Under the last, thoroughly egregious anti-liberty administration, control orders went out of control. And, now, finally, they are to be watered down. As Alex Deane said when being interviewed on the BBC this morning, this is a step in the right direction, but not far enough. What we saw in the wake of the spate of Islamist attacks (no, they were not inside jobs whatever the fruitloops with over-active imaginations might assert) was an overreaction that was not deemed necessary in the wake of far more sustained attacks by a more competent enemy a decade or so earlier. This was not about protecting the public, it was about appearing tough on terror and satisfying the control freak tendencies in Westminster. To say, as they have, that they protected us is to ignore the dangerous loss of liberty we all suffer as a consequence. And, no, there is no right to walk the street without fear of being blown up. That is a risk we face as a consequence of living in a liberal democracy – a very small risk that has been blown out of proportion for political gain.
The Home Office launched the review in July 2010, saying it would be rapid and would be aimed at reconciling counter terrorism powers with civil liberties.
The parties agreed to scrap the power of police to hold a suspect without charge for 28 days – and the time limit has now reverted to the original 14 days, after ministers decided not to renew the legislation this month.
This is good. Not good enough, but it’s a start.
Security chiefs say the power is an essential tool in cases where there is intelligence that someone is involved in extremism but has not yet committed a crime, such as someone associating with known plotters.
While I accept that there is a problem to be addressed here, you cannot start placing people under house arrest simply because they might commit an atrocity. If they haven’t committed a crime, then they are innocent – that’s how the law works. And it is how the law should work. You either have enough evidence to put before the courts or you do not. Someone has committed an offence or they have not. Merely associating with known felons is not a crime and nor should it be. If you do not have evidence, but suspect the commission of a crime, you keep monitoring the situation until you do have the evidence you need.
Lord Carlisle remains a fan of control orders.
“Every person who is subject to a control order at the moment has been found by a judge to rightly suspected of being a terrorist.”
my emphasis
Fine. Place the evidence before the courts and the defence and prosecute. If not, then you have not done your job properly. One of the enigmas of course is that we do not allow intercept evidence in court. We should. Alex Deane made that point this morning. Liberty has repeatedly made that point. The failure to do so leaves us in the half-way house of having evidence that cannot be used and therefore a prosecution cannot be brought. This is patent nonsense. If someone is guilty of plotting a terrorist attack and the security services have gathered enough evidence to place the suspect under a control order, then they should have enough evidence with which to prosecute and if all that is standing in the way is that the evidence is not admissible, then change the rules so that it is admissible. Better that than the current situation.
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Update: More from Alex here.
“It’s art not science. You know, when we started this period of counter-terrorism law following 9/11 there were bound to be mistakes, it’s reasonable to make mistakes,” he (Lord Carlisle) said.
Just a little mistake, oh well, that’s alright then. Of course, the poor bugger on the end of the mistake might not think it is reasonable. I find it truly, truly frightening that there are people in power that think it is “reasonable” to impose restrictions on the liberty of people for whom there is only a suspicion that they might be a terrorist.
“No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or disseised of his free tenement or of his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell or deny or delay right or justice.” Did Magna Carta die in vain?
You said
What we saw in the wake of the spate of Islamist attacks (no, they were not inside jobs whatever the fruitloops with over-active imaginations might assert) was an overreaction that was not deemed necessary in the wake of far more sustained attacks by a more competent enemy a decade or so earlier.
Where I would take issue with this is nowadays there are systems in place that protect a suspect in custody far more than there used to be. This means that potential terrorist can ‘play the system’ to a much greater degree than our Irish cousins ever could. Try beating information out of the buggers now, it can’t happen. The law now over protects those that mean us harm.
Beating up suspects is about as useful as torture. And, frankly, some of those Irish suspects were innocent. The law that protects suspects protects all of us who may find ourselves “helping the police with their enquiries” and quite right, too.
Ultimately, you either have enough evidence to secure a conviction, in which case, prosecute and convince a jury, or you don’t, in which case either let the person go or continue to monitor depending on what evidence you do have.
I’m with Alex Deane here; there are no grey areas.
At the, umm, very high risk of appearing a complete loon…
I don’t know what happened on 9/11 but I do have major concerns about the official story. For example, it completely fails to explain the sudden fall of the virtually undamaged Tower 7 and there are other serious discrepancies.
To me it seems rational to want answers, even if one is not a racist nut-job like your recent correspondent.
There will always be discrepancies. During an incident everything appears to happen at once and for a while, chaos ensues, which is why there appear to be timing discrepancies, for example. Usually, though, the banal explanation is the most likely. In this case, the explosions and fall of the nearby tower caused structural weaknesses. The idea that someone went around previously planting explosives is pure bunk. Likening this to the Reichstag fire is laughable.
The official explanations may well be flawed, but more often than not, it’s a case of cock-up rather than conspiracy. Given the level of observed competence from government and its agencies, I don’t see them pulling off such a conspiracy.
Cock up is always my first choice involving governments as well. They don’t exactly have a track record of being overly bright do they?
I too also have said in the past this would just have been too big to cover up as well but I said exactly the same thing about the global warming scam. I bought into that until recently like pretty much everyone else … so I’m keeping an open mind on 9/11 too, even if that is not a fashionable view.
I don’t think that warble gloaming is comparable. This is a money making scam – much like speed cameras. It’s not a conspiracy as such, more like a religious fervour that the believers buy into and because it’s easy money, the whole thing is self-perpetuating. Terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and 7/7 are pretty straightforward. That cigar shaped object is most likely a cigar.
I don’t care if people accuse me of being crazy, the official version of 9/11 stinks to high heaven.
Erm – Global Warming.
Yes there is a scam in operation.
Ever heard of the Koch Brothers, or the Koch Foundations?
Or Exxon?
They are spending over $1million per YEAR on anti-GW propaganda.
Follow the money!
At the risk of this thread going wildly off topic…
TT there’s nothing wrong with being sceptical about official government versions of events. The US government was sorely embarrassed by its intelligence failings and they are hardly going to openly say that the attacks happened as a consequence of serial incompetence and negligence on their part. However, what we can be certain about is that it was not orchestrated by Bush McHitler and the lizardmen.
By all means be a sceptic, but what you don’t want is to be tarred with the same brush as the troofers. These people, despite their claims are not interested in the truth, as once any evidence of such contradicts their pet theories, they ignore it and claim that anyone presenting it is either a government shill or a Zionist Jew. As happened to me last Sunday.
There’s a nice little summation of the troofer here. From my experience with them, it’s spot on.
Greg, yes, so the AGW alarmists keep telling us. I’ve yet to actually see any of this money. If you come across any of it, a few bob thrown this way wouldn’t go amiss.
While I accept that there is a problem to be addressed here, you cannot start placing people under house arrest simply because they might commit an atrocity.
Oh come on, LR – precrime. Tomcat showed us that.
“By all means be a sceptic, but what you don’t want is to be tarred with the same brush as the troofers.”
It’s not within my power to choose how I am tarred. My choice is whether I remain silent on the matter or not, and if I don’t remain silent I do so in the knowledge that I will be tarred with that brush. So it’s a moral choice. I will not burden you with my reasoning on the subject, as I suspect you do not care 🙂
That’s probably true 😉
My concern, though, about tarring is that all too often, legitimate civil liberties concerns are lumped together with the troofer movement and we are written off accordingly. I recall some of the NewLab ID card apologists doing just that. Hence my tendency to distance myself – and because I have some occupational experience when it comes to emergency planning and exercises, so recognise bunk when I see it.