Britain in the 21st Century

I guess this story has been doing the rounds since it was published in the Guardian yesterday. The upshot is that David Mery was detained and subsequently arrested by the police for “behaving suspiciously”. His behaviour? Well, he walked into Southwick tube station past police officers without looking at them. He then went down to the platform and while waiting for his train, checked his text messages. All this while wearing a rucksack, which, it would seem, became a heinous crime on July 7th. The police subsequently raided his flat and took away various items of a “suspicious nature”.

“They take away several mobile phones, an old IBM laptop, a BeBox tower computer (an obsolete kind of PC from the mid-1990s), a handheld GPS receiver (positioning device with maps, very useful when walking), a frequency counter (picked it up at a radio amateur junk fair because it looked interesting), a radio scanner (receives short wave radio stations), a blue RS232C breakout box (a tool I used to use when reviewing modems for computer magazines), some cables, a computer security conference leaflet, envelopes with addresses, maps of Prague and London Heathrow, some business cards, and some photographs I took for the 50 years of the Association of Computing Machinery conference.”

Clearly the man is a menace to society and should be locked up indefinitely. If only we had the powers to do that. Oh, wait, we’ve done that one already…

Mr Mery was fortunate, Sir Ian Blair is proposing turning his officers into Judge Dredd style enforcers – he could have been summarily executed. Just as well they don’t do that. Oh, wait, they do…

One of the great worries about the Identity Cards bill is that the audit trail will provide the security services with sufficient data to indulge in profiling – something that happened to Mr Mery. It could happen to any one of us. indeed, given the level of incompetence displayed by the police during Mr Mery’s experience, I am seriously worried about my regular trips to London. After all, I do not conform to the usual profile. I have long dark hair, generally wear dark clothing and a long dark coat… Oh, and I carry my stuff in a rucksack. Well, bang to rights, then.

Welcome to Britain in the 21st Century, the land of free speech and freedom of movement. The land where you can be arrested for using your mobile phone while wearing a rucksack. Osama Bin Laden must be splitting his sides.