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Comment by twiceaday | Hacker News Reader

"Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, just over two weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined it was suicide"

"On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war."

Putting him on the money would further the apology.

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I don't want Turing put on a note as "an apology". There are thousands (millions?) of people who have been mistreated by unjust laws in British history, of which Turing's case is sadly not the worst example. Turing's accomplishments in Computer Science and the help he gave the Allies in WWII are cause enough.

Amazing contributions towards defeating the Axis. Response? "Yeah... but, at the time, being gay was illegal, so, ya know."

That was not the response. The actual response

It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort. However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/feb/07/alan...

Gordon Brown may have made an apology, but UK government recently refused to posthumously pardon Turing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/02/07/uk-de...

The argument for not pardoning is mostly reasonable, I think. It was a crime at the time, and you can't go around posthumously pardoning everyone retroactively whenever the law catches up to society a generation or two later. (Edit: I still think what they did to Turing was wrong, of course.)

Not a brit, so my opinion is officially meaningless. But, why can't you just go around issuing posthumous pardons for unjust old laws? I mean, it's posthumous! It's not like there's a fundamental fairness issue at stake here. Other unjustly-convicted dead people aren't suddenly going to file suits demanding redress.

Just do the right thing. Why bother with the technicalities?

Your opinion is not meaningless although like 99.9999% may be ultimately ignored.

But the problem with pardoning people posthumously for something is that there may be people who were convicted of the same crime who aren't yet dead. A government admitting that it did wrong is just asking to be sued. Sorry quite cynical I know.

Personally I'd like Babbage on a note.

Two things because the person is already dead pardoning them isn't going to do a lot of good for them is it? Furthermore the governments opinion that convicting them was wrong is already apparent due to the fact that they changed the law. Next, England is one the oldest governments on Earth being roughly 1000 years old (give or take a century), individually pardoning every dead person who committed a crime that is no longer a crime would be a major burden on the parliament taking time away from addressing the needs of living people. As a result it makes a lot of sense to have a blanket (and longstanding) rule; no pardons for dead people.

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