British Civil Liberties Film Released 282
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."
Gah! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Film Would Be Even Longer If Made In The US (Score:2, Insightful)
Talk about disappearing civil liberties, but this country might have well reverted to monarchy rule. It would really be tough to call it a democracy any longer.
sadly, not going to happen ... (Score:2, Insightful)
the possibility of such an event ?
Re:The Film Would Be Even Longer If Made In The US (Score:4, Insightful)
We are headed there too, but they're one step ahead of us.
This film will be enormously interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Film Would Be Even Longer If Made In The US (Score:1, Insightful)
As far as the US no longer being a democracy, could you please provide any evidence of that, besides "The president was democratically elected, but I don't like him, therefore he must not have been democratically elected"?
We need more cameras (Score:3, Insightful)
So in this one South London neighborhood that I occasionally frequent, there was an armed robbery at 4 in the afternoon on the main street last Saturday. It's a quiet neighborhood, very well-balanced, well-off, so it makes sense to come there and rob people.
There was a similar robbery the previous week.
The week before that, it was on a weekday evening, I guess they had a busy schedule that week. It's the same guys each time. They live in this totally different neighborhood a way to the south, though.
And there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Nothing at all. What are you going to do? Call Batman? The UK police are very nice guys (compared to any other police force I've met) but they really can't do much in this situation.
The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras. The south half of the street near the station does, and the north half near what's called a 'roundabout' does, but there's this bit in the middle that doesn't. So all you have to do is rob people there, since nobody around here is fool enough to intervene and get jailed or killed, and there's no chance of a conviction (or even police attention) without video evidence. If you have video evidence, and there is a history of crime, and someone gets hurt, then in the end, you can get a custodial sentence passed. It's an uphill struggle, though, because there's a hell of a lot of civil liberties in the way.
If nobody gets hurt, there's nothing you can do even with cameras. Every weekend, kids come up the road from the other, nastier neighborhood to the south, and as they go they kick over stuff and pull flowers out because, well, that's the local culture. It's not a life-threatening problem -- it just means you kind of have to remember to get stuff indoors by a certain time on Fridays. And don't grow rosebushes in the front yard.
But all is not lost. Armed robbery generally *does* mean someone eventually getting hurt, and next year there will be cameras for that bit of street, yay! And none of this is really *Real Violent Crime* such as you might find in south chicago; it's just that there's no reason *not* to mug people or kick stuff over so it just becomes the normal expectation that those things will happen.
The thing about 'omg they are taking our libertiez!' is, Civil Liberties in this sense aren't as important as for example the liberty to *not* be mugged or the liberty to *not* have your stuff smashed or the most important liberty of all, the liberty to *not* have the nature of your life dictated by the whims of thugs. The liberty of not being recorded on camera is actually pretty trivial by comparison.
So install some more freakin cameras. Create new powers to stop 'public nuisance', use electronic tags, maybe suspend habeas corpus or something. Take away more civil liberties. Here, have some of mine. I'll expect them back when I leave the UK.
Re:We needed to be unashamedly populist... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why political change usually comes in the form of War. Most people don't do anything about anything unless they see it as a problem that is costing them more than it would to address the problem. When it comes to regaining eroding freedoms, the cost of getting arrested at a real protest is too high for comfortable middle class folks. Only when things get bad enough that there is no "comfortable middle class" will the masses be likely to deal with the problem of bad government. By that time the only solution is civil war. When a government takes away your freedoms they don't willingly give them back.
Re:We need more cameras (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you recall if it was like that there before cameras were installed in the surrounding area?
-Peter
Re:We need more cameras (Score:4, Insightful)
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 timing (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Film Would Be Even Longer If Made In The US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:We need more cameras (Score:3, Insightful)
Big Brother is watching you, but he most certainly isn't watching the fucking criminals.
Now, just for a minute, try and do something that British people are generally terrible at, and try and look at the big picture. Why is there so much armed crime round your way? Clue: the answer is not "because there aren't any CCTV cameras".
The real, underlying problem with life in Britain today - the problem which is a major cause not only of this sort of crime, but of the creeping totalitarianism that this documentary is about - is that the majority of the populace care about absolutely nothing besides the value of their fucking houses. The greed and selfishness is the root cause of the crime, and it's the reason why the government can get away with the stunts they've been pulling. As long as those house prices keep going up, nothing else matters to the average voter.
Re:This film will be enormously interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't trust the current government very far, but if I did, the same principle applies.
nice fearmongering, try responsiblity instead. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:We need more cameras (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:most ppl are stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
WE DON'T HAVE SUCH A DOCUMENT. WE DON'T LIVE IN SUCH A STATE.
We never have.
Therefore your film about rights we've never had is as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Re:Right to bear arms? (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Re:The Film Would Be Even Longer If Made In The US (Score:2, Insightful)
What needs to happen is that somebody reputable, well-known, and with the actual power to influence events has to come out and start actively fighting for restoring civil liberties. An Inconvenient Truth was a large success because Al Gore is known to have strong feelings on the environment and he is in a position to bring about change, especially with the help of a growing populace who support his viewpoint and believe global warming is an important issue. With Gore's success, his film has convinced a lot of people about the importance of combating global warming today or atleast supporting his viewpoint should the issue be raised when they can use their vote to help (political candidates nowadays can't just totally ignore the issue when asked about it). But the film did well and the issue is being discussed now largely because Gore made it and can use his connections to increase awareness and help institute change over time (if Moore made the film it would be immediately demonized and forgotten).
Re:Gah! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, we should just accept all the propaganda that's being shoved our way via Fox News, talk radio (ClearChannel, Salem, TRN)? You don't think that Tom Paine or Ben Franklin wrote "political propaganda"?
I'm not saying there should be any support for dishonesty, but the best political messages have a little drama. You have to get people's attention before you give them the message, yes?
When the mainstream media as used by corporate power is putting their resources toward putting people to sleep and hypnotizing them to be good consumers and borrowers, then maybe it's time to WAKE THEM UP. I mean sure, life will go on the day after we are all slaves to corporate power. We'll eat, sleep, fuck, except our souls will have become superfluous. We'll still be able to watch American Idol after work, and we didn't really need to read all that depressing anti-Bush, anti-Growth, anti-Profit nonsense. Did we?
I'm not going to fault someone who cares about freedom because they used the tools of propaganda to slap these sleepy-assed sheep awake. That's why, in spite of his shortcomings, I think Michael Moore is a patriot, and is doing something very necessary. Of course, the people on the Right will tell you that you shouldn't listen to him because HE'S FAT, but his documentaries are a lot more carefully researched and intellectually honest than anything you'll see come from Rupert Murdoch's sausage-grinder. Sure, it's propaganda, but thank God.
Re:We needed to be unashamedly populist... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like in the Great Woman Wars, when the suffragettes fought their way, rifles in hand, to the ballot box, the Race Wars waged in the '50s under the careful, analytical and ruthless direction of Martin Luther King, and the Gay/Lesbian Guerrillas of the '70s(who still, of course, meet the Christian Right Crusaders in occasional skirmishes).
Or perhaps there are other ways to change unjust systems in democracies? I'm painfully aware that democracy doesn't work as well as we'd like, but saying that a war is the "usual" way these changes happen seems either overly prematurely defeatist("We can't stop this from devolving into a war"), apathetic("I'm not going to do anything about this until it devolves into a war") or like a survivalist fantasy("Can't wait 'till the war!").
Re:Film as political persuasion (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a small film, so why is it being released in summer blockbuster season? Maybe it will get an audience--after all, the BBC is advertising it. But it's also possible that this film will be in the cinemas for two weeks and then be pulled for "lack of interest," since so many Brits will be watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3 or the latest Harry Potter film.
And who distributes this to DVD? When it does reach DVD, the DVDs might all be region 1... [sigh]
Re:This film will be enormously interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The Film Would Be Even Longer If Made In The US (Score:2, Insightful)
The issue of forcing us into debt is couched in the fact of cutting taxes while raising spending to miraculous levels. It is completely irresponsible to do so and creates more debt for our nation than has ever been created before. Against our will.
Cutting programs? Ha! More like building giant monolithic bureaucracy that dooms our intelligence agencies to ignorance. Any sound investor can tell you diversifying your investments is very important. Hard to do that when they're all in one basket.
Illegally imprisoning people without charge has occurred in the past, but not in the recent past on such a scale as we see today. Whatever the past may say, it was wrong then and it is wrong today to do so.
And that's where I find the biggest problem with your questions. Two wrongs have never, ever, ever made a right. Just because others have done the same thing does not justify it. It is wrong to place a wiretap or otherwise eavesdrop without the oversight of the courts. It is wrong to take someone into custody and question them without either granting them immunity from prosecution (in which case they are free and merely detained for their protection, isolated from prisoners) or charging them with a crime (in which case they have the right to a trial, legal representation, to confront their accusers and evidence against them before a jury).
If we have such a big problem in this country with doing things by the book, according to the letter of the law, then we might as well hang up our hats. There is no such thing as asymmetric justice and liberty. It's either, as the Pledge says, "with liberty and justice for all" or it's "without liberty or justice for any."
As for the democracy issue, it's hard to say when a nation stops being a democracy just as it's hard to say when a grocery store stops becoming commerce. If I'm wildly misinformed and ignorant of the products in the grocery store (their contents, uses, costs, externalities) when does my decision to buy them stop being reasonable? Obviously there is some point at which it does. If everyone in the nation voted on randomness would it still be democracy? That is an interesting question which would take some time and thought to answer.
No doubt you've posted because A) you believe what you say or B) you don't believe anything you say. If it's the former then you ought to stick to defending the decisions rather than those that make them. And not by saying "it's been done like this before." If it's the latter I applaud you for use of Socratic Irony.
Re:We need more cameras (Score:2, Insightful)
So in this one South London neighborhood that I occasionally frequent, there was an armed robbery at 4 in the afternoon on the main street last Saturday. It's a quiet neighborhood, very well-balanced, well-off, so it makes sense to come there and rob people.
There was a similar robbery the previous week.
The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras
It looks like you've got some small time crooks with an IQ over 90 deliberately targeting areas without CCTV.
Please, think about what your asking for. Will putting CCTV on your street make these crooks apply for jobs at the supermarket, or will it just make them target a street 500 yards away.
CCTV doesn't prevent crime, it just redirects it.
I live about a 15 minutes walk from the town centre, a few years ago the council did a pilot scheme of putting CCTV everywhere in the town centre and the two most deprived areas in the town.
CCTV worked, very well, the crime rate in town fell, the council called it a massive success, while my area saw a massive rise in crime (we're situated between town and one of the deprived areas), the police fly-postered warnings about bag snatchers, burglaries rose (3 on my street of 20 houses within a year, I'd only heard of 2 burglaries in the previous 2 decades).
My area got CCTV about 18 months later, and crime has dropped to marginally higher than before, so while I'm happy that my area has CCTV, I'm not fooling myself, the crooks are still committing crimes, the council just spent a fortune on CCTV to make them walk a few hundred extra yards to commit crimes.
We still get local kids being vandals, but they've largely moved off the main streets and into side streets (a few weeks ago every car on the street was vandalised, the local cemetery has been vandalised repeatedly), the CCTV still catches the dumb crooks, or the ones so desperate for a fix that they don't care, but any even remotely smart crook is now targeting somewhere else.
The only way CCTV can actually prevent a non-idiot crook is by putting CCTV literally everywhere. Everywhere.
So yeah, you're right, The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras, but the only reason it's your problem is because someone else decided to shift the problem onto you, and your solution is to shift the problem onto someone else. Can't blame you, it really sucks living in a high crime area, but when the entire country tries to shift the problem onto someone else it doesn't really work.
My solution: Don't really have one, Britain already has by far the highest prison population per capita in Europe (141 per 1000, 2nd place is Germany with 98 per 1000 [nao.org.uk]), so I doubt building more prisons would help, I guess the only real options are to go the absolute sissy route, treating the thugs nicely and train them to be productive members of society, or to bring in daily torture in prisons to make thugs really not want to go back. Hopefully there is a 3rd way I'm not seeing, but the current system isn't working.
Re:We needed to be unashamedly populist... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sadly, not going to happen ... (Score:1, Insightful)
You're playing dumb and you know it. Say you don't intend innocent deaths as much as you like. If you take actions that are guaranteed to result in innocent deaths, and you're in possession of a mature human mind, then your intent is to cause those deaths along with whatever other goals you've set for yourself. In this case, your stated goal is to reduce terrorism -- but, curiously, even the people you're directly waging war against generally have nothing to do with terrorism. Well, correction: they had nothing to do with terrorism, but since you went and killed their families they've probably been having second thoughts.
"The US spends literally billions of dollars on weapons systems with no other purpose than ever-increasing the precision so as not to destroy or harm infrastructure or persons not intended."
You are so generous with your money! Spending billions of other people's tax dollars, all to ensure that you don't kill quite as many innocent civilians!
You were fretting in your previous post about the billions of dollars of damage terrorists might want to cause. I reminded you, as you might have overlooked the fact, that you have now spent hundreds of billions of dollars "fighting terrorism" in military invasions that don't have anything to do with fighting terrorism.
You've also killed thousands of American soldiers and tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent foreigners (yes, I said tens or hundreds of thousands because I, and you also, have no idea of the actual figure). This cost, in money and lives, far exceeds even the greatest cost of terrorism in your overactive imagination. Meanwhile, it does nothing to reduce terrorism. If anything, it increases its future likelihood.
"Huh? Where? Who? At most, there were hundreds of people in Guantanamo Bay, and dozens in rendition programs, and frankly, I - and thankfully many others - see terrorism and the fights against Islamic radicalism in general as a military issue, not an issue for the courts. Even things like the Military Commissions Act, designed to clarify US response to enemy combatants and their status, DOES NOT apply to US citizens or persons with a valid US immigration status."
Well, in case you've forgotten, the executive branch of the United States government claims it has the right to detain U.S. citizens without trial, and has done so already. Ever heard of Padilla?
As for the number of detainees, this article [breitbart.com] put the number at over 83,000 just between 2001 and 2005.
You like to pretend foreigners don't deserve trials, and that is an understandable attitude for someone so selfish and delusional. Nonetheless, a person with an ounce of sense and any conscience whatsoever will grant certain
"Whatever. We also kill some. Surprising, isn't it? That throughout history, humans kill others who would kill them?"
Yep, you torture some, and you kill some, and it's not really surprising at all. It's only surprising that you still think you're killing and torturing people who were trying to kill you, when all evidence is to the contrary.
You even want to pretend it's not really "torture" when you waterboard somebody. Well, consider this. Many would think of drowning as a pretty horrible way to die. Now think of drowning. Then, you're alive again. Then you're drowning. Over and over again, experiencing a painful, wracking, struggling death.
Some people would call that torture. Not you. To
Re:Gah! (Score:3, Insightful)