Tag Archives: Political

Daniel Suarez on why the kill decision should not belong to a robot

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Daniel Suarez talk is one I think everyone should watch. The more I consider his words the more I’m convinced that he is right in calling for international ban on the development and deployment of autonomous killer robots. He makes many good points during the talk but here are the ones that really made me stop and think:

because as we migrate lethal decision-making from humans to software, we risk not only taking the humanity out of war, but also changing our social landscape entirely, far from the battlefield. That’s because the way humans resolve conflict shapes our social landscape … Now if responsibility and transparency are two of the cornerstones of representative government, autonomous robotic weapons could undermine both … And this is why we need an international treaty on robotic weapons, and in particular a global ban on the development and deployment of killer robots. Now we already have international treaties on nuclear and biological weapons, and, while imperfect, these have largely worked. But robotic weapons might be every bit as dangerous, because they will almost certainly be used, and they would also be corrosive to our democratic institutions.

Stop Child Executions

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http://www.stopchildexecutions.com

I can’t say that I entirely oppose the death penalty, but I firmly believe there can be no justification for the execution of children. I understand that some of these children have committed crimes that are abhorrent but I’m forced to question whether it’s right to impose the death penalty upon youngsters who are by definition immature and not necessarily able to fully comprehend the consequences of their actions.

Islamabad Airport – Harassment, Bribery and Corruption

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As you’ve read in my previous post I had a hell of a time getting flights into and back out of Pakistan thanks to the antics of their national airline. However I want to talk about what happened to me at Islamabad Airport as I was trying to leave the country.

I arrived at the airport just before 8am. On entering the airport I went through the first security check which was a single police officer standing at the main entrance checking your passport and ticket. No problems there. Once I got through there I had to proceed to a security check performed by the Pakistan Anti Narcotics Force. I was told to place my suitcase on a table.

The ANF Officer asked me where I had travelled from, but didn’t wait for the answer he proceeded to take a knife and start stabbing my suitcase. Which at this point was still locked. I’ve been to many airports around the world and this was the first time I’d ever had anyone stabbing my suitcase, I’m not entirely sure what this was meant to prove or check for. Before I had a chance to protest though his knifed broke in half as the idiot tried to stab the front plate of my suitcase which is metal. He then told me to open the suitcase up and proceeded to rifle through all my belongings throwing things onto the floor as he did so.

My suitcase contained a load of clothes, several cricket balls which I had purchased in Kashmir as gifts for some of the kids at Local Leagues, several books and a couple of small souvenirs which were packed in a small plastic bag which also contained one of my watches. When he discovered the cricket balls he proceeded to start sniffing each of them. I wasn’t aware human beings were actually able to smell narcotics in this manner, security forces normally use sniffer dogs. Anyway he kept tossing my belongings on the floor and the table until he was satisfied at which point I had to hurriedly pack everything back into my suitcase, I took care to make sure that all the items that were on the floor/table ended up back in my suitcase. It was only when I returned to the UK and opened up my suitcase that I realised the bastard had taken the small bag containing the watch and the souvenirs I’m positive he stole it because I packed away all the items that I could see he had tossed onto the floor/table.

Anyway after he had finished with me I proceeded to the next security check. This simply involved me placing my luggage through the x-ray machine and walking through a metal detector and being frisked by a police office. No problem there. After this I proceeded to get my luggage checked in and get my boarding pass. No real problems there.

I then had to proceed to Immigration. Where there were a load of Police Officers with the letters FIA ( Federal Investigation Agency ) emblazoned on their Uniforms. When I reached the immigration desk the officer asked me for my passport and boarding pass which I duly handed over. He then asked me where I had been staying during my visit. He then stared at me and asked me if I was the individual in the picture in my passport, and I said yes! He asked me for my date of birth. Which I provided. He then told me he thought my passport was fake because it wasn’t scanning. However he hadn’t yet tried to scan it! So I just looked at him. He then asked me a question “kuch aur deso?” which in my mind I translated as “do you have any other identification you want to show me?” to which I said no that’s my passport, and it should be fine since I’ve travelled all over the world on it. He kept repeating the question, and I kept replying as I had done.

Eventually after keeping me standing there for almost 40 minutes some of the other passengers in the queue behind me got rather rowdy. Someone shouted out “just give the bastard some money, that’s what he’s asking you for!” others in the queue started hurling abuse at the officer as well as the police in general. The ruckus caused a number of other FIA officers to walk over to see what was going on. They asked their colleague what the problem was and he told them my passport was fake and wasn’t scanning. To which I responded he hasn’t tried to scan it yet. Another officer, wondered over and took the passport from his colleague and scanned it through the machine first time, handed it to me, and told me to proceed. As I walked past the officer who had held me there the best part of an hour I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of him, which I wont repeat here.

Once I got through immigration I had to go through another frisking, and then another metal detector and being frisked once more. Once I got through all that I was able to proceed to the waiting lounge. At this point I felt really drained and quite angry. But I figured I’m through the worst of it, and looked back at the queue of people having to go through all the same security checks and actually felt sorry for them.

My visit to Kashmir left me with a very low opinion of Pakistani Police Officers – they’re all corrupt. It seems it’s impossible to travel anywhere without having to go through impromptu checkpoints set up by small groups of Pakistani police officers who aren’t checking anything just asking drivers to hand over money. They seem to target vehicles that have Kashmiri license plates (which being with letters AJK), in fact I can’t recall making a trip where our driver didn’t have to pay some police officer a bribe to let us travel around our own country which is quite depressing.

There have been wars fought by India and Pakistan over possession of Kashmir and as it stands the country is divided in two. The Indian controlled half of Kashmir is often referred to as “Indian Occupied” Kashmir, whereas the Pakistani side of Kashmir is referred to as “Azaad Kashmir” which means “Free Kashmir”, but the sad truth is that Kashmir is not a free state – not in any true sense of the word. It’s occupied by two nations, Indian and Pakistan, and both nations have committed atrocities against our people, and continue to do so. Growing up I used to fill in application forms that asked for ethnicity as “Pakistani” since it was always one of the check boxes and we were always taught that Kashmiri’s were Pakistani’s. If I learnt anything about myself on this trip its that I am of Kashmiri decent, and I’m definitely not Pakistani – its taken 29 years for me to learn the difference and that hurts.
Anyway I’m digressing, back to the airport.

I was sitting in the departure lounge waiting for the air plane to arrive. As usual it was delayed which meant sitting there for 4 hours! Whilst I was sitting there a gentleman in suit came and sat down next to me. I didn’t think anything of it until several armed police officers walked over to where I was sitting. My first reaction was “shit am I in trouble for calling that FIA guy a C…”, but it wasn’t me they were interested in. The officers walked straight up to the gentleman sitting next to me and proceeded to apologise to him for not meeting him at the entrance of the airport.

I listened to the conversation rather intently, I figured this guy must be someone really important. What I overheard, and then confirmed by talking to the gentleman at great length (i had four hours to kill) actually terrified me to the point where I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to get onto the plane. Here’s why…

The police officers had been sent by their senior officer to escort his friend “the gentleman” through airport security to the waiting lounge, and to ensure he wasn’t harassed by anyone. During the course of our conversation this gentleman went to great detail to explain what “not being harassed” meant.

When he normally travelled from Islamabad it meant he’s met out front by several officers. They take his passport and his ticket. One of the officers escorts the gentleman pass all the security checks to the waiting lounge. The others take all his luggage directly through the luggage check-in without it ever being opened or x-rayed. It’s checked in. They then take his passport and ticket and have it stamped at immigration and then take his documents up to him in the waiting lounge – he doesn’t normally go through immigration himself.

He went to great length boasting at how he doesn’t have a weight limit regardless of who he fly’s with, how on his last trip he was able to take close to 100 KG of luggage with him. I told him that must have been expensive, and he laughed and said “they don’t charge me anything … the police just load it onto the plane”. He was holding his boarding pass in his hand and I clearly see it was marked “Economy” just like mine. This meant was only entitled to 30 KG.

Why did this frighten me so much? Since 9/11 Airports around the world have been implementing more and more rigorous and some feel more draconian security measures to ensure that bombs and weapons cant be smuggled onto aircraft. As passengers we sometimes feel harassed by this or frustrated but we all like to think that hey everyone has to go through the same process and in the end it’s for our own safety – so we accept it.

At Islamabad airport though if your friends with a senior police officer none of the security checks or rules need apply to you. Your luggage isn’t even put through an x-ray machine. That scares me. It scares me a lot.

Many airlines British Airways, Emirates, US, Singapore etc. fly to and from airports in Pakistan. The pilots and cabin crew don’t work on check-in desks they rely on the local authorities to have conducted all the necessary security and safety checks to ensure no one gets a weapon or a bomb onto a plane, either in hand luggage or in the cargo hold. But if those security checks are routinely circumvented by certain people, either because its so easy to bribe officials, or because officials are happy to do favours for friends – then that puts us all in danger.

I believe that any airline that has assets travelling to and from airports in Pakistan needs to demand that something is done about this. I can tell you this – if a plane ever blows up or is hijacked after leaving an airport in Pakistan you don’t need to waste millions on exhaustive investigations to figure out how the “terrorists” got weapons or a bomb onto the plane; corruption amongst security personal at airports in Pakistan is culturally ingrained, I fear it isn’t a question of “if” it will happen. It’s a question of “when”. Unless the international community and airlines around the world do something about it. Ironically the FIA was created to combat this type of corruption and that’s the authority that handles such complaints or issues – yet I’ve seen with my own eyes how corrupt FIA officials are.

As for the important gentleman in the blue suit? I told him I thought he must be someone really important to get that kind of treatment. Turns out he’s unemployed living off benefits – he’s not a dignatory, not an official – just a nobody who happens to be the relative of a good friend of the head of police at the airport.

The brain scan that read people’s intentions

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Came across this article on the Guardian online.

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act

When I read the headline the first thought that sprung to mind was 1984 closely followed by Minority Report. It reveals how far neuroscience is progressing but an urgent debate is needed on the ethical issues surrounding such technologies.

The idea of being able to control a computer with your mind, or a wheelchair on the face of it sounds quite appealing and advocates of this technology argue that it could have many such benefits.

Detractors maintain that such technology could be used to create an Orwellian style society. This kind of technology has the potential to change society, and we need to understand and encourage debate around its ethical use:

“Do we want to become a ‘Minority Report’ society where we’re preventing crimes that might not happen? For some of these techniques, it’s just a matter of time. It is just another new technology that society has to come to terms with and use for the good, but we should discuss and debate it now because what we don’t want is for it to leak into use in court willy nilly without people having thought about the consequences” Barbara Sahakian,Professor Neuro-Psychology at Cambridge

“These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we’re not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared,” Professor John Dylan-Haynes

John Reid: Raising stupidity to an art form …

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I was alarmed to read that after three men were jailed for this plot to assault two young sisters, the home office announced it’s plan to get paedophiles to register their web names. Just how out of touch with reality is the home office under John Reid? Not only this totally impractical its smacks of yet another misguided knee-jerk reaction designed more to garner headlines than do anything to protect anyone.

According to a home office spokesman this idea would mean that sex offenders would have to register their online identity with the police, the notion that “online identities would be treated in exactly the same was their real name” is ridiculous given that it takes about five seconds to register a new email address, and even ip addresses can be faked – i cant see how this could be enforced and it seems to me to be a monumental waste of money.

After reading Bruce Schneier’s piece on the Psychology of Security I can’t help but feel this is a move to make people feel more secure when the reality is that they are far from it.

The wider issue of everyone having a single Internet Identity that uniquely identifies them (like a National Insurance number), is interesting. I need to give it a bit more thought before I comment on it.

Prosecution based on thought crimes

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Found this by Amy Waldman on Bruce Schneier’s latest blog posting. The article center’s around how the Unites States is now prosecuting suspected Islamic terrorists on the basis of intentions and not just their actions. It makes for a fascinating read, because it reveals how the prosecution builds its cases on different interpretations of Islam, Islamic scripture and Islamic belief – in effect, as Bruce rightly points out, they are placing the religion on trial. What’s worse, prosecuting people based on a belief or an interpretation of a belief, or because they have expressed a belief then they are a threat ( a throught-crime ) sets a dangerous precedent – one that the current administration has sidestepped:

The Bush administration did not seek legislation to authorize its new pre-emptive approach, instead relying on existing, if previously little used, laws. Key among these were two statutes—passed in 1994 and 1996 respectively—barring “material support” of terrorism, which can mean anything from personnel to funds. The laws, which were expanded under post-9/11 legislation, allow the government to bring terrorism- related charges even when no terrorism has occurred.

The article does raise some excellent points around the whole issue of the rhetoric found in Islamic Extremism:

The rhetoric of Islamic extremism may present the toughest challenge for that standard since its establishment. The question lapping at the trials’ edges—and sometimes at their core—is how the law should deal with language that does not incite but, through a long slow process, indoctrinates. On the continuum between word and deed, belief and action, where do we draw the legal lines?

I’ll concede that this is an incredibly divisive topic and I can understand why its so difficult for the judiciary to deal with this. Equally though it alarms me that a Muslim who, perhaps professes sympathy to the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, might under this interpretation of the law find him/herself branded a terrorist.

The interpretation of Islamic texts is fraught with difficulties and extremists have been very good at using this to their advantage but that isn’t something that is at all unique to Islam. At the moment though it’s only Islam that seems to be linked so inextricably with terrorism. As Amy points out:

The question of how to interpret a text may be as old as writing, and it applies equally to determining where the power of religious speech inheres. In authorial intent? A reader’s interpretation? Historical or modern context? Over the centuries, and even today, the Bible and Christian theology have helped justify the Crusades, slavery, violence against gays, and the murder of doctors who perform abortions. The words themselves are latent, inert, harmless—until they aren’t.

What worries me the most though are the comments made one of the Jurors at a trial that Amy describes in her article:

We’re not being asked, “Did the defendant commit the crime?”—whether it’s larceny, murder, whatever. Now you’re being asked, “Is the defendant capable of doing a crime?” And I don’t think that that is in the … level of understanding of the juror.

SAS troops are stationed in london

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I was alarmed to learn that an SAS unit is now stationed in London1 in the hopes that with their military training the SAS can help combat the threat of terrorists, perhaps better than specially equipped Police units.

It’s no secret that the Met completely got it wrong with reference to the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes2. They killed the wrong man and then attempted to cover it up with series of lies. However as badly as the situation was handled and as disturbing as the subsequent cover up was, I’m not at all convinced that turning to a military unit is the right answer. Military units are trained for combat not law enforcement, so I find myself questioning whether, in the case of the Menezes shooting, they would have been more or less restrained.

Interestingly, as far as I know here in the UK we do not have the equivalent of the Posse Comitatus Act3, which in the United States is a law that forbids the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the US (unless expressly authorised by Congress). It’s debatable as to whether we need it, however in the US it serves as a deterrent to prevent the deployment of military troops at the local level to deal with what should be purely a law enforcement matter – it should be noted that since 9/11 this law has been somewhat eroded4.

  1. The Times – SAS Unit moves to London in terror fight, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2559186,00.html[back]
  2. Jean Charles de Menezes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_De_Menezes [back]
  3. Posse Comitatus Act, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act[back]
  4. The Myth of Posse Comitatus, Major Craig Trebilcock – http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm[back]

guilty until proven innocent …

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Was catching up on news, when I came across a story that really troubles me. I was shocked to learn that during a radio interview the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Detainee Affairs, Charles “Cully” Stimson, stated that US Companies should boycott law firms that represent any of the detainees currently held in Guantanamo Bay, to quote him:

I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms

Stimson’s remarks deserve condemnation. Neal Sonnett the President of the American Judicature Society, a non-partisan group of judges and lawyers described Stimsons words as “shameful and irresponsible” he actually went on to say that what Stimson words were a “blatant attempt to intimidate lawyers and their firms who are rendering important public service in upholding the rule of law and our democratic ideals”.

Stimson is no stranger to controversy, he infamously stated last October that more than 300 prisoners currently detained at Guantanamo Bay could remain there under US Military detention for the rest of their lives. These are men who have never been tried or legally charged with a crime. Stimson discounted international outrage over the detentions as “small little protests around the world” that were inflated by liberal news agencies. It’s a fact that FBI Agents have documented more than two dozen incidents of mistreatment at Guantanamo – in fact in a December court ruling a federal judge in Washington decried the plight of “some of the unfortunate petitioners who have been detained for many years in terrible conditions at Guantanamo Bay”. Whenever I think of Guantanamo Bay I always recall the following words written by Dostoevsky :

“The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”

The US government tells us that these men are guilty but won’t tell us why, and seemingly isnt willing to let these men be tried in civil courts in front of the world, legally. It’s shocking, though not surprising, that the man they have chosen to oversee detainee policy in Guantanamo would want to encourage legal firms’ corporate clients to pressure them not to defend these men. I would hazard a guess that most of us living in the US or the UK understand that legal representation of the accused is one of the core principles of any democracy – that your innocent until proven guilty. Professor Charles Fried of Harvard Law School recently rebuked Stimson:

It is the pride of a nation built on the rule of law that it affords to every man a zealous advocate to defend his rights in court, and of a liberal profession in such a nation that not only is the representation of the dishonorable honorable (and any lawyer is free to represent any person he chooses), but that it is the duty of the profession to make sure that every man has that representation.

The Pentagon has disavowed Stimson’s remarks, and the controversy surrounding his words resulted in him issuing an apology through the Washington Post. Yet the fact that he hasn’t been sacked speaks volumes about this administration and its conduct.

I remember how different the world around me felt immediately after 9/11. I’m sure It affected everyone. As uncertain a time as it was and as frightening nothing frightened me more than the first time I heard the phrase “The Patriot Act“. It was a piece of legislation signed into law by George Bush that expanded the authority of American law enforcement for the stated purpose of fighting terrorism even though it meant erroding a few civil liberties.

At the time it troubled me greatly that commentators and critics of this bill were branded unpatriotic, or branded as helping the terrorists. Six years on it would appear that the administration is still playing the same card, only now its turning its attention to the lawyers and others in the legal profession trying to provide these individuals with a defence they are entitled to under democratic law.

As I write this I find myself recalling and agreeing with the words of another famous writer, Oscar Wilde, when he said that:

patriotism is the virtue of the vicious