was Elton John made a knight? Was it before or after Prince Charles wanted to be Camilla's tampon?
She's the bloody monarch. Who would have stopped her if she'd done the right thing?
You are welcome on my lawn.