This is a good film for anyone interested in AI at a philosophical level. It even got reviewed in New Scientist and they don’t normally review movies. It’s a clever psychological thriller, so you don’t have to be a nerd to enjoy it, though there are some pseudo-nerdy conversations that are better assimilated if the audience has some foreknowledge. Examples are the Turing Test and the Mary thought experiment regarding colour.
Both of these are explained through expositional dialogue in the movie, rather seamlessly I should add, so ignorance is not necessarily a barrier. The real Turing test for AI would be if an AI could outsmart a human – not in a game of chess or a knowledge-based TV quiz show, but behaviourally – and this is explored as well. Like all good psychological thrillers, there is a clever twist at the end which is not predictable but totally consistent within the context of the narrative. In other words, it’s a well written and well executed drama irrespective of its philosophical themes.
One of the issues not addressed in the movie – because it would spoil it – is the phenomenon known as the ‘uncanny valley’, which I’ve written about here. Basically, when androids become almost human-like in appearance and movement, we become very uncomfortable. This doesn’t happen in the movie, and, of course, it’s not meant to, but it’s the real piece of deception in the film. Despite appearances that the character, Ava, is a machine because we can literally see through parts of her body, we all know that she is really an actress playing a part.
I’ve argued in the aforementioned post that I believe the source of this discomfort is the lack of emotional empathy. In the movie, however, the AI demonstrates considerable empathy, or at least appears to, which is one of the many subtle elements explored. This is very good science fiction because it explores a possible future and deals with it on a philosophical level, including ethical considerations, as well as entertaining us.
There are nods to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Asimov’s I Robot, although that may be my own particular perspective. I’ve created AI’s in my own fiction, but completely different to this. In fact, I deliberately created a disembodied AI, which develops a ‘relationship’ with my protagonist, and appears to display ‘loyalty’. However I explain this with the concept of ‘attachment’ programming, which doesn’t necessarily require empathy as we know it.
I bring this up, because the 2 stories, Ex Machina and mine, explore AI but with different philosophical perspectives and different narrative outcomes.
Thursday, 4 June 2015
Friday, 15 May 2015
In memory of B.B. King - 16 September 1925 to 14 May 2015 - a True Legend
This is a trailer for a documentary on B.B. King released last year. It says it all, really.
When I think of the Blues, I think of B.B. King.
Wednesday, 6 May 2015
Salt of the Earth – the movie
I saw this film last weekend, and, once again, I think this is a movie everyone should see. I said that about the last film I reviewed (Citizenfour), and, in both cases, despite winning awards, they’re only being shown in one cinema in the whole of Melbourne (yes, the same cinema).
Salt of the Earth is a documentary about the life and work of Brasilian photographer, Sebastio Salgado, from around 1969 to 2013, even though he speaks French throughout the entire film.
Salgado was educated as an economist and worked as one in Europe before he made the unorthodox choice of devoting his life to recording peoples and events throughout the world, although, in the latter part of his career, he reinvented himself as a nature photographer. His son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, co-directed the documentary with legendary German filmmaker, Wim Wenders.
The most famous photograph taken by Salgado, which some of you may have seen, is of the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brasil (taken in 1986), where people look like ants climbing impossibly steep wooden ladders, laden with bags of dirt and covered in dirt themselves.
There are many layers to this film. Firstly, there is the subject of Salgado himself, who is an extraordinary human being, not least because he goes to places and witnesses events that very few of us have the courage to attempt. Over 40 years he has recorded and chronicled humanity at its best and worst – it’s like he is willing to go and witness what the rest of us have no compulsion to see.
The film is 1hr 45 mins, much of it taken up with monologue from Salgado and full screen projections of his black and white stills. Yet this is anything but boring cinema. His photographs alone have an emotional force that is often attempted yet rarely achieved in cinema. No one leaves this film without being deeply moved and questioning the very place of humanity in the world. Whilst that last statement reads like hyperbole, I will attempt to provide the context that leads me to make it.
Salgado himself is relatively quiet spoken for someone who has seen so much and travelled so widely. Yet his voice is an eminently suitable companion to his photographs, providing a gravitas with no hint of embellishment. The documentary not only tracks his private life but also the series of ‘projects’ he embarked upon, which provides the film’s structure.
Salgado is not someone who simply photographs people, often in circumstances most of us (in the West) can never imagine, he goes and stays with them, in refugee camps in Africa or the jungles of South America, for example. He really does chronicle their lives and, in so doing, captures with his lens their pain or suffering or ebullience that the rest of us can readily empathise with.
He records the Balkan wars, the oil fires in Kuwait, the droughts and consequential famine in Ethiopia and the genocide in Rwanda. This last event made him question humanity itself, and because you literally see the world through his eyes, via his camera, you find yourself doing the same. It was after this that he reinvented himself as a nature photographer, and it is in this role that I feel he produced some of his best work.
There is a point in this movie where I found myself wondering: do we, as a species, deserve the responsibility of being caretakers of this planet? Because that’s the role we have, whether we want it or not. This film brought this home to me more than anything else I’ve seen or read.
It creates a perspective that we rarely contemplate: the petty lives we live in the West, driven by economic consumerism; whilst much of the world is exploited, starved, imprisoned by inescapable poverty; and its wildlife pushed evermore into smaller enclaves, often pursued by poachers.
We have the knowledge and the technology to make the world a better place – I don’t doubt that – but whilst the entire Western world is driven by the accumulation of wealth at the expense of everything else, we will never achieve it.
Salt of the Earth is a documentary about the life and work of Brasilian photographer, Sebastio Salgado, from around 1969 to 2013, even though he speaks French throughout the entire film.
Salgado was educated as an economist and worked as one in Europe before he made the unorthodox choice of devoting his life to recording peoples and events throughout the world, although, in the latter part of his career, he reinvented himself as a nature photographer. His son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, co-directed the documentary with legendary German filmmaker, Wim Wenders.
The most famous photograph taken by Salgado, which some of you may have seen, is of the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brasil (taken in 1986), where people look like ants climbing impossibly steep wooden ladders, laden with bags of dirt and covered in dirt themselves.
There are many layers to this film. Firstly, there is the subject of Salgado himself, who is an extraordinary human being, not least because he goes to places and witnesses events that very few of us have the courage to attempt. Over 40 years he has recorded and chronicled humanity at its best and worst – it’s like he is willing to go and witness what the rest of us have no compulsion to see.
The film is 1hr 45 mins, much of it taken up with monologue from Salgado and full screen projections of his black and white stills. Yet this is anything but boring cinema. His photographs alone have an emotional force that is often attempted yet rarely achieved in cinema. No one leaves this film without being deeply moved and questioning the very place of humanity in the world. Whilst that last statement reads like hyperbole, I will attempt to provide the context that leads me to make it.
Salgado himself is relatively quiet spoken for someone who has seen so much and travelled so widely. Yet his voice is an eminently suitable companion to his photographs, providing a gravitas with no hint of embellishment. The documentary not only tracks his private life but also the series of ‘projects’ he embarked upon, which provides the film’s structure.
Salgado is not someone who simply photographs people, often in circumstances most of us (in the West) can never imagine, he goes and stays with them, in refugee camps in Africa or the jungles of South America, for example. He really does chronicle their lives and, in so doing, captures with his lens their pain or suffering or ebullience that the rest of us can readily empathise with.
He records the Balkan wars, the oil fires in Kuwait, the droughts and consequential famine in Ethiopia and the genocide in Rwanda. This last event made him question humanity itself, and because you literally see the world through his eyes, via his camera, you find yourself doing the same. It was after this that he reinvented himself as a nature photographer, and it is in this role that I feel he produced some of his best work.
There is a point in this movie where I found myself wondering: do we, as a species, deserve the responsibility of being caretakers of this planet? Because that’s the role we have, whether we want it or not. This film brought this home to me more than anything else I’ve seen or read.
It creates a perspective that we rarely contemplate: the petty lives we live in the West, driven by economic consumerism; whilst much of the world is exploited, starved, imprisoned by inescapable poverty; and its wildlife pushed evermore into smaller enclaves, often pursued by poachers.
We have the knowledge and the technology to make the world a better place – I don’t doubt that – but whilst the entire Western world is driven by the accumulation of wealth at the expense of everything else, we will never achieve it.
Thursday, 9 April 2015
Morality is totally in the eye of the beholder
The most obvious and topical examples of this truism are the behaviours of members of IS towards ‘outsiders’. But this post is not about IS; nevertheless, it is about a clash of cultures – in this case a clash of ‘old’ versus ‘new’ in the same society, which happens to be India.
Last night I saw a documentary, 2 years in the making, by British filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, called India’s Daughter about the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in December 2012 – a crime at once so brutal and primal that it shocked the entire civilised world. The film was due to be broadcast worldwide on International Women’s Day in March, including India, but the Indian Government unexpectedly banned the documentary from being shown in the country, ‘claiming it was an affront to women’ (according to the ABC). This about-face on the part of the Indian Government is not so surprising when the documentary itself reveals the schism that exists in Indian society on the issue of women’s roles and women’s rights.
This blog is seen and read all over the world, including India, so I hope that Indians do indeed read this, especially since they were not allowed access to the documentary.
I’ve written before that morality for most people is determined by social and cultural norms, hence the title of this post. I’ve read many articles and essays that attempt to provide a meta-ethics or an objective morality, but experience and observation suggest that culture is the overriding factor in determining someone’s personal moral compass. This incident demonstrates how 2 conflicting cultural norms can lead to tragic and fatal consequences for an individual. Written in that language, one might consider that the 2 opposing cultural norms may have equal validity, but, when it leads to a crime, comparable in nature to Jack the Ripper’s, it’s hard to maintain that relativist position.
I’ve argued previously that moral relativism is an impossible position to hold because no one can hold or defend opposing moral viewpoints. This documentary is a case in point, because, whilst it demonstrates that one’s moral viewpoint is indeed in the eye of the beholder, it also demonstrates that 2 opposing moral viewpoints cannot be sustained.
Jyoti Singh was an only daughter of a poor family who put herself through university to earn a degree in medicine, whilst working in a call centre, managing on 3-4 hrs sleep per night. So she’s an extraordinary modern success story, an inspiration for any young woman wanting to pursue a career in whatever field; but becoming a doctor, given her circumstances, is an especially outstanding achievement.
She had earned her degree and was about to start her 6mth internship the following Monday. Knowing that she would have little free time, she went to see a movie with a male friend on the Sunday night – they went and saw Life of Pi. Nothing could be more ‘ordinary’. I have seen that movie and it gave a particular resonance, because no one expects that, after being entertained by a celebrated movie, they would be murdered on their way home.
But this is where we have a clash of cultures because she was trapped on a bus with a pack of animals(6) who not only raped her but disembowelled her. I use the term ‘pack of animals’ because they were not human. No human could do that to another human. In committing that act, they gave up all rights to be called human.
The documentary includes interviews with the driver of the bus and the 2 lawyers who defended the gang. These interviews, more than anything else, reveal the cultural schism that I referred to earlier, because they all defended the gang and blamed the girl – that’s their moral perspective based on their cultural norms.
The driver maintained that he didn’t partake in the ‘incident’ (he just drove the bus), which at one point he corrects himself and calls an ‘accident’, yet he defends the actions of the others and goes so far as to say, that in the case of rape, ‘the girl is more responsible than the boy’. What’s more, he argues that she shouldn’t have fought back, then she wouldn’t have been harmed. In other words, even the fatal wounds she suffered were her own fault. But he also, tellingly, said it was a ‘message’, implying that she had forfeited all rights to her dignity and her life by going to a movie with a male friend.
The truth is that he knew nothing about her: he didn’t know that she was a recently qualified doctor or the sacrifices she had made to earn that qualification or that she had a future that he could never even dream about. No, she had no value as a human being because, in his eyes and those of his partners-in-crime, she had no self-respect. It was obvious from conversations with the filmmaker that he considered rape to be a normal activity. A prison psychiatrist related that they believed they had the ‘right to enjoy themselves’. Whereas others enjoyed themselves using money they did so with their ‘courage’ and that legitimised it in their minds. What strikes one straightaway is that the girl’s enjoyment is irrelevant – in fact, implicit in this rationalisation is the belief that her suffering: physical, emotional, psychological; actually contributes to their enjoyment.
But this admission highlights another problem in a society like India’s. There is effectively no outlet for normal sexual appetites for young men because of their strict moral approbations towards women, and this is what makes rape a normal and acceptable activity in the eyes of those who practice it. What’s more, as the bus driver points out, it’s easy to justify when it’s the girl’s own fault.
But whilst the defensive arguments of the bus driver were understandable if impossible to empathise with, the arguments of the 2 lawyers beggared belief. One lawyer, to distinguish him from the other, I will call the ‘unctuous’ lawyer – the other lawyer didn’t even deserve the title, human being, but I will come to that later.
The unctuous lawyer described a woman as something precious like a flower or a jewel that needed to be protected. In ‘our culture’, to use his own words, she is not allowed outside the home. But this is a contradiction because a person who is not allowed to interact with the outside world has no value whatsoever, except of course to be a servant to her husband and a mother to her children. So she’s a ‘jewel’ or ‘flower’ who should never be seen in public. He blames ‘filmy’ culture because it portrays women as independent (he didn’t say that but it was implied) which, in his mind, is a fantasy. And although he never says it, it’s a corollary to his viewpoint that a woman should never use her brain to become a doctor or a lawyer (like himself). So a woman can be ‘precious’ as long as she’s never seen and as long as she makes no attempt to use her brain as a man can.
But the second lawyer publicly stated on TV that if he had a sister or a daughter who committed ‘adultery’, he would pour petrol on her and set fire to her in front of the entire family. That’s his mentality. A person, who publicly admits that he would burn his sister or daughter alive, doesn’t deserve the title, human being. And he’s a lawyer. Does he consider then, that a young single woman going to a movie with her boyfriend is tantamount to committing adultery?
One can’t watch this documentary without feeling the pain of the parents and without contemplating the senseless waste of a young life that had so much promise. The mother, when discussing her daughter’s situation, having just earned her degree and on the brink of starting a career as a doctor, made the following statement: ‘It seems that God didn’t like this. He ended everything.’ Implicit in this statement is a belief that God was punishing her and her daughter for daring to follow an independent career. It is not surprising that people feel a perverse sense of guilt when they lose someone so close to them. Also, just before dying, her daughter apologised for ‘all the trouble she had caused’ – her last words, apparently. This is the culture that India has imparted onto its women: that they take the burden of responsibility and guilt, whilst those who commit the most heinous crime see no wrong in what they’ve done. It’s an upside down perverse sort of morality.
Young people, from universities mostly, protested for over a month, despite being subjected to tear gas and fire hose dowsing by police. And this is probably why the film has been banned, because the protests could easily start anew. But a consequence of the protests was that the government set up a panel to review rape laws and make recommendations. One of the members of the panel, Leila Seth, a woman and former Chief Justice, held hope that young people would challenge and ultimately change the culture, which is the only long term solution. She made the logical and true statement that the key was the education of women, because only then would women attain a sense of self-worth that men would also value and acknowledge.
Last night I saw a documentary, 2 years in the making, by British filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, called India’s Daughter about the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in December 2012 – a crime at once so brutal and primal that it shocked the entire civilised world. The film was due to be broadcast worldwide on International Women’s Day in March, including India, but the Indian Government unexpectedly banned the documentary from being shown in the country, ‘claiming it was an affront to women’ (according to the ABC). This about-face on the part of the Indian Government is not so surprising when the documentary itself reveals the schism that exists in Indian society on the issue of women’s roles and women’s rights.
This blog is seen and read all over the world, including India, so I hope that Indians do indeed read this, especially since they were not allowed access to the documentary.
I’ve written before that morality for most people is determined by social and cultural norms, hence the title of this post. I’ve read many articles and essays that attempt to provide a meta-ethics or an objective morality, but experience and observation suggest that culture is the overriding factor in determining someone’s personal moral compass. This incident demonstrates how 2 conflicting cultural norms can lead to tragic and fatal consequences for an individual. Written in that language, one might consider that the 2 opposing cultural norms may have equal validity, but, when it leads to a crime, comparable in nature to Jack the Ripper’s, it’s hard to maintain that relativist position.
I’ve argued previously that moral relativism is an impossible position to hold because no one can hold or defend opposing moral viewpoints. This documentary is a case in point, because, whilst it demonstrates that one’s moral viewpoint is indeed in the eye of the beholder, it also demonstrates that 2 opposing moral viewpoints cannot be sustained.
Jyoti Singh was an only daughter of a poor family who put herself through university to earn a degree in medicine, whilst working in a call centre, managing on 3-4 hrs sleep per night. So she’s an extraordinary modern success story, an inspiration for any young woman wanting to pursue a career in whatever field; but becoming a doctor, given her circumstances, is an especially outstanding achievement.
She had earned her degree and was about to start her 6mth internship the following Monday. Knowing that she would have little free time, she went to see a movie with a male friend on the Sunday night – they went and saw Life of Pi. Nothing could be more ‘ordinary’. I have seen that movie and it gave a particular resonance, because no one expects that, after being entertained by a celebrated movie, they would be murdered on their way home.
But this is where we have a clash of cultures because she was trapped on a bus with a pack of animals(6) who not only raped her but disembowelled her. I use the term ‘pack of animals’ because they were not human. No human could do that to another human. In committing that act, they gave up all rights to be called human.
The documentary includes interviews with the driver of the bus and the 2 lawyers who defended the gang. These interviews, more than anything else, reveal the cultural schism that I referred to earlier, because they all defended the gang and blamed the girl – that’s their moral perspective based on their cultural norms.
The driver maintained that he didn’t partake in the ‘incident’ (he just drove the bus), which at one point he corrects himself and calls an ‘accident’, yet he defends the actions of the others and goes so far as to say, that in the case of rape, ‘the girl is more responsible than the boy’. What’s more, he argues that she shouldn’t have fought back, then she wouldn’t have been harmed. In other words, even the fatal wounds she suffered were her own fault. But he also, tellingly, said it was a ‘message’, implying that she had forfeited all rights to her dignity and her life by going to a movie with a male friend.
The truth is that he knew nothing about her: he didn’t know that she was a recently qualified doctor or the sacrifices she had made to earn that qualification or that she had a future that he could never even dream about. No, she had no value as a human being because, in his eyes and those of his partners-in-crime, she had no self-respect. It was obvious from conversations with the filmmaker that he considered rape to be a normal activity. A prison psychiatrist related that they believed they had the ‘right to enjoy themselves’. Whereas others enjoyed themselves using money they did so with their ‘courage’ and that legitimised it in their minds. What strikes one straightaway is that the girl’s enjoyment is irrelevant – in fact, implicit in this rationalisation is the belief that her suffering: physical, emotional, psychological; actually contributes to their enjoyment.
But this admission highlights another problem in a society like India’s. There is effectively no outlet for normal sexual appetites for young men because of their strict moral approbations towards women, and this is what makes rape a normal and acceptable activity in the eyes of those who practice it. What’s more, as the bus driver points out, it’s easy to justify when it’s the girl’s own fault.
But whilst the defensive arguments of the bus driver were understandable if impossible to empathise with, the arguments of the 2 lawyers beggared belief. One lawyer, to distinguish him from the other, I will call the ‘unctuous’ lawyer – the other lawyer didn’t even deserve the title, human being, but I will come to that later.
The unctuous lawyer described a woman as something precious like a flower or a jewel that needed to be protected. In ‘our culture’, to use his own words, she is not allowed outside the home. But this is a contradiction because a person who is not allowed to interact with the outside world has no value whatsoever, except of course to be a servant to her husband and a mother to her children. So she’s a ‘jewel’ or ‘flower’ who should never be seen in public. He blames ‘filmy’ culture because it portrays women as independent (he didn’t say that but it was implied) which, in his mind, is a fantasy. And although he never says it, it’s a corollary to his viewpoint that a woman should never use her brain to become a doctor or a lawyer (like himself). So a woman can be ‘precious’ as long as she’s never seen and as long as she makes no attempt to use her brain as a man can.
But the second lawyer publicly stated on TV that if he had a sister or a daughter who committed ‘adultery’, he would pour petrol on her and set fire to her in front of the entire family. That’s his mentality. A person, who publicly admits that he would burn his sister or daughter alive, doesn’t deserve the title, human being. And he’s a lawyer. Does he consider then, that a young single woman going to a movie with her boyfriend is tantamount to committing adultery?
One can’t watch this documentary without feeling the pain of the parents and without contemplating the senseless waste of a young life that had so much promise. The mother, when discussing her daughter’s situation, having just earned her degree and on the brink of starting a career as a doctor, made the following statement: ‘It seems that God didn’t like this. He ended everything.’ Implicit in this statement is a belief that God was punishing her and her daughter for daring to follow an independent career. It is not surprising that people feel a perverse sense of guilt when they lose someone so close to them. Also, just before dying, her daughter apologised for ‘all the trouble she had caused’ – her last words, apparently. This is the culture that India has imparted onto its women: that they take the burden of responsibility and guilt, whilst those who commit the most heinous crime see no wrong in what they’ve done. It’s an upside down perverse sort of morality.
Young people, from universities mostly, protested for over a month, despite being subjected to tear gas and fire hose dowsing by police. And this is probably why the film has been banned, because the protests could easily start anew. But a consequence of the protests was that the government set up a panel to review rape laws and make recommendations. One of the members of the panel, Leila Seth, a woman and former Chief Justice, held hope that young people would challenge and ultimately change the culture, which is the only long term solution. She made the logical and true statement that the key was the education of women, because only then would women attain a sense of self-worth that men would also value and acknowledge.
Monday, 23 March 2015
Emmy Noether's birthday today
Google has honoured Emmy Noether's birthday. Few people know who she is but, amongst other contributions to mathematics, she proved a theorem, known as Noether's theorem, that underpins all of physics because it deals with symmetry and conservation laws of energy and momentum.
The mathematics is well over my head, but I appreciate its ramifications. Basically, it deals with the mathematical relationships between symmetry in space and conservation of momentum, symmetry in time and conservation of energy and symmetry of rotation and conservation of angular momentum. This applies in particular to quantum mechanics, though conservation laws are equally relevant in relativity theory.
Symmetry, in this context, is about translation: translations in space, translations in time and translations in rotation. Richard Feynman gives a good exposition in Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, where I came across it for the first time, and he describes it thus: ...a most profound and beautiful thing, is that, in quantum mechanics, for each of the rules of symmetry there is a corresponding conservation law; there is a definite connection between the laws of conservation and the symmetry of physical laws.
You can read about it in some detail in Wikipedia, though I confess it's a bit esoteric.
Noether died relatively young in America at age 53, 2 years after escaping Nazi Germany, and Einstein wrote a moving tribute to her in the New York Times (1935). Physicists, Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill, in Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe, give the following accolade: “..certainly one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics…”
The sad part about her story is that she is virtually unknown and was not given due recognition in her own time, simply because she was a woman.
Addendum: It's also 100 years since Noether developed her seminal theorem - the same year that Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity, incorporating gravity.
The mathematics is well over my head, but I appreciate its ramifications. Basically, it deals with the mathematical relationships between symmetry in space and conservation of momentum, symmetry in time and conservation of energy and symmetry of rotation and conservation of angular momentum. This applies in particular to quantum mechanics, though conservation laws are equally relevant in relativity theory.
Symmetry, in this context, is about translation: translations in space, translations in time and translations in rotation. Richard Feynman gives a good exposition in Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, where I came across it for the first time, and he describes it thus: ...a most profound and beautiful thing, is that, in quantum mechanics, for each of the rules of symmetry there is a corresponding conservation law; there is a definite connection between the laws of conservation and the symmetry of physical laws.
You can read about it in some detail in Wikipedia, though I confess it's a bit esoteric.
Noether died relatively young in America at age 53, 2 years after escaping Nazi Germany, and Einstein wrote a moving tribute to her in the New York Times (1935). Physicists, Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill, in Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe, give the following accolade: “..certainly one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics…”
The sad part about her story is that she is virtually unknown and was not given due recognition in her own time, simply because she was a woman.
Addendum: It's also 100 years since Noether developed her seminal theorem - the same year that Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity, incorporating gravity.
Saturday, 21 March 2015
Citizenfour - aka Edward Snowden
I saw this Oscar-winning movie last weekend, and, tellingly, despite very recently winning the Oscar for Best Documentary, it’s only being shown in one cinema in the whole of Melbourne. And yet everyone with internet access should watch this movie, because its message affects all of us.
For those living under a rock, Edward Snowden famously revealed that the US is capturing all our on-line activities and mobile phone calls, even though, as revealed in the film, various representatives of the government had been openly denying this (even under oath) for some time. The closest we get to acknowledgement is when someone says, in a Senate Committee Hearing, in response to this very question about accessing people’s digital communications: “Not willingly.” Reading between the lines, one could conclude that it could happen ‘accidentally’, which suggests a couple of options: the information is available if they want to access it; or they might accidentally access someone’s data whilst trying to access someone else’s, whom they can legitimately target (via a court order or whatever judicial process is required). As it turns out, thanks to Snowden’s expose, we know it’s the first option.
Ethically, there are 2 distinct but related issues implicit in the same movie. Are the American Government’s activities in this regard, ethical, and is it ethical for Snowden to use his position of privileged information to break his Government’s trust (as well as the law) by revealing them to the rest of the world?
There is a third ethical issue, entwined with the previous 2: is it ethical for the American Government to pursue Snowden with the full force of its law, treating him, effectively, as a traitor and a spy (they are charging him under the espionage act)?
Let’s deal with the first ethical issue first; after all, it’s the one that triggered the other two. As pointed out in the movie, this ‘action’ on the part of the American Government is a consequence of 9/11 and the threat of terrorist attacks anywhere in the Western world. It’s also pointed out in the movie that England have even more comprehensive measures than the US, regarding tracking everyday digital information of its own citizens.
On the same day I saw this film, I heard a news bulletin that here in Australia, the Government is currently debating a bill requiring internet providers to keep all user activity (in Australia) for however many years (I don’t know if there’s a limit). Interestingly, the only proviso the Opposition suggested is that journalists be protected in order to protect their sources. This is a very important point, because it’s only journalists that can keep politicians honest, and journalists’ roles in providing a conduit for Snowden’s ‘leak’ was crucial to his expose. I’ve said before that the health of a democracy can be measured by the freedom that journalists are allowed in criticising their elected leaders. Keeping sources ‘secret’ has been critical (at least, in Australia) in allowing journalists that particular freedom.
There are similarities between this documentary and the not-so-recent movie, Kill the Messenger, because, in both cases, someone exposed the Government or the Government’s agents in activities that the public were unaware of, and, in both cases the Government, or its agencies, effectively destroyed the whistleblowers’ lives.
But this parliamentary debate taking place in Australia reveals an ethical distinction, which, in my view, is worth noting. In Australia, because it has to be passed as Parliamentary law, it cannot be done without the public’s awareness, and, I feel, this is where the American Government went wrong. I don’t have an issue with them keeping all my digital data, most of which, like this blog, is freely available to the public anyway. And I understand how such data is crucial to stopping terrorist attacks, so, as long as the data capture is not used to persecute me personally, I have no problem.
Having said that, the movie points out how data collection on a nation’s citizens is a first step in controlling or oppressing that citizenry. So, hand in hand with this action is an essential ‘trust’ that it will be used only for spoiling terrorist attacks and that the essential democratic character of the nation won’t be compromised in the process. In some ways, this is a moot point because, after watching this film, I couldn’t help but feel that this will never be reversed. We already live in a quasi-Orwellian environment where our entire lives can be tracked digitally, if someone so requires. We effectively have no secrets regarding our on-line activity (including mobile phone communications).
Towards the end of the movie, there is a news clip of President Obama saying that we needed ‘to have this debate’, implying that it could have occurred without Snowden’s revelations. However, this is contradicted by earlier video footage (alluded to above) that, even under oath, no one was going to admit to this whilst the public remained ignorant.
And this brings to the fore Snowden’s ethics. There are some similarities here between Snowden and Assange, both of whom are now living in exile, because both had sensitive material that embarrassed the American Government in particular. However, Snowden is probably more like Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who had access to and leaked the relevant files, in that both men acted on their conscience at considerable personal cost.
But, in the case of Snowden, he demonstrates neither the naivety of Manning nor the ego of Assange. It is clear from the outset that Snowden understood fully the consequences of his actions, and is remarkably calm throughout his entire dealings with the specific journalists he colluded with in order to make public what the American Government preferred to remain covert. This is the crux of the issue for me: not that the American Government is collecting all our communications data, but that they did it behind our backs and are now enraged that some individual dared to let everyone know.
There is some irony that Snowden now lives in exile with his partner in Russia, a country not renown for honouring freedom of speech or freedom of the press. If Snowden had done to Russia, what he’s done to America, he probably would have been assassinated. As it is, in America, they will lock him up and throw away the key, just like they’ve done to Manning, assuming they ever catch him.
For those living under a rock, Edward Snowden famously revealed that the US is capturing all our on-line activities and mobile phone calls, even though, as revealed in the film, various representatives of the government had been openly denying this (even under oath) for some time. The closest we get to acknowledgement is when someone says, in a Senate Committee Hearing, in response to this very question about accessing people’s digital communications: “Not willingly.” Reading between the lines, one could conclude that it could happen ‘accidentally’, which suggests a couple of options: the information is available if they want to access it; or they might accidentally access someone’s data whilst trying to access someone else’s, whom they can legitimately target (via a court order or whatever judicial process is required). As it turns out, thanks to Snowden’s expose, we know it’s the first option.
Ethically, there are 2 distinct but related issues implicit in the same movie. Are the American Government’s activities in this regard, ethical, and is it ethical for Snowden to use his position of privileged information to break his Government’s trust (as well as the law) by revealing them to the rest of the world?
There is a third ethical issue, entwined with the previous 2: is it ethical for the American Government to pursue Snowden with the full force of its law, treating him, effectively, as a traitor and a spy (they are charging him under the espionage act)?
Let’s deal with the first ethical issue first; after all, it’s the one that triggered the other two. As pointed out in the movie, this ‘action’ on the part of the American Government is a consequence of 9/11 and the threat of terrorist attacks anywhere in the Western world. It’s also pointed out in the movie that England have even more comprehensive measures than the US, regarding tracking everyday digital information of its own citizens.
On the same day I saw this film, I heard a news bulletin that here in Australia, the Government is currently debating a bill requiring internet providers to keep all user activity (in Australia) for however many years (I don’t know if there’s a limit). Interestingly, the only proviso the Opposition suggested is that journalists be protected in order to protect their sources. This is a very important point, because it’s only journalists that can keep politicians honest, and journalists’ roles in providing a conduit for Snowden’s ‘leak’ was crucial to his expose. I’ve said before that the health of a democracy can be measured by the freedom that journalists are allowed in criticising their elected leaders. Keeping sources ‘secret’ has been critical (at least, in Australia) in allowing journalists that particular freedom.
There are similarities between this documentary and the not-so-recent movie, Kill the Messenger, because, in both cases, someone exposed the Government or the Government’s agents in activities that the public were unaware of, and, in both cases the Government, or its agencies, effectively destroyed the whistleblowers’ lives.
But this parliamentary debate taking place in Australia reveals an ethical distinction, which, in my view, is worth noting. In Australia, because it has to be passed as Parliamentary law, it cannot be done without the public’s awareness, and, I feel, this is where the American Government went wrong. I don’t have an issue with them keeping all my digital data, most of which, like this blog, is freely available to the public anyway. And I understand how such data is crucial to stopping terrorist attacks, so, as long as the data capture is not used to persecute me personally, I have no problem.
Having said that, the movie points out how data collection on a nation’s citizens is a first step in controlling or oppressing that citizenry. So, hand in hand with this action is an essential ‘trust’ that it will be used only for spoiling terrorist attacks and that the essential democratic character of the nation won’t be compromised in the process. In some ways, this is a moot point because, after watching this film, I couldn’t help but feel that this will never be reversed. We already live in a quasi-Orwellian environment where our entire lives can be tracked digitally, if someone so requires. We effectively have no secrets regarding our on-line activity (including mobile phone communications).
Towards the end of the movie, there is a news clip of President Obama saying that we needed ‘to have this debate’, implying that it could have occurred without Snowden’s revelations. However, this is contradicted by earlier video footage (alluded to above) that, even under oath, no one was going to admit to this whilst the public remained ignorant.
And this brings to the fore Snowden’s ethics. There are some similarities here between Snowden and Assange, both of whom are now living in exile, because both had sensitive material that embarrassed the American Government in particular. However, Snowden is probably more like Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, who had access to and leaked the relevant files, in that both men acted on their conscience at considerable personal cost.
But, in the case of Snowden, he demonstrates neither the naivety of Manning nor the ego of Assange. It is clear from the outset that Snowden understood fully the consequences of his actions, and is remarkably calm throughout his entire dealings with the specific journalists he colluded with in order to make public what the American Government preferred to remain covert. This is the crux of the issue for me: not that the American Government is collecting all our communications data, but that they did it behind our backs and are now enraged that some individual dared to let everyone know.
There is some irony that Snowden now lives in exile with his partner in Russia, a country not renown for honouring freedom of speech or freedom of the press. If Snowden had done to Russia, what he’s done to America, he probably would have been assassinated. As it is, in America, they will lock him up and throw away the key, just like they’ve done to Manning, assuming they ever catch him.
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