I was one of the activists who had their computers seized. I told the police to kiss my ass and they gave up trying to get my password. Though I guess a 6 month concurrent sentence when you’ve already got 4 years isn’t worth the paperwork. Prison was butlins btw. I highly recommend it. Plenty of time to read books
I'm glad your experience wasn't too bad but it isn't always so. The Austrian state practically terrorised some activists here for years destroying their lives and almost completely got away with it until German reporters wrote about it and helped shine a light on the abuses of power. These activists didn't even do anything illegal they just annoyed some powerful and connected individuals.
Sorry this is only in German but maybe you can find English sources about it
What does animal rights activism to the point of that level of government interest look like? Linked article didn't go into any details on the matter at hand.
“Urban terrorism” according to the incredibly foolish judge. Considering no one ever had a finger laid on them he would have a shock if he ever found out about the IRA
Not sure I feel comfortable with celebrating breaking the law.
No one laid a finger - ok no physical violence. However some off the tactics used against people involved in activities you disagree with were not pleasant. I not sure I agree with the narrative that it is a victimless crime.
On the other hand prison works rehabilitated in to society.
Disclaimer: I’m not an animal rights activist. I have some overlapping politics and some disagreements. My intent isn’t to defend any particular action by GP, but to object to this more generally.
> Not sure I feel comfortable with celebrating breaking the law.
I don’t know where you live, forgive me if this comes off condescending.
In the US, celebrating activism with illegal techniques is part of the fabric of our culture, institutional and even foundational. Approximately everyone is taught about:
- the Boston Tea Party, and the Revolutionary War which that and similar actions ultimately precipitated
- the Underground Railroad and other actions to smuggle slaves to their (relative) freedom
- various illegal actions in the Civil Rights movement, from sit ins at segregated businesses to Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit in the back of the bus to Freedom Riders crossing all sorts of state/county lines to help ensure others’ access to polls
There are of course other illegal actions which are less taught/known but nevertheless shaped our society in ways few could disagree with. We have strikers and work saboteurs to thank for the 5-day/40-hour work week. We have the Black Panthers to thank for breakfast and child care programs in schools, as well as the proliferation of community health clinics.
Some of these were not non-violent actions, some of the actions taken in these contexts and others which moved us as a society forward were morally complicated. But at least from my historical perspective, I cannot justify deference to the law as a moral imperative. Sometimes, often even, it’s the law which is morally unacceptable. And the moral imperative is to go beyond it.
Yeah there is a difference. But it’s a difference of courage, not one I’d be proud of.
Edit: I don’t want to trivialize that courage either. Challenging power can be an incredible risk. Most people under most circumstances will choose to limit their risk no matter what the moral question. I’m honest enough to say, even though I’m not proud to, I haven’t taken all of the risks I wish I had.
So in the future when animal rights are actually respected and the abuse is totally banned we'll be allowed to support them? What sort of argument is this?
Things can be right regardless of the law, history is filled with false and immoral legislation.
Original poster made it seem like there is some unique American culture of anti establishment and celebration of courage and activism. Then goes on to enumerate examples that are now obviously celebrated.
My point is that it's a survivor biased argument. It's very easy _now_ to celebrate past activism that ended up on the good side of history. There's nothing special in American culture about that.
We are talking about a country that started wars on false premises, tortured prisoners, incarcerated whistle-blowers, economically bullies most of its competitors, elected an ultra conservative president, have one of the worst immigration integration policy, etc etc.
> In the US, celebrating activism with illegal techniques is part of the fabric of our culture, institutional and even foundational.
I'm sorry but that just strikes me as plain.. . Maybe that's how Americans see themselves, but get back to earth, 99% of the world would roll on the floor at this.
Most of the activism enumerated in the comment is actually a minority's activism against social problems that only existed in the US in the first place. It requires a very twisted argument to celebrate US activism on issues that the US created for itself.
I didn’t intend to express it as American exceptionalism, but rather to pick examples that were relevant to my own context. I’m quite certain there are examples all over the world where illegal actions have become celebrated. The last point you make is much closer to my intent: when the law is immoral, it is sometimes moral to challenge it by breaking it. And I intentionally added examples which are not as celebrated because, well, they should be.
It’s odd to frame actions by some in the US to right wrongs in our country as “issues that the US created for itself”. I mean yes, as a country slavery is a horrible stain on our history. But the abolitionists who fought it since before the US even existed and continue to this day are not implicated in that. And that’s my point: rejection of immoral laws and power structures is valid, and equating legality with morality is sometimes and even often wrong.
Prison doesn’t work. At all. My views are more radical than ever. The lesson to learn is; never try to effect serious social change via peaceful means, go directly to illegal means, bypassing legal protest will mean the police won’t know who they are looking for.
I can’t say I lose a seconds sleep over the “victims”, they are weak minded crybabies
I don't think the point of prison is to change your views (the system doesn't care what your views are). It's to make you less likely to re-offend and the vast majority of people to not offend at all. I would guess that there are lots of people with radical views who never act on them exactly because they are afraid of the legal consequences (e.g. prison). This means the system has worked on them.
EDIT: Not that I'm defending any particular prison system or making a moral statement here. In many countries the prison system is horrible and probably not even very optimal at preventing offences. It's just that in my mind the prison has one main purpose; to act as a deterrent for crime, and most of the time, for most of the population, it somewhat works for that purpose.
The a level was just for fun. I did a masters in computer science from a too 3 UK university. Not that anyone has ever asked to see my degree certificate…
This question somewhat trivializes the "radicals" and their "extreme" views and denies them agency. What would it take for you to change your strongly held views, "extreme" or otherwise? Who the fuck knows, right? But probably nothing formulaic and generalizable. So it is with others.
Nothing, prison is a warehouse. Remember though all that occurred was property damaged and a level of intimidation that would make a person of sturdy character laugh, on the spectrum of political action it really was not that extreme
> level of intimidation that would make a person of sturdy character laugh
The intent was for the intimidation to work, so regardless of how sturdy the character. Its hardly a victimless crime.
Marching and demonstrating maybe not as effective, but I find it hard to celebrating trying to harm another person, regardless of how ineffective. Non-violence is a good way to change unjust laws, intimidation is not just.
How could a prison system ever really do that? It's a punishment. You learn that what you did before has consequences, not that it was wrong.
Rehabilitating someone with "radical" ideas would involve acknowledging and challenging their ideas. That's not how rehabilitation really works even in theory - most rehabilitation is taking criminals who aren't ideologically motivated and solving the much simpler problems of educating them so that they can work.
There are actually three different justifications for prison:
* Retribution ("a punishment")
* General prevention ("a jailed person cannot keep hurting others and prison threat is a deterrent")
* Special prevention (rehabilitation)
Last time I looked, most countries are mostly for general prevention with a pinch of special prevention. Retribution is not currently defensible philosofically or technically, though some people errounesly think it's the basis of the system.
I'm quite curious: who counts as 'civilized' these days? Clearly not the UAE (we've just seen an article on Dubai debtors prisons on these pages) but it seems we'd need to take Japan off the list, for instance (see e.g. https://www.economist.com/asia/2015/12/03/silent-screams ) and if we have to take them off the list I'm not sure where we end up stopping
Apart from the pissing contest of who has a better penal system, can anyone in this discussion show that there’s a system to imprison people which parts people with their strongly held moral beliefs and should do so?
I would assume that in most countries rehabilitation is seen the same way as here in the US. It focuses on the top causes for crimes - lack of education, lack of opportunity. So there are rehabilitation programs that educate people and help place them in work programs.
I would assume that rehabilitation does not focus on changing people's ideological values.
Generally rehabilitating beliefs is associated with authoritarian regimes (reeducation camps) or abuse (claiming to cure innate characteristics that others find inconvenient like sexuality or disability)
As far as I understand it, lengthy sentences don't work -- the likelihood of getting caught does. (I mean in a statistical sense. But I might have read this before the replication crisis, so caveat lector.)
... but also: Do you have any evidence of your claims? Literally any evidence of being who say you are?
Many crimes are barely enforced; I'm thinking of some kinds of moving-traffic offences such as using a phone while driving. Because it's not enforced, people keep doing it; so the government increases the fines.
But increasing the fines has zero effect, if everyone knows the law isn't enforced.
The law is not perfect, and often protects the wrong people doing the wrong thing. Peaceful protest is one of the things that allows average people to put pressure on the legislative and judicial system to change.
I kept asserting my rights until the cops threatened my wife, then I told them they could write down whatever they wanted and I would sign it. Took 7 years of being in jail before that piece of paper got in front of a judge and he threw it out, though.
It’s chill, I redid my maths my maths A-level and got an A, I basically had a one on one maths tutor for a year in the prison learning complex, came in very useful now I am a software engineer.
The ironic thing is that the police waited about 2 years after they seized the laptop to ask me for the pass phrase. I’m not sure I even actually remembered it as it was so long. PGP Whole Disk Encryption ftw. At the time WDE wasn’t available on the mac and the police got loads of data from my pals text editor temporary files. No one got anything from mine hahaha
I do not have a criminal record. The wonderful conservative/liberal coalition updated the rehabilitation of offenders act 1974 so my conviction became spent. That said I currently work for a 1000 employee plus employer and they never did a criminal record check but others have.
Yeah, I've never known any tech job actually do a background check in the UK. It'd have to be something very specific. Even when I worked for a financial company.
I found this entertaining. Since you cannot legally refuse to give up the password, insult them while you giving up is probably the most appropriate revenge you can do at that situation.
"Tell me, what's your password?" says the adversary, "It's 'kissmybloodyhemorrhoidsassyoudumbshithahaha!', all lowercase, no space, ended with a exclamation point".
The password is cryptographically secure too since it's long. And it's easy to remember, relatively easy to type in. All around, simply a good password.
