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Benedict Cumberbatch on Chelsea Manning and mass surveillance.
- Thread starter Slayven
- Start date
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Agreed
Half and half
Member
They may be saving lives. In fact, I believe they probably have. But the government has not adequately made that case imo.
ComputerMKII
Banned
Sorry, I was off-topic
Plenty of people would take it over death.
I like Cumberbatch more now, was expecting some typical Hollywood overly liberal response. Not that I'm implying being a liberal is bad, I'm a liberal democrat but there is a certain form of liberal that ignores reality and facts that just makes me want to punch someone.
Like the video I saw recently of a bunch of douchey college kids bothering David Patraeus as he was walking from class yelling at him that he was "a war criminal."
EDIT:
I also hate when people say stupid shit like "you can't trade liberty/freedom over security." Bullshit, yes you can and that is how civilized society has always worked. It's a balancing act. Full freedom is anarchy, full security is a totalitarian state. What society actually craves is something in between. Stop acting like we don't constantly trade liberties for security, and that somehow this is a bad thing. That's the same rationale for why our guns laws are fucked in this country.
Like the video I saw recently of a bunch of douchey college kids bothering David Patraeus as he was walking from class yelling at him that he was "a war criminal."
EDIT:
I also hate when people say stupid shit like "you can't trade liberty/freedom over security." Bullshit, yes you can and that is how civilized society has always worked. It's a balancing act. Full freedom is anarchy, full security is a totalitarian state. What society actually craves is something in between. Stop acting like we don't constantly trade liberties for security, and that somehow this is a bad thing. That's the same rationale for why our guns laws are fucked in this country.
Palette Swap
Member
To be fair, the life saving part is hypothetical while the other isn't.
Also, I'm not sure society at large explicitly validated that particular trade-off.
Ingueferroque
Banned
Wow.
LaserBuddha
Member
I think it's weird that before, when we all assumed that the NSA and CIA could and did snoop around in our private data, it was all according to plan and we didn't think about it much. But now that the thing which we already thought was happening has been brought into the spotlight and proven factually, it's as if something's changed.
I'm not saying that its okay just because it was predictable, nor am I saying that there aren't people who honestly believed before all of this that the NSA's nose was clean. I just think its funny that a lot of people were surprised and outraged, where a day before they would have said "yeah they probably do that" with no objection or emotion.
I'm not saying that its okay just because it was predictable, nor am I saying that there aren't people who honestly believed before all of this that the NSA's nose was clean. I just think its funny that a lot of people were surprised and outraged, where a day before they would have said "yeah they probably do that" with no objection or emotion.
He's British, they don't have our Bill of Rights nor do they think that freedoms like speech are sacrosanct. That's why you can get arrested there for being mean on Twitter.
I don't care what opinions actors have on real-world issues. I didn't even read it. This should be everyone's level of interest where an actor's opinion is concerned.
Palette Swap
Member
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic.
dito. In the end, he is an inidividual with opinions like every other person. I don´t know how the fact of him being an actor somehow makes his opinion special.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=494709
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=44294740
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=33027273&postcount=351
etc.
From a cursory search. It's pretty well known, to the point where Americans lament becoming the UK. The Brits don't have a written constitution let alone anything equivalent to our First Amendment.
kittoo
Cretinously credulous
My man!
Hypereides
Member
Well, objectively he's right.
It's a pretty ambivalent topic. Essentially a double-egded sword. On one hand it may/does save lives, on the other it's intruding and playing games with our private life.
My suspicion is that on a human level he doesn't condone it. But you gotta give him some credit for not being selfish and putting others security first. He could've obviously said that it breaks your entitlement to privacy but in the other hand, not every political action works with a hostile agenda.
It's likely that when people say this, they aren't saying it to mean it's impossible to trade one for the other, but that you shouldn't do it. While liberty and security is a balancing act, it seems that security is the easier one to lure or fool people into accepting. There can certainly be a creeping increase of totalitarian policies, as where a creeping increase of anarchy seems really unlikely.
Palette Swap
Member
Sorry, I wasn't surprised by the freedom of speech part particularly but more by the notion that somehow Brits would be more submissive to surveillance because they don't have freedom ingrained as deeply. That seemed a bit ridiculous because, you know, the outrage is over an American agency acting thanks to an Act pushed by an American president. And all this was done to protect people from freedom hating foreigners.
Vermillion
Banned
Because they're actors? We're a bunch of random forum-goers - what exactly makes our opinions that much more sacred?
Hypereides
Member
If they want to save lives they might try changing their awful foreign policy. That might be a much better deterrent to terrorism than compromising the privacy of planet earth.
But I for one can't wait until the next huge government document leak includes full details on all the NSA encryption limit-breaks that they bought off Tor. That'll make us all REALLY safe.
Sacred? Not the best choice of words, but the distinction is that we volunteer ourselves into a discussion. Publishing an actor's opinion on world events in mass media is a foisting upon the public, an implicit representation that the celeb opinion matters.
Note that I'm not saying the celebs shouldn't be free to express their opinion, and media corporations should be free to publish it if they wish. But the public should be smart enough not to give credence to a celeb actor's opinion on real-world issues just because they're famous for pretending to be people they're really not.
Unfortunately, the general public in many cases really seems to care when a celebrity (and I'm talking actors/musicians/comedians here) throws their opinion into the ring. Makes no sense to me.
.
SpectreFire
Member
Life is never that simple and black and white.
It's very easy to say you'd rather have liberty than life if you aren't starring death right in the eyes. For every 1000 person who says they'd lay down their life to stop the government from stealing away their liberties, 999 of them are completely full of nonsense.
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
This is dumb, these two sentences are completely separate matters.
In Britain we don't worship freedom as the be all and end all, like the USA does(I'm generalising here). Restrictions on freedoms can be a positive. Not all freedoms are equal. Some are worth swapping for a bit of security. Gun control springs to mind. That is not to say I agree with Cumberbatch re: NSA surveillance.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Whats liberty without life?
Which is not a statement supporting or condoning any course of action or any program. Just a general frustration with such utterly vague platitudes
I've yet to hear a compelling case from anyone that you shouldn't do it as a generality though, and yet its constantly trotted out as one. Oh sure, there are lots of specific situations where you would not want to trade liberty for security, but there are also lots of examples of the reverse, especially once you realize that liberty does not operate on a linear slider and its possible for security to then enable other forms of liberty, which is the basis for an enormous number of systems that modern society is built around.
Its so goddamn annoying seeing people trot out such vague, useless statements like they're somehow profound and edgy
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
It'd probably save the US a lot of money if they'd have him crack encryptions.
Slight Sherlock spoilers.
Slight Sherlock spoilers.
The Librarian
Banned
Hey, Cumberbatch. It's "she." It's not that hard to use the correct pronoun. Same goes to the writer of the article, Patrick Smith.
Devolution
Member
If you're in everyone's shit then have to spy because of blowback from being in everyone's shit, how about just not being in everyone's shit?
ProfessorLobo
Banned
Don't you think that if they could make that case they would. Do people really think that the #1 priority of the NSA is "saving lives"?
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
This is an utterly fair criticism that is also not the main line of attack people have been using to argue against the NSA. If it was then I probably wouldn't come off as defending something I'd rather not when it comes to a lot of this NSA shit
NSA spying to save lives, okay, rocky an issue, but there's a clear pro to a definite con. The oft-rumored corporate or financial espionage coupled with rendering some security technologies less effective for the purposes of easier spying, not that's something that just cannot be allowed.
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
I think the idea is more so that it is the opinion of someone who has managed to become extremely successful at what they do, and so people get the notion that someone who has achieved so much would have a rather clear, logical view of the world around them. Of course that's not always true, but it's misleading to think that fame itself is where the public credence comes from.
I like this Wimbledon Tennismatch dude.
SMH at people who oversimplify the issue with stuff like "life without liberty is no life at all". We're not actually looking at a 1984 scenario.
Both sides can and have made good arguments in the debate, but such slippery slope arguments will get us nowhere.
SMH at people who oversimplify the issue with stuff like "life without liberty is no life at all". We're not actually looking at a 1984 scenario.
Both sides can and have made good arguments in the debate, but such slippery slope arguments will get us nowhere.
IISANDERII
Member
The ends don't justify the means, Cumberland, the ends don't justify the means.
The problem of trading liberty for security is that there have been and will always be plenty individuals who on the pretexts of providing you security, they would like more powers for themselves while in fact the result is both less liberty and security for yourself.
Such as for example when spy agencies wanting the power to spy on their own citizens or presidents needing extra authority to play the role of judge and jury such as some of the ones given to them by the patriot act. The fact is that very often someone in a position of power would like to have even more power and security and external threats if often a good rationalization for that. What one ought to do is not let themselves be fooled.
Such as for example when spy agencies wanting the power to spy on their own citizens or presidents needing extra authority to play the role of judge and jury such as some of the ones given to them by the patriot act. The fact is that very often someone in a position of power would like to have even more power and security and external threats if often a good rationalization for that. What one ought to do is not let themselves be fooled.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
Damn, And I was just liking him as an actor too.
IISANDERII
Member
We are way, way past looks.
I feel like I couldn't agree more if I tried.
Hoya Destroyer
Member
Julian Assange is an embarrassment to Australia, IMO.
I think releasing all that classified info to the public will only encourage certain people to keep hating America and perpetuate the violence we see in the World today. I suspect he did it, moreso for his own ego, rather than the good of mankind etc. lol
I saw him in a recent interview, here in Aus and he came off as a massive wanker.
Overall, I have no prob sacrificing some privacy for a safer society. Even here in Aus, we have some real nutjobs, that need to be monitored.
I think releasing all that classified info to the public will only encourage certain people to keep hating America and perpetuate the violence we see in the World today. I suspect he did it, moreso for his own ego, rather than the good of mankind etc. lol
I saw him in a recent interview, here in Aus and he came off as a massive wanker.
Overall, I have no prob sacrificing some privacy for a safer society. Even here in Aus, we have some real nutjobs, that need to be monitored.
maplelord93
Banned
high and mighty cumberbatch has opinions, i just don't like this guy.
Half and half
Member
edited out original response: Misread, I apologize for that.
Nope, I don't think they'd share that kind of info with us even if it was true.
Is that the same logic that is telling us that if USA stops bombing /fucking up other countries, those countries will show some love? So when they can stop trading in their liberty for our safety...naaah.
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