Alan Turing’s story could be rebooted by calls to pardon late computer legend | Hacker News Reader

Alan Turing’s story could be rebooted by calls to pardon late computer legend

washingtonpost.com

32 pointsdctoedt20 comments

I think a pardon is not wise. A pardon implies that he was "guilty" but shouldn't have been punished, or perhaps not-guilty and erroneously convicted, rather than that the law was entirely unjust. A pardon implies that it is possible to unwind the wrongs of the past retroactively and make it as though they never happened.

History cannot be rewritten, wrongs cannot be righted after the fact. The best way to honor Turing's legacy is to fight against unjust laws that still exist today.

A pardon and an apology are different things. In this case both are necessary and the apology has already been given.

A pardon is necessary because without it he will still be recognised as a criminal by the state since he technically broke the law at the time.

Why is it necessary? He's dead, and likely so are those who prosecuted him. The whole push seems pointless to me. I don't dispute the injustice of what happened to him, but I don't see how a pardon makes it better in any way.

It's symbolic and sends a message to people who are still alive, similar to posthumously awarding a medal.

You're saying "not only do no longer consider this a crime, but we no longer consider this to be a crime to the degree that we are willing to rewrite the record".

It may well give comfort to both surviving family as well as send a signal to other british homosexuals who are concerned about the security of their rights.

Well the issue here is that he was guilty under the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 Section 11 (which re-criminalized male homosexuality in Great Britain — actual sodomy was a separate crime)

The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde.

Pardoning only Alan Turing in the face of 49k other historical injustices isn't enough. It makes me wonder about the countless other thousands of convictions that remain on the books for things that we hardly think of as crimes today. With time, I suspect that we'll only add to that list.

How far back do you want this to go? I'm sure there are tons of crimes like witchcraft that people were sentenced for that are no longer illegal.

Should we go back through all the laws that have now been repealed and retrospectively pardon anyone that may have been affected?

Turing was clearly a genius and was treated very, very badly by the laws of the time but pardoning him changes none of that.

> It makes me wonder about the countless other thousands of convictions that remain on the books for things that we hardly think of as crimes today

If we're going to retroactively declare the dead to be innocent, what's to stop us from retroactively declaring the living to be guilty?

IMO we should be leaving past convictions alone, and just treat this as a reminder that the law isn't always the absolute unchangeable definition of what is morally good.

> If we're going to retroactively declare the dead to be innocent, what's to stop us from retroactively declaring the living to be guilty?

Pardons don't work that way.

Pardoning only Turing isn't enough, but it would be a start.

Pardoning Alan Turing is not a good idea in my opinion. This sends the message that what he did was wrong, and only because he happens to be a war hero he gets pardoned. This makes it seem like the other homosexuals who got the same treatment as Turing do not deserve a pardon. Just because Turing was a genius does not make his treatment any more unjust than the treatment of those other people. Therefore either all homosexuals who were prosecuted should be pardoned, or nobody should be.

Shouldn't it be the other way round. May be some descendent or relative of his family can pardon UK government.

This. Turing doesn't need to be pardoned; the UK government should apologize to him and everyone else that they persecuted.

There has already been an apology - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8249792.stm

It would be better to just allow the government to be symbolically prosecuted for past wrongs. Politicians love to create revisionist history in which they are the heroes for letting people be free. In cases like this the government committed human rights violations, but they believe that they have the right to do this because it was legal. Only prosecution makes it clear that the government lacks the authority to ever attack people in this way.

Wasn't he pardoned already? I always assumed he was a few years ago.

EDIT: I stand corrected, it seems to be ongoing: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/19/enigma-codebr...

I believe that we have done so much damage to Turing, that while this is a nice gesture, it does very little to the redeem society for the abuse we heaped on one of our greatest thinkers.

What the really needed to do was to apologize, not pardon.

The government has already apologised.

I stand corrected.

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