The attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket reignited the debate about freedom of speech and tolerance for the beliefs of others. One issue that received less attention is how far an open society should surrender freedoms it values highly in the name of security. An illuminating exchange took place on BBC…
Category: Politics
Morals and dilemmas
As introductions go, Mohammed Mahdi al-Bayati’s takes some beating. Described by his media consultant as “the person with the worst job in global politics”, Iraq’s minister for human rights carries his burden with grace. Mr Bayati, 52, an ethnic Turkmen, is a former foe of Saddam Hussein and still carries the physical scars of his…
Risky business
The world loves a bogeyman. And Kim Jong Un certainly fits the bill. But the fallout from the alleged hacking of Sony by North Korea has revealed much about how governments, corporations and individuals view the subject of risk. Certainly emails have been swiped, to the intense annoyance or schadenfreude-tinged fascination of participants in, and…
Crime data reveal a very British attitude to theft
To interact with this data sheet click here. According to the recently released Crime Survey of England and Wales recorded crime levels are falling, which is a good thing. Dig further and the data for the last decade reveal curious insights into the changing nature of crime against the person. Perceptions that such crime is…
Hearts and minds
The report into the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme is a grim read. Not because it is 524 pages long, or that this heavily redacted offering to the public is tiny compared to the more than 6,700 pages of the full classified Committee Study. Rather, it is grim because it is real. Think Homeland was…
Man versus Machine
“We have not let technology run away with our ethics.” So says a senior British Army Officer in the UK’s Ministry of Defence when quizzed about drones; the catch-all descriptor for unmanned aerial vehicles. But his comment hints at a nervousness in senior political and military circles of an erosion of public support due to the…
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