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In the UK, Possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook Is Terrorism
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Oct 08, 2007 06:22 AM
from the orwell-would-have-been-so-proud dept.
from the orwell-would-have-been-so-proud dept.
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.'"
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Queue the outraged moderates.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Terrorism or Suicide? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Terrorism or Suicide? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Terrorism or Suicide? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Terrorism or Suicide? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the process we forget the mere possession of a book doesn't necessarily mean we're attempting to do what's written in it.
Wow, I just protested against a government policy, they better put me in jail before I kill someone.
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Re:Terrorism or Suicide? (Score:5, Funny)
Amen. That's a book that we should encourage terrorists to own and experiment with. Be a lot fewer of them it they did.
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ugh.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't people know most of the stuff in that book is a good way to get yourself blown up? Dangerous or not, though, censorship of any kind is just not acceptable in a free society. Everybody should read banned books [ala.org].
Amazon.co.uk (Score:5, Informative)
That's a bit vague... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:That's a bit vague... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:That's a bit vague... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same thing. It gives the authorities extra charges they can add to increase the severity of the punishment and make it more likely that they can secure a conviction. If the state starts sliding towards a real police state, it also allows them to arrest anyone for practically anything - for instance, for a government to have political opponents arrested, by using nebulous laws that can practically make any object "useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism". A police state would go through, say, the government opponent's garden shed and find some sodium chlorate weedkiller, and arrest the opponent on the grounds that this is an ingredient for explosives and useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.
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Am I the first person who gets to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Just a wild, crazy idea.
Re:Am I the first person who gets to say... (Score:5, Informative)
Freedom of expression
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Re:Am I the first person who gets to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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No it isn't, thank you very much. (Score:5, Interesting)
This may confuse many an american who live in a country that isn't free but they think it is. In europe we know we ain't got many of the supposed freedoms of the US of A and more or less, we like it that way. In for instance Holland the rules about banned books is VERY clear, it is the goverment that has banned them and those books are banned and ONLY those books. NO OTHER BOOKS CAN BE BANNED BY ANYONE ELSE!
No withholding funding from libraries that stock books somebody doesn't like. No pressure on printers, no self-censorship. IF the goverment wants to ban something, they got to come out and do it openly.
The US is very different, in theory every book is free, just that libraries that stock the wrong ones get no funding. An even greater evil exists in self-censorship. It allows the politicians to wash their hands off any anti-freedom policy while still having censorship.
Freespeech does not exist (shout fire in a crowded room to see just how free you are) so why even pretend it does exist? Far better to have extremely clear rules about what can and what cannot be said and make it very clear WHO wants it to be that way.
IF the british goverment wants to get rid of the page 3 girl, they would have to do it themselves, directly and show it to the public. In the US, the goverment would just hint at regulation, then the industry would self-regulate and nobody would be any the wiser.
Do I agree with the cookbook being under the terrorism law? No, but at least it is clear who is responsible for it (Labour party/Blair), it is clearly banned, not just not in stock at the local library. You go and live in lala land screaming to yourselve that you got freespeech. I prefer to live in the real world and KNOW what is forbidden and who forbids it. At least that gives me a target.
Parent
He was making explosives (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing the headline, summary and article itself don't make clear is that this guy had half a kilo of potassium nitrate, 250g of calcium chloride, videos of beheadings and he had recently visited Pakistan. More information article. [yorkshirepost.co.uk] There's a lot more to this story than "kid reads forbidden book and gets arrested". It sounds more like "this guy looks like he was planning on blowing people up".
Re:He was making explosives (Score:5, Informative)
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It wasn't the anarchist part he was in trouble for (Score:5, Funny)
Those of us who have eaten British cuisine will realize fully its hazardous potential.
Yeah, it seems innocent enough, until the kid opens a delicatessen and starts whipping up some kippers & marmite. I'm sorry, but free speech has its limits, and kippers & marmite lie squarely on the other side of it. Blech!
Ok, we arrived at thoughtcrimes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Remind me... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Cue the knee-jerk reaction (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Cue the knee-jerk reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Anarchist's Cookbook saved my life (Score:5, Funny)
One day when I was but a lad of 16, my girlfriend dumped me for a pickup-driving football player who beat me up in gym class. In the subsequent evening alone with my thoughts I wore out my The Cure vinyl by overplaying it, so that the hissing, scratching hiss of the record player formed perfect accompaniment for the wailing and lamentation of my punctured and bleeding heart. As the record starting to skip and I heard Robert Smith wail "-enever I'm al-" over and over, I realized two things:
1. I really #%^%$! hated The Cure.
2. I was going to slit my wrists that very night. It was going to be just like that scene in The Royal Tenenbaums, with Elliot Smith and everything. Elliot Smith is way better than the cure, like, he stuck a freaking knife in his chest, man. Oh wait, maybe I should do that instead...
But then, as I was surfing online for inventive ways to kill myself, I found the Anarchist's Cookbook. That book changed my life forever. Here was someone who was clearly more pathetic than me, and who had obviously failed chemistry to boot. I got a C in chem! If in my life I could say to myself "at least I wasn't that idiot who wrote the Anarchist's Cookbook," that was a life worth living. From that moment on, I renounced all satanic rock music, discovered Christ and placed my life with the Lord, and now I run a successful business as a reseller of fine artist Thomas Kinkade's work. All thanks to the Anarchist's Cookbook. Thank you Lord, for sending me the Anarchist's Cookbook in my time of need.
Parent
Re:Quit sensationalizing everything (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Quit sensationalizing everything (Score:5, Interesting)
> Quit fucking sensationalizing everything.
This is the UK government, what do you expect? They are slowly inventing thier own kind of newspeak, where highly emotive language can be used to justify anything.
The best one was last year when some poor guys house was accidentally raided by mistake. The police burst in, accidentally shot him and labeled him a "terrorist suspect" (rather than just a normal "suspect"). When it started to become clear that they had the wrong address, they decided he was also a paedophile and investigated him for that as well. A TERRORIST PAEDOPHILE!!!
In the end, they dropped all charges.
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