http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315
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| Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=20878 |
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| Author: | pcernie [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 3:20 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25495315
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| Author: | davrosG5 [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 3:24 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing |
Good news indeed and about time too. One has to wonder what else Turing could have achieved if he hadn't been convicted and 'treated'. |
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| Author: | bobbdobbs [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 3:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing |
Bad idea. Its revisionist policy. At the time it was the law no matter how repugnant it is to modern sensibilities. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 |
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| Author: | ShockWaffle [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 5:04 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing |
One the one hand it's about as pointless as posthumously freeing all those slaves we took. There must be a fair number of surviving victims of that legal regime, so I guess what matters is how this makes them feel. Does this empty token bring them a sense of vindication? |
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| Author: | jonlumb [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 5:10 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing |
I think pardoning is the wrong idea here. Just because something was the law in the past does not make it right. As a society we now recognise how fundamentally wrong that legislation was (and in particular how barbaric the punishments were). I think what is actually required is for those "crimes" to be struck from the record, and where possible restitution made to those that are still alive. Also it needs to apply to everyone convicted for that offence (I believe about 75,000 people), not just Turing. |
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| Author: | Amnesia10 [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 6:05 pm ] | |||||||||
| Post subject: | Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing | |||||||||
Yes there are many who were arrested for such crimes. The pardon should be extended to everyone. |
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| Author: | jonbwfc [ Tue Dec 24, 2013 6:40 pm ] | |||||||||
| Post subject: | Re: Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Turing | |||||||||
I agree with all of this in principle, but in reality you have to draw a line. There are many things that were illegal in the past that we now consider perfectly fine and there were punishments in the past that we would now consider draconian. I mean, where do you stop, are we going to apologise to the population of Australia for what we did to some of their forebears? The fact is this is actually a recognition that Turing's work during WWII makes him exceptional, so they're making a special effort and, indeed, an exception for him by making this formal declaration. The bare fact is nobody (or at least very very few people) now consider anyone who was convicted of something similar to Turing as being a criminal. We all know it happened, we all know it's wrong and we know we've learned to behave better. If there are people who were persecuted are still alive, some public declaration of their mistreatment would be reasonable. But at the end of the day, the dead don't care. There are many things we as a nation did in the past which we as a nation today would not do. But history is a very long time and the past is done and can't be changed. Does pardoning people long in the grave really mean anything? |
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