Delight in Giddiness

@roygrubb praises @HPluckrose for clarity.

We need you to define 'Islamophobia' very clearly by 7th May @Ed_Miliband. Will such statements be criminalised? pic.twitter.com/moStkDYcD7
— Helen Pluckrose (@HPluckrose) April 25, 2015

Perfect. Couldn't be stated more clearly. https://t.co/YI2reCO7Ed
— Roy Grubb (@roygrubb) April 26, 2015

Helen says we need something. But is this really a clear statement of requirements? What exactly is she demanding here? Does she expect politicians to provide precise definitions of all the cliches and platitudes and vague promises in the manifesto or on the hustings? If benefits are going to be directed towards "hard-working families", do we need this term to be defined as well? (See Terry Eagleton's criticism of the party manifestos.)

Supposing it to be possible to legislate about "islamophobia" (or "hate crime"), the term would need to be defined properly, so that the legislation is fair and workable. My initial reading of Helen's tweet was that she believed that a meaningful definition was not possible, therefore legislation would not be possible, therefore the promise to legislate would be either foolish or in bad faith. However, instead of stating this belief directly, she expresses her challenge in the form of a case that may demonstrate the impossibility of producing a fair and workable definition.

Of course, this form of challenge is quite legitimate, but I should like to quibble with Roy's assertion that it is the clearest (most explicit) way of posing such a challenge. The fact that I initially misread Helen's tweet (as affirmed in the comment below this post) reinforces my concern about clarity. I'm not blaming Helen for this - it is rarely possible to express one's complete meaning in a 140 character tweet.  

Helen wants Ed Miliband to reassure us that any legislation would be drawn narrowly, to avoid restricting legitimate intellectual debate. However, there is a precedent for ill-defined and over-generalized terms being coded into legislation, as shown in the absurd laws on "glorifying terrorism", and we may have little confidence that the legislators will apply the appropriate rigour in coming up with a proper definition of anything.

The example quoted by Helen is interesting because it could be used to generate further examples. Firstly, the word "Islam" could be replaced with the word "Christianity". Secondly, the word "Islam" could be replaced with the phrase "Islam-or-Christianity". Could someone who wished to attack Islam and/or its adherents evade the Islamophobia laws by including a token attack on other religions and their adherents? And how would the law regard someone who claims to attack all religions indiscriminately but is accused of devoting a disproportionate amount of his bile for one religion in particular?

The example quoted by Helen is also interesting because it attacks the notion of truth embedded in the phrase "True Islam", using a correspondence notion of truth, which Richard Dawkins and other scientists take as the epistemological "gold standard". But I think many people would interpret "True Islam" in terms of some (subjective) notion of authenticity, and regard the opening statement as either begging the question or deliberate provocation.


What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting.

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Hamed Chapman, Labour would outlaw Islamophobia, says Miliband in an exclusive interview (Muslim News, 24 April 2015)
S. Abbas Raza, Richard Dawkins, Relativism and Truth (3Quarks Daily, December 2005)
Francis Bacon, Of Truth (Essays)
Terry Eagleton, Which party’s election manifesto is the best written? (Guardian 24 April 2015)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Correspondence Theory of Truth
Wikipedia: Terrorism Act 2006. 
POSIWID blog: Glory Glory Knockdown Argument (October 2005)


Update 14:20 UK time following Helen's comment. Clarified that this was my initial (but incorrect) reading of her tweet. Reworded from "attack Islam" to "attack Islam and/or its adherents".

Hard Cases Make Bad Law

Heated debate in the UK about the new anti-paedophile checks in the UK (Parent driver checks prompt row, BBC News 11 September 2009). On the one side, people suggesting that the new system is a disproportionate response to a single appalling case (Ian Huntley murdering two schoolgirls in Soham); on the other side, people adopting the "no check is excessive if it makes our children safe" line of argument.

It's a big if. Any vetting or screening system will produce false positives and false negatives. Nobody knows how many. There are people cleverer and more devious than Huntley, and they will know more than Huntley did about how the system works, so it is fairly certain that some of them will manage to get through the check undetected. In any case, the check only picks up people who already have a police record. If the check creates a sense of false security, then it potentially makes our children less safe.

Meanwhile, honest volunteers who have been the subject of false allegations in the past may prefer to avoid having these allegations raked over again; so there may be fewer people willing and able to run scout groups, youth clubs, and so on, leaving kids with little option but hanging around on street corners. Nobody knows how many. (Whatever happened to evidence-based policy? Whatever happened to joined-up thinking?)

Furthermore, as one of the detectives responsible for catching Huntley points out (This CRB-check paranoia won’t stop another Soham, The Times, 15 September 2009), the girls knew and trusted Huntley not because he happened to be a caretaker at a completely different school, but because they knew and trusted his girlfriend, Maxine Carr. The logical implication of this is that CRB checks should cover not only classroom assistants (such as Ms Carr) but also their boyfriends. Perhaps the designers of the CRB system already have a cunning plan to extend the scheme later, as soon as its inadequacy becomes apparent.

This seems to be one of those schemes (along with DNA testing and identity cards) where a partial scheme is pushed through as a compromise. The logic of the scheme suggests that it will only work properly if the entire population is covered, and covered far more thoroughly than the present scheme can, but the politicians rightly recognize that this would be politically unacceptable. So they grab what they can get, and wait for a later opportunity to make the scheme yet more totalitarian.

Purpose of Legislation 2

Legislation is often justified for one purpose, and then used for some other purpose. We have seen numerous examples of this on this blog. Here are some further examples.

• Animal Rights Activists Forced to Hand Over Encryption Keys [BBC News]. Bruce Schneier comments: "If you remember, this was sold to the public as essential for fighting terrorism. It's already being misused."

• NatWest Three Face Jail Sentence [BBC News]. Three UK bankers will spend time in US prison, thanks to an extradition treaty agreed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. British business leaders and civil liberties campaigners (including Digby Jones, Mike Templeman and Shami Chakrabarti) have criticized the treaty as unbalanced. [BBC News]
  

Sometimes we wonder whether those pushing for the original legislation always had a hidden agenda - at least they must be aware of the potential value of grabbing powers that can be used for other purposes.

Judge Actions by their Effects

In an earlier post Glory Glory Knockdown Argument, I mentioned the curious detail of recent UK legislation, whereby infringements of laws restricting free speech are based on the effects produced by the speech on the audience.

In his latest article, This is now a protest for democracy, George Monbiot points out how the legal definition of harassment has now been extended to include pretty much anything that causes people to become alarmed or distressed. Any act of protest aimed at drawing some issue to public attention can now be interpreted as harassment.

We have always known that politicians and businessmen get upset when they are challenged, heckled or mocked. Two years ago, anti-terror legislation was used to suppress heckling at the Labour Party conference. Some people might be alarmed or distressed at the absence of heckling or even serious debate, but presumably that doesn't count.

POSIWID turns the law into a social construction - the legality of our actions depends on the subjective reactions of other people. We cannot tell in advance whether our words or actions will be illegal. Risk-averse law-abiding citizens will be careful to avoid causing offence to anyone - even those who deserve it. Meanwhile crooks and wide-boys will issue injunctions, and none will dare speak against them, except in carefully coded form.

Government for the People

Why are our elected representatives such prats?

There has been lots of high moral commentary about the latest action by British MPs, who voted to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act. Not for their benefit, you understand, but to preserve the privacy of their constituents.

We could have a technical discussion about the degree of protection constituents already had - either from the Data Protection Act or from other provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. I had a minor disagreement with Robin Wilton recently on the adequacy of the DPA. [See his post Exploding Venus Probe.] For my part, I don't believe the DPA is strong enough. But if our legislators have now (belatedly) realised this, the proper thing for them to do would be to make the DPA stronger, rather than tinker with some other legislation in an apparently self-interested way.

In a later post, Robin despairs of our elected representatives. "I don't know what's more depressing; the idea that our MPs haven't read their own legislation, or the idea that they think we can't."

This problem is not a new one. Our beloved legislators produce too much bad law all the time - and not just when there is any apparent self-interest. In general, legislation is hopelessly complicated, self-contradictory, and riddled with accidental loop-holes and unintended side-effects. (I've seen a lot of badly designed software systems, and I recognize many of the same characteristics.)

What is the effect of this bad legislation? More work for lawyers, and more wriggle-room for the powerful. In many cases, it is not the MPs themselves who are affected by the low level of legislative competence, but those behind the scenes pulling the strings.

But I wanted to go beyond the technical legal discussion. Some people have complained that blatant self-interest serves to distance the elected representatives from the people they purport to represent. I don't agree with that argument. We may observe that the rogue with his hand in the till often has much more popular support than the cold fish who wouldn't dream of bending the rules.

It's an interesting question - should not the elected representatives have the same collection of strengths and weaknesses as the population as a whole - including their moral weaknesses? Surely the biggest turnoff for the electorate is to be presented with a supposedly superior governing class? In the past, the supposed superiority has been through attending the right schools and universities (the magic combination of Eton and Oxford has a good chance of producing yet another Prime Minister, if Gordon Brown doesn't watch out) - or perhaps the right trade union credentials. In the future, perhaps, the superiority will be through squeaky clean morals, a completely respectable CV, and a total lack of testosterone.

But who can the British people relate to better - John Prescott or Hilary Benn? Yes our MPs may be prats, but there are worse alternatives.

[Update July 2008] This was written before Prescott published his autobiography, revealing that he suffered from an eating disorder. [Prescott tells of bulimia battle BBC News April 2008]
I'm not sure whether that makes any difference to my argument, although clearly he was not willing to reveal this until his political career was over. However, there are larger questions about politicians and mental health. [MPs reveal mental health problems BBC News July 2008]

Purpose of Legislation

Adam Shostack celebrates The New Transparency.

"Sometimes, we Americans forget how lucky we are to live in a country with 51 legislative bodies, all of which can pass laws which affect all of us. By sheer luck, some of those laws will not stink, and a few actually turn out to be useful, not jarringly out-of-tune with the gestalt, and not trampling of civil liberties."

Adam singles out the legislation (initially in California, and now replicated in other states) that mandates notification of security/privacy breaches. He points out that this legislation has raised expectations of best practice in other countries, that are outside its jurisdiction.

Similar arguments could be made by supporters of Sarbanes-Oxley. The legislation itself only applies to US public companies, but the required corporate governance practices are being adopted by other organizations as well. So the effect is broader than its legal scope.

Sometimes the explicit purpose of legislation is not just to control behaviour but to change attitudes. If it is successful, the legislation itself might even become unnecessary. But removing the redundant legislation from the statute book at this point would send the wrong signals.

Technorati tags: POSIWID

Delayed Reaction - Politics

Sometimes it takes a while for the real purpose of a complex system to emerge. 

Last year, 82-year-old heckler Walter Wolfgang was ejected from the Labour Party conference [BBC News]. At the time, this appeared to be a heavy-handed and inappropriate use of anti-terror legislation to suppress dissent. Robin Wilton described it as an ugly incident, and I sarcastically suggested this might be a case of mistaken identity. 

This year, Walter Wolfgang has been elected onto the Labour Party National Executive Committee [BBC News via Robin Wilton]. “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." 

Wolfgang's election can perhaps be seen as a healthy reaction (restoration) by a large and slow-moving institition, which maintains at least some principles of grass-roots democracy and free speech notwithstanding the efforts of party leaders and minders. POSIWID suggests that we may be able to infer something about the true purpose of an institution like the Labour Party from the way such incidents unfold, and from its resistance to being pushed around.

 

Glory Glory Knockdown Argument

`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

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The latest UK Government plans to deglorify terrorism apparently take a POSIWID line - inferring the purpose of a speech from its effect on an audience. Robin Wilton raises two concerns with this (note1).

Standards of proof - How can a law officer demonstrate the intent to glorify?

Liability - If glory is defined in terms of the effect on an audience, does this shift responsibility / power away from the speaker and onto the audience?

There is of course an important difference between the effect on an audience (taken as a whole) and the effect on a very small number of audience members. Is it reasonable to infer the purpose of a speech from its effect on a tiny fringe of listeners? (note2)

But we can also reflect the POSIWID line back onto the Government plan. What is the likely effect of Government legislation on the people who are supposed to be vulnerable to incitement? Might it possibly reinforce a sense of alienation and isolation, leading to further glorification instead of deglorification. We have had counterproductive antiterrorism measures before, including the stupid ban on Sinn Fein which resulted in their words being spoken by actors. But this time around, actions that lead to the glorification of terrorism become illegal - and for consistency's sake this should surely include any Government actions that lead to the glorification of terrorism, since the proposed legislation itself defines intent in terms of effect! Ha!

The UK Government also intends to introduce powers to control places of worship that "foment extremism". On past form, any official definition of extremism is likely to be sweeping and all-inclusive, both in wording (note3) and in interpretation (note4). I confidently expect extremism to include beliefs about heaven and hell, good and evil, evolution and reincarnation, and so on. (Well at least we Buddhists will be all right then.)

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Notes

1. Robin Wilton's comment (8th Oct 2005) was posted at the following URL, which is no longer available http://blogs.sun.com/roller/comments/racingsnake?anchor=uk_law_revised_on_glorification
2. See earlier posts on DogWhistle Politics (March 2005) and Purpose and Probability (Sept 2005).
3. See post by Masood Mortazavi on Tony Blair's definition of terrorism, with my comments (Sept 2005).
4. See discussion of the use of the Terrorism Act against Walter Wolfgang (Sept 2005).

Links updated 5 April 2015

Mistaken Identity

A heckler was ejected from the Labour Party conference today. Mr Walter Wolfgang (aged 82) was thrown out of the conference by Labour Party heavies, after shouting at the Foreign Secretary. 

According to the BBC News, "police used powers under the Terrorism Act to prevent Mr Wolfgang's re-entry". Many critics had always feared that the Terrorism Act would be used for other purposes besides terrorism. Here we see the Act apparently being used to suppress heckling. If there was a covert purpose to the legislation, surely it has been exposed by this action?

[updated to add] Robin Wilton writes: "Whatever the intent of the Act, a shameful episode like this reveals the danger of framing legislation in ways which make such abuses possible." 

Or was it a case of mistaken identity? Perhaps the police thought they were dealing with Mr Walter Wolfgang Droege, whose name appears on various international databases. Yes that must be it.

 

Related post: Delayed Reaction (August 2006)