According to "France terror: Girl, 16, investigated over Telegram 'attack plan'", Young France girl got interrogated by the authority after being accused of planning an attack in the smartphone application. Also, this application is used by the man who killed the priest about 2 weeks ago.(2016)
_______________________________________
My Yes/No question is:
Is it ok to break the law to safe people's life?
My answer is:
Yes, but it is unlikely for us to do this.
There are many controversies about the NSA spies on people chat or a camera. It is against the privacy rules. You also don't want your parents to look at your chat history with your friends. However, your parents want to know that whether you have any secret that might be illegal such as dealing drug with your friends. When come to this scenario where many of lives are depended on this surveillance program of NSA to prevent possible attacks that may kill a lot of people. This may sounds like 1984 for some people but the surveillance program is for protecting people not to silence people and to check and control every aspect of there life.
When come to breaking the law and save people. This make me think of one word "vigilante". Lets take a "1984 New York City Subway shooting" for the example. Bernhard Goetz pulled out the gun and shoot at 4 men while they were trying to rob him. One of the man is left paralyze. Most people would say it is ok for this case because of self-defense. Still he was charged with attempted murder and illegal firearms possession. Let's trace back a bit. Why he he carry gun everywhere? That is because he used to get attacked in Subway about 3 years ago and because he knew one day someone is going to do something bad to him again. Many people were consider this as a heroic act. That is because without shooting at those 4 guys, they might go out and do some malicious act to other people.
Another extreme case will be a Marvel comic character, "The Punisher". The veteran who came out at night and kill every criminal that he found. Paradoxically, when he got jailed he start killing his cellmate. Even the concept of prison does not work with him!! Actually I state this because this is an ideal situation where police cannot do their work properly. However, this idea of "The Punisher" is only in a comic. As I said, all of these situations would be unlikely to happen. Should we consider him as a criminal?
___________
Reference
1984 New York City Subway shooting. (2016, August 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:35, August 10, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1984_New_York_City_Subway_shooting&oldid=733562241.
France terror: Girl, 16, investigated over Telegram 'attack plan'. (2016, August 9). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37033271.
France terror: Girl, 16, investigated over Telegram 'attack plan'. (2016, August 9). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37033271.
Actually, I think the more serious problem is that governments make it legal to spy on their own, or other nation's, citizens. Should the Australian government be able to spy on my private life? Should the Thai government be legally able to invade the privacy of Thai citizens?
ReplyDeletePhu's answers seem pretty clear. Do you agree with him?
I particularly like the example of the film The Punisher, it wasn't great art, but it was great fun to watch. And it clarifies Phu's point very well.
DeleteDoes everyone know what Telegram is? (No, it isn't something sent by the post office.)
ReplyDeleteIt is a mobile application that has been used to plan the attack and spread the propaganda of ISIS
DeletePhu, your question reminds me of one moral dilemma I read a few years back. I think it's called the Trolley Problem. The situation is if there are 5 people tied up on the main track and only one person on the alternative route while the train is going to hit the 5 people, would you switch the track given that you don't have enough time to untie them? If you hit the switch, you will save 5 people, but kill one. The majority of people would choose the first choice. They would rather kill one person to save 5 people. However, another version of Trolley Problem called Fat man (I'm not sure if this is the correct name) shows interesting ways people think. The situation is quite similar except that in this time, you have to push a fat guy from the platform onto the track to stop the train. This guy is heavy enough to decelerate the train while you are skinny and trying to be a hero, you use yourself to obstruct the train won't do anything. 5 people would survive if you push him. The conundrum is that you would have to push him by yourself. Before you kill this guy, you can see his facial expression. You can also talk to him if you want to. You can see his face when you betray his trust! Well, the majority of people can't put themselves to push this obese guy. They would choose to let the 5 people die. It is quite interesting that despite the end result is the same, saving one man or saving 5 people, people uses their sense of morality to judge, to make a decision. They would feel bad to push the guy, even though the action would save more lives. It is because the second option has the intention to kill the man. This brings me to your question, "Is it ok to break the law to safe people's life?" And your answer match mine, people are not likely to do it. If they have to intentionally commit a crime, they might choose to doing nothing at all.
ReplyDeleteStudies show that psychopaths are more morally consistent: they do the calculation and readily push the fat man.
DeleteBut Oil is right, this example and the variations on it help us to understand our complex moral reasoning, or lack of reasoning. Is it better to be a psychopath or to take other factors than the results into account when determining what is right and wrong?
A couple of sources on this are: "Utilitarians Aren't Psychopaths—Are They?", White, 2011
and
"Are You a Psychopath? Take the Test", Fowler & Rodd, n.d.
I have found this lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY maybe it has some of the useful reasons. I am watching it right now.
DeleteInteresting topic. I have never watched "The Punisher", but your article reminds me of the film "The equalizer." The idea is pretty much similar here. The main character possesses incredible killing skill which he uses it only to help other people. He is the man with good heart who cannot tolerate injustice. When the movie had ended, i was thinking to myself that what if we have this kind of people in our country? Will our society be more peaceful? In the country where rules and regulations cannot be counted on anymore, I kind of like the idea of having someone like him in the country. However, if you ask me if he should be considered as a criminal, my answer is yes. He breaks the law so he is undoubtedly a criminal. But I do believe there's always a fine line between good and bad, evil and moral, right and wrong and a criminal who saves innocent people by committing the crime and a police--a peace keeper who turns blind eye to innocent people but choose to save another criminal for the fear of losing his wealth or job.
ReplyDeleteThoughtful comment by Mieng. I'm looking forward to the responses.
DeleteSo does capital punishment is the legal way to kill those criminal? There is the only small difference between capital punishment and vigilante which is capital punishment have to go through law first. Still there is no indication that the law is perfect since it also came from the logic of people. However, isn't a group of scholars has the correct logical thinking as one one man? For me, as a human, we make a lot of mistakes and it is impossible to make a perfect sense of logic as what Gödel's incompleteness theorems state: in math it is impossible to prove everything. In the nutshell this theorem is about the liar paradox("This statement is false".).
Deleteis Paradox a bug of the universe?
What i mean "bug" is a computer term of the error in logic of the program.
Thank you for your comment. I find it very interesting. In my opinion, the definition of the term "vigilante" answers your question by itself. If we talk about what's legal and what's not, any punishment from a person with no authority is absolutely illegal. But if we talk about "moral" or the definition of good and bad, it's completely another story. I'm 100% agreed with you that human is not perfect and we do lots of mistakes. But I think there's no such thing called the "correct logic" for human just like we can find the absolute answers in math or science. Human's mind is too sophisticated to be able for a simple answer like "correct" or "incorrect". For me, it's just the way which the majority of people agree on. So It depends on what standard are you using to answer that specific question. So for me, is it illegal?--yes. Is it immoral?-- as a Buddhist, definitely. Is it acceptable?-- as a human being who doesn't believe in my own country's criminal justice system, hell yes.
DeleteYour post remind me of the news I saw yesterday which is about a guy was robbed by a motorcycle gang. He drove his car chasing them. It ended in crash and left one suspected thief dead. (http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1059316/robbery-suspect-killed-in-crash-after-victim-gives-chase)
ReplyDeleteI think we should look at it case by case whether one should charged as a criminal. In the news i mentioned, I'm not feel sorry for that dead thief at all and hope the robbed guy won't get any serious charge.
For the government spying on people, it's more difficult to decide. It may help prevent the attack that might happen as in France. But I don't want anyone to spy on my private life either and I think many people would feel the same.
I think we can kill murderers to protect someone or us if we can't talk with them (murderers) or they refuse to listen us. Furthermore, if some countries aren't peaceful or have a lot of crimes, I think governments in that countries can access personal privacy (like talking on mobilephone or chatting on social media) to eliminate crimes which are run by murderers. Howerer, this also erodes people's privacy in which they aren't murderers.
ReplyDelete