One of them, whom I met in Rangoon, told me how he was forced to sign a document prior to leaving jail, which made him liable for future imprisonment if he publicly denounced the government again.
"You will recognise from discussions with the attorney general that there is a difference of emphasis between the UK and the US governments on the extent to which a political understanding was reached in 1998-99 regarding the future imprisonment of the Lockerbie accused," he wrote.
Systems like the box, they say, also offer a glimpse of a future in which imprisonment may be more a function of technology than of bricks and bars.
Trudy Morgan, a solicitor at the law firm Hodge Jones & Allen who represented Sisangia, said: "The decision is a significant victory for civil liberties in this country and I am pleased that we have been able to ensure funding, both for our client's case and future cases of false imprisonment.
"I had a lot of stress, I still had the jail sentence, and I wasn't sure what was going to happen in the future as far as imprisonment and how much time I had, how I was going to make it back out, and how I was going to keep myself relevant in changing times," he says of the pressurised recordings, which struggled, justifiably, to match the absurdist wit of his debut.
His continued imprisonment will harm future compliance with tax laws, especially as they relate to illegal offshore accounts".
The state gains nothing from execution except revenge and the guarantee that the individual put to death will commit no future crimes, goals which life imprisonment can accomplish just as well.
It was a raid on the farm on 11 July 1963, when Mandela's great compatriot Walter Sisulu was seized, that led to the eventual imprisonment of the future president after the Rivonia trial.
His future is months, maybe years, of imprisonment and interrogation, a military tribunal and almost certain execution.
To date, the only convictions have been for reckless transmission, for which the maximum punishment is five years' imprisonment (ancillary orders regulating future disclosure and sexual behaviour are also available), and the number of successful prosecutions has been very low.
More patient or more risk averse individuals are likely to place a greater weight on the possibility of future punishment and future income losses from imprisonment.
