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Issue No. 141 21 June 2002  
E D I T O R I A L

Bitter Pills
It had to be one of the greatest frauds of history, we had reached a stage of evolution where we no longer needed to be regulated.

F E A T U R E S

Interview: The Fels Guy
ACCC chair Professor Alan Fels on big business attacks, the waterfront dispute and where unions stand under the Trade Practices Act.

Solidarity: Life or Death?
Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora � the eternal warriors� dilemma - filled the Sydney air this week. Jim Marr was there.

Unions: Back to Basics
Tony Papa made it to the top of the Australian union movement; now he's back at the frontline organising building workers. And he's never been happier.

International: Global Terror
The annual report into violence against trade unionists was released this week. But, as Andrew Casey reports, the killings continue.

History: Sorry Business
Dr Rosalind Kidd lifts the lid on the use of forced labour of Aboriginal people in Queensland right through to the 1960s.

Technology: Future Active
In his new book on net activism, Graham Meikle arges that ideas will ultimately triumph over assets.

Satire: Executive Presents PowerPoint Eulogy at Mother�s Funeral
A corporate affairs manager from a leading Sydney company yesterday delivered a moving presentation at his mother�s funeral, utilising the many features of Microsoft�s PowerPoint software.

Poetry: Santa Claus Was Coming to Oz
As we commemorate world refugee day, what can we learn about our treatment of refugees, from the case of one man from far away who tried to enter Australia last Christmas?

Review: Dial 'M' For Minority Report
Imagine a place where everyone knows your name, the streets are filled with smiling faces, and murder has all but been obliterated. Anyone who finds this scene idyllic has clearly not seen Minority Report.

N E W S

 Fair Share: Link Executive Pay to Wages

 Abbott�s 'Rule of Law' Faces Court Challenge

 Royal Gaze Averted as Bosses Shut Down and Fined

 Molten Metal Sparks Safety Probe

 Consumer Boycotts Don't Break Law: Fels

 Korean Own Goal in World Focus

 STOP PRESS: Court Ticks Off on Service Fees

 Zero Tolerance on Casino Violence

 GIO Workers Challenge Bosses' Union Wages

 Nurses Reject Band-Aid Solution

 Saving Lives In Killer Productions

 McDonalds Vandal Becomes Global Hero

 Debate Rages Over Chinese Unions

 Paul Howes' Activist Notebook

C O L U M N S

The Soapbox
Jock or Janus?
Roland Stephens looks at Labor's progression through the eyes of 'Jock' the legendary David Williamson character.

The Locker Room
The World Game
Former Socceroo Dennis Yaager gives his take on the Cup Finals while Labourstart's Andrew Casey rates the labour performance of the nations left in contention.

Week in Review
A Law Unto Themselves
Law, domestic and international, is centre stage but Jim Marr discovers 7.1 billion reasons why big business seems to rise above it.

Bosswatch
Who Wants To be a Millionaire?
There are more of them than ever before, according to a new global survey of the world's richest.

L E T T E R S
 Tanya Inc
 Tom Bites Back
 Root Canal Therapy
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Review

Dial 'M' For Minority Report

Reviewed by Tara de Boehmler

Imagine a place where everyone knows your name, the streets are filled with smiling faces, and murder has all but been obliterated. Anyone who finds this scene idyllic has clearly not seen Minority Report.
 

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Stephen Spielberg's Minority Report is set in Washington DC in the year 2054.

Everyone knows your name because every name is listed alongside license details, face shots and a barrage of additional data linked to a scanned image of your iris. The streets are filled with smiling faces: largely belonging to hologram images of models projected on walls, windows and billboards. These welcoming types also greet you by name as they try to sell you products associated with those already existing on your spending history (once again linked to you via iris scan data).

Meanwhile, murders are no longer committed thanks to a new super program that has been on trial for the past six years. The program works by combining the most advanced technology, the psychic power of three 'seers', a small army of people who cannot decide if they feel more like cops or the clergy, and all the personal identifying data on record.

Using the 'pre-vision' of the three psychic seers - destined to live out the rest of their lives half submerged in a swimming pool with electrodes attached to their craniums - their mental images of future murders are projected onto walls enabling the pre-vision police squad to link the images with identifying information, track 'em down, and bust them before the murder is committed.

There are no excuses, no alibis and no grounds for recourse.

But just how reliable is this apparently failsafe system? With its future due to go to the vote, the reliability of the system has to be tested - no matter who would stand in the way.

Enter John Anderton (played by their Tom Cruise). John is the pre-vision program's top gun and one of its greatest advocates. He is also about to find out what happens when it all goes horribly wrong.

The release of Minority Report is timely in light of the post Sept 11 rush by people around the world to give up their civil liberties and rights to privacy at the request of governments promising greater security and safety will result.

But with many aspects of the film, one gets the impression that if the horse has not already bolted it is at least already bucking at the fence posts. Despite the increasing reach of federal and state privacy laws, in NSW alone the level of surveillance in public places and worksites is phenomenal, as is the amount of information known by governments, financial institutions, and marketing companies about many aspects of our personal lives. The power of the internet to share said information constitutes yet another ongoing privacy risk.

Police have been given the power to fingerprint on the spot suspected criminals and people fined for misdemeanors. Sniffer dogs have been released onto the streets to help cops bust people carrying anything from hard drugs to a couple of joints. Once searched and confirmed, police can then fingerprint them, check their records and see if they are wanted for anything else.

In the movie, electronic 'spiders' are released into public places and private buildings where they track down and scan the irises of every person in the area - linking them to identifying data stored on the system's intranet. How long until Michael Costa's sniffer dogs are also fitted with this technology? Probably never - but that's not the point.

At a time when many are increasingly trading their civil liberties for the promise of greater security and peace of mind, Minority Report serves as a wake-up call for the Big Brother generation - or at least it might if it weren't so tiresomely long.

For a movie seemingly so concerned with rights and liberties, this reviewer was surprised at the liberties it took with its audience's time.

Minority Report takes way too many hours out of its viewers' lives to tell what is certainly a complex story - but one that is only made more so because of its reliance on our ability to sustain an extended period of undivided attention.

When will producers stop trying to outdo each other with the unnecessarily long movie lengths? Don't they realise how much of the modern world now possess the attention span of goldfish? Or do they just not care?

This movie reminds us why it is worth caring about our personal privacy and why we should not rush to give it up so quickly - because while we may want to believe we are running away from danger we should be very careful about what we are running towards.

Two and a half out of five stars. (Conspiracy theorists' delight)


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