Yet There Is Method In It

Security guru Bruce Schneier has challenged the view that privacy and security are at loggerheads, suggesting the real debate is between liberty and control.

Schneier, security technologist and CTO of BT Counterpane, made the comments during a keynote address at the RSA Conference in London on Tuesday. He sees ubiquitous surveillance and measures such as identity cards tipping the balance towards the state, describing them as stepping stones towards a future where checks become less obtrusive while simultaneously more all-encompassing. The Register

Interesting view there and agrees with what I have said on this blog several times.

There was also a piece on the BBC about flat earth theory. How do you personally know the world is not flat (or flat)?

AC1

On BBC’s question time:

Goldsworthy: How far is he [Hoon] prepared to go to undermine our civil liberties to protect us… [from terrorists?]
Hoon: …To stop terrorists killing people in our society, quite a long way.
[and later]
Host: The words Julia [Goldsworthy] used were “undermining peoples civil liberties”. You said you would go quite a long way to undermine people’s civil liberies?
Hoon: Because the biggest civil liberty is not to be killed by terrorists.

Now I would grant that the right not to be killed is a human right. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” But it is not correct to put this single natural right over the others in the way Hoon argues. With this logic, all the other rights may be abridged to serve the right “not to be killed by terrorists”. If anything, staying alive is less important than the other civil rights. As Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”. If you don’t have the other civil rights, some might think it justified in risking one’s own life to achieve civil rights - this is the case of revolutionaries, freedom fighters and “terrorists”.

I notice that article 12 begins “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy….”. I guess one way to get around this right is to attempt universal surveillance so no individual can claim their privacy was arbitrary violated?

Anti Citizen One

Plans to extend pre-charge detention from a maximum of 28 days to 42 were defeated in the Lords by 191 votes. BBC

They still plan to introduce it if there is an emergency - which means civil rights can be abridged when inconvenient for the state. Keep paying attention to this.

I doubt we will be needing this power anyway.

AC1

Update 21/10 UK’s top prosecutor warns against growing state power

I was engaged in a lively debate recently on the merits or demerits of a monarchical system. Personally I am a republican and in general I consider monarchism an outmoded relic of a bygone era of social repression.

As the debate wore on it became obvious that on most points I was possessed by the spirit of reason. The supporters of monarchy in general could only make appeals to tradition whereas mostly my arguments were based on sound pragmatic opinion.

Then they wheeled out what they consider their strongest argument. Namely “The Royals bring in so much money” i.e. through tourism and as industrial and trade ambassadors.

It is a fairly good argument. Why? Because it sounds empirical - rather than being an appeal to tradition this is an argument based on pragmatic concerns.

There is one problem - basically it is what Wittgenstein would call nonsense. The sentence or proposition though constructed in a way that is similar to an empirical proposition, a proposition about a definite state of affairs, is in fact a clever charade - and according to ‘logical’ rules is a non-argument.

The proposition reads: we must not abolish the monarchy as they provide substantial income for the nation through tourism and trade and industry ambassadorships.

The objection reads: Can you verify this - and is this open to falsification?

The conclusion is: technically one could only hope to measure the “value” of the monarchy by its abolition and subsequent measuring of financial effects.

Naturally no monarchist is going to vote for its abolition - so the argument is null.

The moral of the story - be careful of making psuedo-empirical propositions. When the falsity of their factual basis is uncovered you may find the validity* of your viewpoint eroding away rapidly.

* Validity depends on the language game being played. Just as Anselm famously said “God is a special case” one may choose to argue that psuedo-empirical propositions are in certain language games still valuable and valid as rhetorical tools.

I thought I’d better mention I have a professional interest in non-verbal communication. (and even more importantly, a non-professional interest!) Non verbal communication usually occurs outside of conscious control. Expect more on this subject.

This is in line with my philosophic thinking, fore shadowed by FN (again) when he said of Luther and his translation of the Bible:

He gave the sacred books into the hands of everyone, -they thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based upon books. The Gay Science, 358

So back to current affairs, I was reading news of an interesting study on voting patterns shifts depending on the building where the vote was cast.

[...] in the case of polling locations, seeing lockers, desks and other things associated with schools might activate norms (such as the urge to take care of children) or identities (that is, being a parent) that then shift people to vote to support school funding.
[...]
Policy makers should definitely pay more attention to where people vote and, if possible, be more careful in the types of places selected. Choosing polling places is already a tough task, though—they need to be centrally located, handicap accessible, et cetera, so we are not arguing to eliminate churches and schools altogether. Rather, if such places are used, there are ways to minimize their potential influence. Jonah Berger

Interesting stuff. “Free will” indeed. I expect banks to be used if the government is attempting to make the economy a deciding issue!

Anti Citizen One

Several very interesting news items:

“A federal judge says the University of California can deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.” Interesting state and religion issue. SFGATE

UK Government proposes wide reaching surveillance powers to investigate … well anything. I expect we will soon be given a helpful reminder by an anonymous camera operator when I forget to turn the oven off. I am now thinking the balance of power to the government from the individual is getting extreme. Individual rights are fraying at the edges and are almost torn apart. PCPRO

China: where an application to hold a protest is met with arrest for “disturbing social order”. BBC

Interesting piece on atheism in the US - The Guardian

And a subscription only news item, the New Scientist had a issue exploring the boundaries of reason. I have not finished reading all of it yet!

AC1

The government should adopt a Bill of Rights for the UK, a cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged. BBC

I cautiously welcome this idea but I hold many reservations. If the present UK government has such a feeble grasp of human rights, how can they hope to advance this cause?

Building on existing protections is a noble aspiration which will be difficult to fulfil as long as so many other politicians denigrate our existing Bill of Rights - the Human Rights Act - in thought, word and deed. Shami Chakrabarti

Unspeak by Steven Poole

Another insightful book on the power of words and how they can be used to control how a debate is conducted - and ultimately the outcome of a debate.

[Unspeak] represents an attempt to say something without saying it, without getting into an argument and os having to justify itself. At the same time, it tries to unspeak - in the sense of erasing, or silencing - any possible opposing point of view…

So called “Unspeak” uses ideas we associate with words to control how we think about other idea. I suppose this is a standard technique in rhetoric. Once something is labeled with a word, that word brings associated value judgments to the bear. So to control vocabulary is to control thought. This is well known in politics and public relations.

Wolfowitz acknowledged that, according to international law, the US was in fact engaged in ‘occupation’, but still argued that they shouldn’t have ‘accepted that label’. In other words, he seemed to think that if they had simply called it something else - perhaps a mass sleepover - then no one would have noticed that the occupation was actually an occupation.

You may notice that the US and UK parliments do not have “wars” any more - at least they are not declared. We now are told we have peace keeping operations, liberation operations, etc. And the author points out the word “operation” has medical and beneficial connotations. How easy it is to accept another’s language!

The case of the ‘insurgents’ was a small triumph of journalistic resistance to propagandistic terminology.

… we should at the very least expect, and demand, that our newspapers, radio and television refuse to replicate and spread the Unspeak virus.

The book claims a small triumph against Unspeak was the media (or a subsection of it) rejecting the word terrorist - which instantly condemns the subject - and substituting the word “insurgent”. This word supposedly had no prior meaning so had no previous value judgments. This is a compromise between calling them “freedom fighters” or “terrorists”. The catch is the word “insurgents” previously had no meaning at all and so conveys no information. Is it the job of the media to invent neutral vocabulary? In the extreme they might invent a new word for everything to make everything “objective” - but this would make the media void of meaning.

Naturally, in such a book, it is impossible that I will not myself have committed barbarous acts of Unspeak. I leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to identify them.

I take it as a gauntlet thrown down! The very concept “Unspeak”, subtitled “Words are Weapons” implies it is a bad thing and should be avoided. But the book does not say why “Unspeak” is bad! It also avoids the point that all words contain value judgments. “Unspeak” implies that some ideal “Speech” exists. It does not exist, as has been outlined many times on this blog. Invent a word and apply it to a set of “stuff” requires someone to do some valuation (see the Will to Power). What is needed is not a rejection of Unspeak but more critical thinking.

Anti Citizen One

PS “Do not all words lie to the light ones?” FN

The shadow home secretary has resigned in an apparent attempt to throw down the gauntlet over the governments 42 day detention without charge. Although this is a highly original political move, it has the same air as Monty Python’s Judean People’s Front.

Suicide Squad Leader: We are the Judean People’s Front crack suicide squad! Suicide squad, attack!
[they all stab themselves]
Suicide Squad Leader: That showed ‘em, huh?

I can’t blame them for trying.

In a similar battle against the US political majority, Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich recently called for the Senate to impeach Bush. Political observers do not expect this action to make headway and the resolution has been sent to committee as a delaying tactic.

The problem is the US senate (and the UK parliment) mainly supported the Iraq war and are hardly likely to approve an investigation that might expose their flaws. Since there has been an election in both countries, they know there is no great public pressure to force the issue. The UK government defeated a similar attempt to launch an inquiry into the Iraq war in March 2008.

Anti Citizen One

A bill outlawing the possession of “extreme pornography” is set to become law next week. But many fear it has been rushed through and will criminalise innocent people with a harmless taste for unconventional sex. BBC

They appear to be saying “Cause: violence in pornography/TV/movie/culture causes violent actions”. Ummmmmm… evidence, please? (and anacdotal evidence is not going to be sufficient.) It is more likely that:

Religion and morality say: “A people or a society are destroyed by license and luxury.” My revalued reason says: when a people degenerates physiologically, when it approaches destruction, then the result is license and luxury… Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Therefore banning is pointless and in fact harmful.

Anti Citizen One