Assembly for Human Rights: Montreal; Science and Technology as Threats

We bring you now another only series report from Montreal the human rights assembly in observance of the current international year for human rights the assembly which took place recently in Montreal Quebec brought together a wide spectrum of delegates from all parts of the world to assess the work still to be done in the field of human rights. Starting with this program we're going to turn to specific problem areas beginning with science and technology and there are implications as possible threats to individual freedom. Perhaps the most enthusiastically received of all the addresses given at the assembly was presented by the Lord Richie Calder a prominent British scientific writer and now as he spoke on the International Civil Aviation building in Montreal. Lord Ritchie Calder thank you very much Mr. Chairman. As we say in another place the parliament of Great Britain I must declare my interest. I want to assure everyone that I am not anti technology. I have written books on science. I have written books and medicine I've written books

and pharmacuticals and I am very heavily devotedly committed to the advantages of technological advancement and I may also add for the benefit of those who may suspect that what I say is somehow withholding the advantages of technology from the developing countries. I spent the last twenty years of my life going around to developing countries to see how science and technology can best help them. But having said that I want to let this gathering and indeed the wider audience that we are seeking to reach of the real dangers of technology. To paraphrase another saying Beware of the technologists and the gifts they bring because implicit in all these developments is the converse of benefit and it's the abuse of the means of engineering change with which we are concerned. Here

it is the genuine threat to human rights which are embodied in the kind of instrument instrumentation which we have now secured and the greater danger. I may say so of dumb acquiescence in adoption. I think that as I said the opening night here the briefing meeting we are faced with a tyranny of the experts that the tyranny of the expert isn't by US operation by the expert is by default that we have in fact failed failing to counteract the genuine dedicated technological insistence of the experts by failing to recognize that what they are doing is in fact a threat to the public and the private sector of human life. I believe in the computer I believe also the computer has enormous

capacity to involve open involved and it is again the acquiescence of failure to recognize what it cumulatively the computer can do in the in the public and the private domain. Illustration I give you a very dramatic one. That was when the whole of the western eastern states of the United States was blocked blocked out blacked out. In November 1965 this was simply a surge in the electrical system of the eastern states which overwhelmed the monster computer and completely paralyzed the whole community. It was a very solitary warning that in fact we had handed ourselves over to the machine and when or when it happened I had one of the federal commission in power commission of America say that only five people in the United States could understand what it had to happen and none of

them knew and I was so surprised by this. Today a dangerous friend of mine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whether this could conceivably be true. Yes it is perfectly true. This system was like a minefield in which we lost the chops. And this new possibilities of. The effective tax knowledge there's something about which we all must be aware. Please read what I want to say for example that if you are considering the enormous benefits which could come to the developing countries from Sissons of systems of communication for the spreading of education and so forth which are a measure you've got to consider the techniques which are being used. To me education is not for export. The means of education offered. But we are going to have countries

simply being having an education forced upon them which is alien to the culture of that country and I don't mean just nostalgic culture. I mean the literal beneficial and meaningful culture of that country then I I'm very very suspicious of the means and therefore when we are looking at the means and here I speak as the British delegate UNESCO's where we have here in Esca the mandate to go into the field of communication satellites a prospect maybe of a satellite over India for educational purposes. I entered a very strong caveat which I repeat here a communications satellite which is a station to station satellite like Telstar about what what you're like well you are simply relaying what is coming to you from somewhere else that is in fact a system of screening which is legitimate that you are not merely accepting everything that had been done to you. But when you come to

broadcasting satellites which we all have within the next few years where I have satellites poised in space over an area of hundreds of millions of people of different countries and different cultures. I warn you everyone that you are going to have the destruction of culture that this is going to be directly into the homes of the people and they can be an alien culture superimposed upon the genuine and valued cultures of the country. So this is something which we must be aware of and indeed I have insisted through you ask and I hope we will back up my insistence in reference to the Iran that we should secure our convention before the thing gets in us into space. We can secure the convention which will govern the output of such satellites. Once they're there there's nothing you can do about it. It's a takeover bid and a culture will dominate. I

may say just encourage that didn't this. Rescuers had the backing of the Soviet Union and the USSR for a very good reason that I told them that one would put this propaganda satellite out and believe me. And I said the other fellow put a satellite up and he believed that we had that propaganda wise we had at least the recognition that somebody might dominate. This is not just a question of propaganda. It is the effect which you will have of absolutely blanching or destroying a culture. And the first conference of ask the leader of the British delegation said something which I want to repeat here and I go on repeating and I hope we'll hang onto the white light of universal enlightenment includes in this spectrum the colors of all the cultures of the world. If we withdraw that well anyway back you change the character of that law and like it we have a broadcasting satellite beamed straight into people's homes with

no means whatever of protecting them are advising them or any other way then you are going to have the equivalent of the sodium light we have along our streets which stuns everything into a mana crowd and never in the interest of all the preservation and the rights of people to have the cultures that they want. I insist that this is a gross intrusion on human rights. The second thing which I have elaborated the past in my own favor and which I'm not going to get out of here is all the methods by which we can now by default allow central authority or the the police system or anything else to take over the individual. I have a profound distrust. I'm not thinking now about beating ups or anything else. I have a profound distrust of methods which are insidiously used by by police forces and others in order to obtain information information which

incidentally the individual cannot rebut that they don't know how that has been obtained and this includes methods of pharmacological softening opposites called. It includes as I said in my paper ultrasonic waves includes polarized mirrors and what you don't know you are being so sick of that etc. etc. etc.. It includes all the bugging methods which you can buy in the city of Montreal what you see advertised and the American newspapers by which anyone can go into a shop and buy an a small instrument for you you can attach to a telephone and hear what other people are talking about this kind of thing which is used in order to obtain information about to which the individual has no means of rebuttal no means he doesn't know it exists. He's not challenged with is not checked on it. It is similar simply as I said in my paper fed into the master dossier.

And you and you're confronted not by the details of that dossier but by the total effect of it. Every one of us today is a walking criminal. On this basis because of us and our lives not done something which has not offended against somebody in some political situation in our lives. I'm a walking criminal because I don't know in what countries my offense is innocent to me are criminal to them. And here we have a situation in which we must really recognize that this is a genuine and real threat which at the moment is being acquiesced. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm simply saying that is our job. Those of us who are concerned with human rights to let everyone everywhere in the world as to what is happening now have taken the precaution on your injunction as the challenge of at least putting up one drawing which I am more than more than willing to modify and we'll with the Raptors.

I suggest that we recognize as we've said here the dangers for his electronics and other forms of intrusion is not merely. The implication of computer based text not to say if a democratic government. The tyranny of the expert of the faceless man we never see and who are never accountable to our policy decision making on facts we do not know and there's never been public time for members were simply told the experts say i have this in my own parliament. Our experts say this is not democracy. We must challenge the expert at every point. We are we are going to the village sponsible for decision making and we are faced with this kind of centralized decision making based as I say on information which we know nothing. For example is the CIA the Central Intelligence Agency we are told now has fifteen thousand agents throughout the world.

Now I have a great head a great deal to do with secret intelligence. I know how dangerous it is to accept secret intelligence without the most careful scrutiny. If 15000 agents are feeding in to a computer in Washington then the intelligence with the total intelligence is not what it is like fitting it into a kitchen blender margin either. And then you dont know where the bad smell came from because you didn't know what to put a piece of waste depleted. This is real really dangerous misuse of information and intelligence. The other thing which I want to stress I has been right as I indicated we are now moving into a stage in the DNA age the DNA deoxyribonucleic age which is as you well know the secret of life is the information code not only to the cells of the body it is the cells of heredity and we can manipulate these now

we know the code. We know what we can do and in many ways we've already sampled in the area of which Mr. Shaw McBride is particularly concerned of bacteriological warfare and so on. We have already manipulated jobs which of which have changed the whole character we have in fact produced jobs for which no immunity exists in the world. One man in Britain die of it but he himself invented. And one of my scientific friends said Thank God he didn't sneeze. We could have had a worldwide epidemic against which to be no immunity. We manipulate what I call surgical plumbing. The whole of this artificial transplants and so on all of which in detail or in particular circumstances may be completely adjusted. I am going to introduce in the British Parliament this year what I regard as an important human rights and that is that I in

full possession of my faculties at this moment have the right to say the conditions under which I will not be artificially kept alive become a human zombie or a human vegetable that I regard as a very important human right. We are facing now a great profound philosophical and ethical problem in the whole of this manipulation of the human being. And I warn you that this manipulation is going much further than we've seen at the moment because you can in fact and will eventually dictate what the personality of a human being shall be. We are even now talking about putting transistors in the human brain transistors which in fact will and will enable people to walk. That is the beneficial that transistor in the same method by the same means could in fact enable that person to become a complete robot by on a robot of some of them conforming society. We have got to watch the ways in which we are now

being at this moment manipulate in this sense because we are accepting all these things and rightly as ultimately beneficial. But when it comes to the test we have no ethical or moral standards to give to the medical profession except the fact that they have to keep people alive and that they know they must give to their patients. I insist and I believe that in the light of this completely new circumstances in which we can take on the human personality and change it. The personality within the body we can give them our own official cause we can give them artificial limbs we can get them out of organs and what remains something we are keeping alive. We called the brain. And I would remind you ladies and gentlemen the brain is not the mind the human person. All knowledge is not an organ called the brain. It's a compound of everything we are altering in this method. We've got to

bring people to a recognition that this raises great profound issues very very important issues professionally for all people concern. And that's what I suggested. And another point I'd like to make this I think we ought to refer to this that I have seen and I watched the methods of so-called training. I hope all everybody here. Men and women will realize and recognize that the education and training is not by any means the same thing. Education is bringing out training is putting in. And we can now produce human assets like the tapes of the tape machine or like a sealed packet of your camera. We can now produce just human cassettes by man and brainwashing them of all extraneous intros and concentrating on their aptitudes to the point where they will fit into the missing set of a computer system where you are an automation and so on

whether you just have not found the substitute for the moment of the human being you can and you can train by attachment logic by our tiny computerized methods. You can train a human being for this limited capacity for a limited time and then he has discarded the way we throw away a set. And by that time you're probably disabled him from even thinking for himself. These kinds of things are profoundly important we are now entering the third the third quarter of the apprentice of the 20th century. And by and I'll show you that George Orwell's 1984 is already here. That was Lord Richie Calder as he spoke recently at the Assembly for human rights in Montreal. To learn more about the ideas of his prominent student of science and human rights and about his personal background as well we interviewed him at the conference site to

open the interview. We noted that the program for the assembly identified him only as a scientist from Edinburgh Scotland and with Lord Richie Calder. Please elaborate. Well I am a science writer and I am a scientist by habit and repute. I am a common law scientist. I have been I have written about now about 28 books on science but my interest is very much involved in international Leshin and I was a professor of international. And this is because the University of Edinburgh recognised that science and technology is now becoming the driving force of social and political change. I say that for six years but my concern with human rights goes back a long time because in 1948 before the Blitz actually started when the war started I was the secretary of the H G Wells declaration on the Rights of Man. And this was

started by Jeevan. He wanted and insisted we are to war aims at beating Hitler was not enough. We must define what we were going to do with the world if we had beaten Hitler and he insisted on the recession. The right to and that in the course of that I became very heavily involved in these problems. I may say that most of that debate and declaration is now embodied in the Declaration of Human Rights a great satisfaction in the thinking of the work that Wells did on it. But we got very heavily involved in these problems of the modern world. This was right in the 20th century. And the head is the chairman of that drafting committee declaration. We had a former Lord Chancellor Lord Sankey and one of his great concerns was the tyranny of the dossier and the terror in the dust. It has now much more exaggerated

because he didn't foresee in those days when the time when they left every time the computer could give to a central authority the capacity to compile a dossier on every man woman and child in the community with a total recall of every childhood illness every adolescent lessened indiscretion. What you did when you were a student threw a brick through the president's office and on. And every instance of adult nonconformity In fact the investigation of the entire every aspect of the individual's life. We've now got that capacity. Are you trying a lot of what she called her to decide for your own edification whether the latest scientific developments such as the computer are a van or a boon to modern man. Well science is evil and good signs to the head and a tail of the same penny. I mean there's never any choice in this matter. Well we have the choice of social choice. But I mean everything that happens in science is not a

good or a bad potential. And the capacity of the computer to help in removing the drudgery of thinking what not is there. It's a very useful instrument but it has enormous potential for danger and the danger that I see in it is the fact that we are now capable as I say of accumulating all the information about everybody without them knowing it without them having any jurisdiction over it with no God and he is going to be and I'm a Russian television program in Britain. When I was discussing this problem with the world box were calling it and it was all the information in the world sort of glorious you know it would be created. And I said that I hope that no matter what the innocent intention was of this whole business I hope to have a built in time bomb and would instruct itself to go when a new Hitler came to power. Because this is this is the complete

information on every aspect of human being's life. And much more dangerous it is the indiscriminate collection of information. It is perfectly factual. I mean I don't particularly worry whether somebody finds out my bank account is or whether I haven't paid my television license or my car license. But I do very much object to the kind of information which I know is compiled in these sort of way because I was director of plans of political warfare in Britain during the war so I know the good evil of these methods. And one of my jobs was to collect and screen and that we didn't have computers at that time that we didn't have computers. But the point is I do know the kind of information that is compiled and the computer is not half as discriminating as we were in the evaluation of intelligence. The typical situation is that if you get now information coming in from spies or patta spies pseudo spies

all over the world because a lot of this is just straightforward intelligence is piled into some great intelligence center and that stuff goes into the kitchen blender. As I said there's no proper evaluation there's no possibility of saying was this US by a double agent was this man drunk when he gave it. What was the circumstance in which this information was got all of which we had to take into account when we are evaluating all of this goes into a kind of kitchen blender comes out there's a moose and nobody knows where the bad smell comes from because you never know where got in. And this to me is one of the greatest dangers that is on the sort of wide security question. And I honestly do believe he had a great deal of intelligence which is now passing as intelligence is highly suspect. I'm not talking about the uses made of it except that if the intelligence isn't properly screened if you don't

know what the popular amazing is. And of course you're going to be misled. I've got a great suspicions. Much of our military intelligence isn't fact in this way misinformed. It's simply the indiscriminate collection of facts and information without any sense of what in fact is waiting and so on. But apply that to the individual up in a way as this system began. It had its justifications don't you think in attempting to track down criminals for example or to maintain the security of the nation. All right. Just one version if we talk about the methods which he uses and this is one of the things I'm watching this conference that there's always a justification for the introduction of a method. Now you want to know what's happening you want to you like an Interpol which will give you the potential to track people all over the world and so on and that probably not. I mean you'd have a world computer system for this and I have know basic complaint against that

except that I would like to know what where the information came from what in fact was the evaluation of it and whether in fact you will be confronted with a dossier that nobody has really screened. And certainly the victim and I'm talking now a potentially innocent victim has no right to question one of the prisons during the war. As I said in a position of very high security. But I did find when I was director of plans to walk from office that I had been following two separate periods in the 1930s by our Special Branch equivalent the FBI and today music. If it hadn't been so sinister because the circumstances are well in one case it was the during the Spanish Civil War when I was connected with the Spanish medical aid which is a purely humanitarian body which the authorities thought had been

infiltrated by communists. So I was being followed. There's a number yes. And and one of the items in my dossier was the fact that I left the headquarters of this committee accompanied by very beautiful actors that I'd gone to have had a few blocks away and I left her two o'clock in the morning. My wife been looking for divorce and information to be very useful to her. But it did not appear as dust. I went with 12 other people and I was the suspect. And we ran around for coffee and you find this sort of gossip columns stuff which passes intelligence getting into the dossier of a person which you never see you can never question that. And then then the man is highly vulnerable at this at this time when

this pursuit was going on. You were in the government. No no no no. I was and this was apparently a free for the private citizen. But I would suspect because I was very heavily involved with the Spanish medical committee and also was on the staff of the New Scientist and a New Statesman around. And I was a prominent journalist and checking out my my connection but this kind of incidental inconsequential meaningless stuff gets into the dust and flavors of the dossier. For example I had some very good some years ago getting to the United States at the height of light from my visit Tom DeLay I got and a friend of mine of his American embassy and I said what is holding up my visa. So he made discreet inquiries and he came to me and he said the last time United States you were very indiscreet I said listen I was so busy I couldn't be indiscreet he said that you

made a speech. I said I never meant to speak. And he said yes and he said you stop talking to such and such a body and all that happened was that some friends of mine in Washington were having a party and I went around to this private party and that was the Federation of atomic scientists. And in the course of the evening we got you know pretty bright and but in the course of the week some discussion on security and someone had made a defense of the American methods of security and so on. And I and I made that remark when I came into the United States last night and I saw the Statue of Liberty stood with its back to AMERICAN