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."
I'll take back some of my liberties... (Score:3, Interesting)
We needed to be unashamedly populist... (Score:4, Interesting)
most ppl are stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
oh, and before you ask, many of them regard themselves as 'intellectual' (a.k.a. they don't read yellow press etc.).
kinda seems like only IT ppl and civil rights activists are concerned now. and i absolutely cannot see anything that would change that.
Film as political persuasion (Score:3, Interesting)
It's interesting to me that video has become the newest, best tool to portray a point of view on an issue. Now if we could get these videos on the airwaves on a regular basis, I think the public good would be served. I realize that oil companies, tobacco companies, and other groups with an agenda might tend to drown out the discourse with their own videos. Still, these videos are better than the 30 second sound bites that we get in our broadcast TV channels.
saw it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure I already saw this movie when it was called V for Vendetta. Or was it Children of Men?
Re:sadly, not going to happen ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:This film will be enormously interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Intresting quote on the site (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
What is liberty (Score:1, Interesting)
The world used to be so simple, when I was young primates had a male leader who had beaten the previous male leader in a fight and replaced him. Younger males could live under his care until they became too dangerous to his rule and were forced to live outside the group, were natural selection would make on of them the next challenger.
It all made sense, was simple and that was how the monkeys lived and in some way so did humans.
Turns out that is not the case at all. The male leader may very well win temporary control just by beating the old leader BUT if he then acts like an asshole to his new harem of females and is too rough with their young then he might just learn that a dozen pissed of female monkeys can seriously hurt one male leader, especially one not smart enough to have a second in command.
So in one docu the old leader is replaced by a new upstart, the females don't like his attitude and give him a near lethal kicking and the old leaders second becomes the new boss with the old leader now being the second in command. So the females really decided who they wanted after all. Revolution in the monkey world.
Note however that at no time did the monkeys bother with election or trying to correct the behaviour of the hooligan monkey. He died of his wounds. Execution.
Yet for the last couple of decades both left and right wingers have toned down the element of punishement for crimes in our own society, the left because they are bleeding hearts and the right because they are to cheap too pay for prisons and other essential tools of a justice system.
This leads to repear offenders by wich they don't mean people who are commiting their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, etc etc crime but people whose offences are in the triple digits, and still are getting non-sentences that are often not even applied.
What does a sentence forcing someone to do a few hours of community work sentence but a clear message that working is a punishement (how would you like to have a job to wich other people are sentenced) especially if people then can use excuses like actually perfoming this sentence would place an undue burden on them.
Note that both the left and the right are to blame for this. The left because they believe the softly softly approach will work despite several decades of failure and the right because they think you can keep cutting costs and still get the result. It is odd that right wingers are all for locking people up for life and executing them but when you ask them cover the cost of the bullet they can't be found. Just as odd as the left wingers who shout the hardest never ever seem to live in the areas affected by their social experiments. Odd eh.
The situation you describe is the end result of years of mis-management, were rights granted to combat excesses were taken to far and now create just as much problems as they were supposed to correct.
I do not think it is right childeren should be sentenced as adults. HOWEVER that does not mean that kids under a certain age cannot be touched by the law. There are criminal gangs that use children because they know the police does not have any power to stop them. A kid who commits a crime knowing he cannot be punished is a sign that things have gone to far to the other side.
Perhaps a person needs a second chance BUT at the moment the system seems to be more like a person needs another chance, and another and another and another add infinitum.
I take public tranport in amsterdam, holland as an example. There used to be conductors on the trams. They were removed. The left thought the people could police themselves, the right wanted to cut staffing costs. Problems encurred, were muffled over by both sides until finally the problems became just too big, too many people not paying and security problems. So now we have both cameras and the conductor back. One huge failure of a social experiment but does anyone bother to interview the people t
Re:This film will be enormously interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
scarier in the U.S. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We needed to be unashamedly populist... (Score:5, Interesting)
So no, it may not be War, like the American Revolution, but it would still be war, like those pushing the issue have reason to fear for their safety. Still far too much commitment. What Rights are you willing to get beaten with a police baton to protect?