Civil libertarians had noticed that the Blair administration is impatient with conviction rates. We have seen real attempts to reduce the availability of jury trials and to lower the burden of proof. And we have had strong hints from the Prime Minister that he doesn't regard the principle of innocent until proven guilty as applicable in the modern world.

Astonishingly, however, none of those is enough. A guilty plea may in future permit prosecutors to operate without court process. Idiotically the BBC captions this as "Petty criminals could avoid court": but a better headline would be "criminal convictions without courts". People will be convicted and punished by prosecutors and police if prosecutors or police can persuade them to confess. This is a recipe for abuse.

Magistrate's courts may not be the most reliable finders of fact or interpreters of law, but they have no direct interest in the guilt of the defendant or in clearing up unsolved crimes. They can and do hear defenses and pleas in mitigation. They can, and very occasionally do, insist on entering a not-guilty plea if the defendant appears to be have been browbeaten or to be incapable of understanding his position.

The inevitable consequence of introducing summary police punishment will be an assertion on behalf of the authorities that those who are convicted at trial instead of submitting to official processing ought to be more heavily punished because they have somehow wasted the court's time. Which will place the accused under more pressure to make admissions regardless of guilt, regardless of whether prosecutors abuse their position.

As the report stage of the Identity Cards Bill approaches in the Lords, a reminder of one highlight from the first day of the committee stage Hansard, 15 Nov 2005, Col.1012:

Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl's father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.

Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:

"I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?".

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords' views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

This is the sort of rhetoric that makes my blood run cold. Here's a prefiguring example:

In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence.

Terry Eagleton (from a review of Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism in the New Statesman) elucidates the connection:

Conservatives disdain the popular masses, while fascists mobilise and manipulate them. Some conservatives believe in ideas, but fascists have a marked preference for myths. If they think at all, they think through their blood, not their brain. Fascists regard themselves as a youthful, revolutionary avant-garde out to erase the botched past and create an unimaginably new future.

All supporters of the old-fashioned conception of individual liberty, whether they think of themselves as left or right, conservative or progressive, must do what can be done. Resist. We should not expect any quarter for outdated ideas under a new kind of freedom.

[cross-posted to Samizdata]

Perhaps you think I am talking about Venezuela under the thuggish Chavez?

Nope. I am talking about Britain.

Gustave Le Bon would have something to say about this. He'd point to the sugestibility of the emotionally aroused crowd:

Almost three-quarters of the public believe that it is right to give up civil liberties to improve our security against terrorist attacks.

A Guardian/ICM poll published today shows that 73% of respondents back the trade-off, with only 17% rejecting it outright. The results provide evidence of public support for Tony Blair's anti-terrorist reforms which he unveiled before leaving on his summer holiday earlier this month.

Full article here.

I simply do not accept there is a trade-off to be had. Our liberty is our safety.

The world is replete with counterexamples to the trade-off twitch. (One cannot call it a theory.)

Take Saudi Arabia. Civil liberty does not exist there. It is an alien concept, and, in common with other alien concepts, banned. There is no protection of citizen from state, and no limit to the actions that can be taken.

Yet terrorism is in robust health. The Kingdom's official figures for the last two years (which one would expect to paint the rosiest picture) are 129 dead and 720 injured among civilians and security forces. More than twice Britain's casualties among a population that may be around a third of ours--reliable figures on anything Saudi being hard to come by. (They probably have significantly more police, too.)

Tim Worstall asks: "Are We Still a Free People?":

We have a Home Secretary who has been told by the courts that locking foreigners up and denying them their right to trial is illegal. The basic presumption is that one must either be tried and convicted, or be being held on remand while that process is put in train, for it to be allowable for the State to lock you up. His reaction on being told that foreigners have the same rights as natives was, quite amazingly, to remove that right for natives. Quite.

The most basic foundation of the relationship between citizen and state, that of the right to trial, Habeus Corpus and all the rest, has been altered. It is seriously proposed that the Home Secretary should be allowed to intern anyone at all, on no evidence that he has to reveal (and thus can be argued against), for as long as he wishes. We all know that miscarriages of justice happen, the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four being examples, even when there is an open system with judges, juries and the like. We'll never know under the new system as no one will ever have to tell us.

Quite. The illiberal moves by this government are rather worrying.

The Civil Contingencies Act became law last Thursday in what can only be described as a blaze on non-publicity. This legislation, which represents perhaps the most serious threat to liberty in Britain since World War II, has put in place the legal tools for some future government to impose rule-by-edict.

It would be hard to overstate how grave this situation is.

If your political antennae have been sensitive to the undercurrents shimmering across the blogosphere, then you will have picked up the few postings alerting readers to the implications of the Civil Contingencies Bill. The dangers of this giant step towards authoritarianism have been publicised far more effectively both by David Carr and on Iain Murray's personal weblog, The Edge of Englands Sword:

Lord Lucas has described the Civil Contingencies Bill as comparable to Hitler's Enabling Act of 1933 which enabled him to transform Germany's Weimar Republic into his own personal tyranny. I have now read it, and I have to say that he is not exaggerating.

Readers could argue that this is an invocation of Godwin's Law and that, by quoting this passage, I have lost the argument. However, this opinion is that of Torquil Dirk-Erikson, "a noted Eurosceptic writer and learned silk". However, in considering the passage of this Act, it should also be noted that the European Constitution has a section on 'civil protection' as one of the coordinating powers for the European authorities.

The Government wishes to push through an updated Civil Contingencies Bill in 2004. It does not mention the EU, but the draft EU Constitution includes 'civil protection' as an area for 'coordinating action' and the current Treaty mentions the topic vaguely. The Bill also enables the creation of arbitrary imprisonable criminal offences. It enables regulations that can delegate powers to anyone or confer jurisdiction on any court or tribunal. This could be an EU body, unaccountable to government or the people.

Although the draft Constitution gives us a veto on a European Public Prosecutor (the Government says it 'currently' sees no reason for one) Blair has said that he opposes permanent 'opt-outs' or being isolated in Europe. Although the amended Bill states that it will not change criminal procedure, the Government is happy for the EU to have over-riding powers to do this via the EU Constitution.

These developments happen at a time when the Government is trying to introduce universal ID cards and a 'population register', and has just announced a national database to carry information on all children, not merely those 'at risk' (Sunday Times, 25.7.04). Again there are worrying parallels with European developments. Amazingly, MI5's website, which is listed in Preparing For Emergencies assures us that "the subversive threat to parliamentary democracy is now negligible".

One giant step along 'Chavez' Blair's road to a 'managed democracy'.

Cross-posted to Samizdata.

The British government is advocating the vaccination of children against particular behaviours using the forthcoming array of pharmacotherapy vaccines. These would innoculate children against a host of behaviours that the government defines as anti-social: drinking, smoking, drugs, blogging and so on.

The article explains that "Doctors would immunize children at risk of becoming smokers or drug users with an injection" and that the program would operate in a way similar to the "current nationwide measles, mumps and rubella vaccination programme." Further the authors reveal that "such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years."

Developments like this are monitored by the Centre for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, whose response was clear:

Richard Glen Boire, a legal scholar at the CCLE, believes that vaccinating children with "anti-drug" drugs would be "alarming and unlawful, and would signal the first time that neuropharmaceuticals were overtly used to enforce government policy."

Aside from the human rights concerns, the UK plan raises serious health questions regarding the long-term effects of these drugs on the complex neurochemistry of the brain.

The CCLE warns that advances in the neurosciences will challenge the ability of individuals to maintain their cognitive freedom. Governments will redefine mental health to use drugs and other neurotechnologies in order to police and channel people's behaviours.

(My thanks to Alex Ramonsky of the Entelechy Institute for alerting me to this issue).

If you are arrested, and the police take your DNA to run tests on it, and if the outcome of your arrest is either that no charges were brought against you or you were brought to trial and found innocent, it has been ruled that the state can retain your DNA records indefinitely regardless.

The moral of the story is, of course, that if you do not want the state to take your DNA and hold it on record forever because you simply do not trust the state or because you have the quaint notion that your body is your own property, then do whatever it takes to not get arrested, regardless of how confident you are that you can establish your innocence subsequently.

Lord Brown said the benefits of this procedure were so manifest and the objections so threadbare that the cause of human rights would be better served by expanding the police database rather than by reducing it.

Just as it has often been said that modern fascism is most likely to appear in the guise of anti-fascism, when some establishment figure like Lord Brown start taking about 'human rights' it is a fair bet that 'human rights' about to get trampled underfoot.

My guess is that it is only a matter of time before the police in some nations start taking samples of DNA from everyone, probably starting with all children under a programme with a name like 'The Safe Children Act' or something similar, probably with the ostensible reason of 'protecting your child from kidnap by Paedophiles' or some such drivel. I mean, after all, who could possibly object to that?

The state is not your friend.

A loyal reader sends in this 'gem' of a story... someone was arrested for sketching on the South Bank:

I spent four hours (having already been detained for three and a half) in a cell in Kennington police station wondering whether I might not be joining those in Belmarsh where Mr Blunkett could detain me without explanation and, in the interest of public security, refuse to divulge the alleged evidence. If the majority in this country need protecting, they had better ask who the enemies of democracy currently are.

Read the whole thing... Incredible but not surprising.

The Home Secretary has instructed the Humberside Police Authority to suspend the chief constable of Humberside, David Westwood. I have no views on the actual issue of David Westwood's competence and whether or not he actually deserves to be suspended and ultimately sacked, but what is alarming is how Downing Street is centralising more and more decisions on local matters that have a huge baring on civil liberties.

Lawyers for Mr Blunkett are expected to ask the High Court, possibly on Tuesday, for an injunction forcing the authority to carry out his instruction to suspend the officer. This will be the first test of powers under the Police Reform Act 2002 and the Home Secretary will argue that suspension is necessary "for the maintenance of public confidence" in the force.

[..]

Colin Inglis, the chairman of the authority and the Labour leader of Kingston-upon-Hull told BBC1's Look North: "The police authority is not a rubber stamp and if the Home Secretary expected a rubber stamp then that, I'm afraid, is not what he has got.

"The Home Secretary is not David Westwood's line manager. David Westwood works for the police authority.

The issue is not "is David Westwood a good copper" but "do you want David Blunkett making those decisions?". No prizes for guessing where I stand on that.

It is a long time since I have contributed anything to White Rose. And it is a long time since this article by journalist and novelist Alexandra Campbell appeared, in the Telegraph, on May 14th. Apologies on both counts, but better occasional contributions and late reports of White Rose relevant material than never, I hope you agree.

This article did not just appear in the Telegraph. It was also reproduced in full, in the "last word" slot, towards the end of the "all you need to know about everything that matters" magazine (i.e. lots of good bits from all the different British newspapers) The Week, of May 29th, Issue 462. That was where and (approximately) when I first read the piece.

Ms. Campbell, on the basis of vague CCTV "evidence", was falsely accused of a crime, and it took a scarily long time for the system to stop persecuting her.

Concluding paragraphs:

"In theory," said Mark, "it's innocent until proved guilty. In practice, whoever makes the allegation first is believed."

Now that we are all picked up on CCTVs up to 300 times a day, and can also easily be identified electronically through swipe cards (health clubs, the office, season tickets, etc), there is a real risk of someone linking you to a passing resemblance on a fuzzy CCTV image and making an allegation against you.

It had taken about eight months to get to this point of the inquiry and I was terrified of enduring months' more worry before I was cleared, but the police followed up my brother's statement quickly and dropped the charges. However, they told me that current policy is to leave fingerprints, pictures and allegations permanently on file.

Checking subsequently with the police press office, I find that "fingerprints may not be held for more than 42 days", but I find it scary that nobody really seems to know. I suspect our civil rights are being chipped away all the time in the name of crime and terrorism prevention.

The whole thing, I discovered, was based on a breach of the Data Protection Act. Companies using CCTV are supposed to show images only to authorised people, such as the police. The supermarket involved should never have allowed the receptionist and the credit card victim to see footage on demand. The receptionist, himself in charge of CCTV, should have known this. He wasn't even following his own company's code of practice, which asks staff who are suspicious of members to take the matter to a manager first. But he has done nothing illegal.

And neither have I. But while I struggle to have my records deleted from police files, he has drifted on and cannot, so far, be contacted. Nobody knows if he made the allegation out of boredom, spite, or genuine, if misplaced, civic-mindedness. It's Kafkaesque, said friends. It's a joke, said others. But it wasn't fiction and it wasn't funny. I was actually very lucky.

I might not have been able to prove where I was. If I'd been a lawyer, police officer, accountant or worked in financial services, my career and livelihood would also have been on the line, and if I'd been a celebrity, the story would have been splashed all over the papers before it was disproved. If the allegation had been connected to terrorism, I would have been jailed immediately.

I used to think that if you didn't break the law, you had nothing to fear from it. Now I know that if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

Unpersons alerted us to the news that from today British police may legally and against the will of any law-abiding subject, take DNA samples and fingerprints from any arrested person without that person having even been charged with committing a criminal act.

We can but echo the good Unpersons concerns:

The law now leaves British police officers free to help Blunkett establish one of the most ambitious and truly disturbing elements of the British police state that he has slowly but surely been working to create over the last few years. In a country where the state can take over half of your income, charge you expenses when it wrongly imprisons you - yet fail to defend you after it has crushed the right to self-defence, send parents to jail for not sending their children to state day-care centres schools, steal your property because 'you couldn't possibly have earned that much money without selling illegal drugs' whilst slowly handing over control to a foreign power, attempt to dictate what you eat 'for your own good' and generally treat its citizens as its troublesome children one has to wonder to what extent we already live in a police state.

This has not been a good week.

Blair is a liar. But of course the notion any politician does not utter more than the occasional porkie pie is a very uncontroversial one. But as I said in the wellspring of lies yesterday, one can but marvel at the bare faced effrontery of it when our political masters stand up and state something is true when any person not wilfully blind (or David Blunkett) can see it is patently untrue just by reading a few newspapers or one of several thousand blogs and websites.

Mr Blair said political objections had been removed and the only obstacle now was technical. He made clear he wanted the project to "move forward" as soon as it was feasible.

He risked antagonising civil rights campaigners by claiming they no longer objected to the idea, which would see each citizen required to buy a computer-readable card that would record personal details.

Risks antagonising? Civil rights campaigners no longer object to the idea? Excuse the French, but, what the fuck? Blair is a bare faced liar. The only other alternative to that is that he is so ignorant of goings on outside the cloistered world of 10 Downing Street as to be completely deluded.

I will try my damnedest to refuse to get an ID card and I will openly declare that I do not have one when the sun rises on that evil day. I urge as many people as possible to not just resist but to do so openly when the time comes. They will try to make it very difficult to live without one so we must make the system unworkable by using whatever civil disobedience and intelligent resistance is needed. Do not cooperate with your own repression. Time to get creative, people. Time to get angry.

Cross-posted from Samizdata.net

A new nationwide police agency, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has been created in Britain.

The creation of a new "British FBI" to combat organised crime, with informants being offered reduced sentences to snitch on their gangland bosses, was given unanimous support in the Commons today - despite a controversial raft of new powers.

The home secretary, David Blunkett, told MPs he was in favour of allowing intercept material - bugged phone calls and emails - to be used as evidence, pending a review which would report back in June.

And he would also, for the first time, force professionals such as lawyers and solicitors to cooperate with police enquiries into organised crime, even if it meant betraying client confidentiality.

And thus people will simply stop asking for legal opinions just in case their shyster runs off to the police in order to cover their rear ends and thereby ensuring a steadily increasing climate of fear, distrust and uncertainty. The Blair-Blunkett government are nothing less that populist authoritarians.

It takes a lot to amaze me, but Blunkett has done just that.

WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty's Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn't have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

This is insane. The state locks someone up unjustly and then demands payment for room and board? This is the true face of the people who have power over us. It is actually evil.

If this astonishing development does not cause the mother of all political storms both in Westminster and society at large, then Britain as a society has clearly become so inured to authoritarianism and arrogance by its rulers that we must be past the point of no return. Blunkett must go. Now!

Following last week's atrocity in Madrid, the media are reporting London Underground's plans to increase security. These plans include more plain clothes police patrolling the network and encouraging passengers to be vigilant.

There's another aspect to the plans not mentioned in most reports. According to the BBC:

British Transport Police have also said more people using the Tube will be randomly stopped and searched

Do we really want to live in a country where being randomly stopped and searched is considered an acceptable part of everyday life?

Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe

Amongst the announcement of the new Serious Organised Crime Agency one comment seems to have been largely overlooked. Tony Blair said, concerning serious crime:

My impression sometimes is that the system is struggling against a presumption that you treat these crimes like every other type of crime, and that you build up cases beyond reasonable doubt. I think we have got to look at this.

Reproduced below is the text of yesterday's press release from the Libertarian Alliance:

"Any Excuse for a Police State: Blunkett Secret Trial Plans as Bad as Foreign Conquest", Says Free Market and Civil Liberties Think Tank

Home Secretary David Blunkett wants to bring in laws allowing pre-emptive arrest of suspects, secret trials without juries, with state-chosen defence lawyers, on undisclosed evidence provided by the security services, and a lower burden of proof. He says this is to protect the country from "terrorism".

"Nonsense", says Dr Sean Gabb, Director of Communications for the Libertarian Alliance. "We did none of this in the second world war, when the enemy was poised to invade from across the Channel, and killing 60,000 British civilians in bombing raids. We did none of this when Irish terrorists were killing thousands of state and civilian victims within the United Kingdom.

"The truth is, this government wants a police state and will use any excuse to get one. We are told these new laws will only apply in terrorism cases. That is a lie. We were once told that confiscation orders would only be used for drug dealing cases, and after normal conviction: now we have a Confiscation Agency trying to seize assets from suspected criminals without the need for criminal charges. This legislation would soon become the normal mode of trial of all offences.

"Do you want a criminal justice system where you can be tried in secret by another Lord Hutton, on the basis of secret evidence supplied by the same security services that did such a good job at proving Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? I don't. Looking at these proposals, anyone who fell asleep in 1940 and woke today might almost think the Germans had won the war. I wonder if all those who fought to prevent that ever suspected our own government would behave like an army of occupation?"

Perhaps that is now how they think of themselves.

The Big Blunkett's draconian measures to 'fight terrorists' would not be necessary if the British justice system was functioning. When this and this can happen with increasing frequency, no wonder that terrorists have a ball in the British courts and Mr Blunkett can continue warping British laws with self-righteous indignation of a politician.

Telegraph reports that civil liberties groups and Muslim community leaders lined up yesterday to denounce plans from David Blunkett to conduct secret trials of suspected terrorists.

He said the threat from extremists was now so great that the burden of proof in criminal trials should be reduced from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "the balance of probabilities".

He also wants a debate over whether intelligence information against suspects should be given in camera to avoid compromising security. Mr Blunkett's ideas - to be proposed formally in a Home Office paper later this month - are intended to address what the Government sees as a serious threat from Islamist fundamentalists.

We need to debate how we deal with these delicate issues of proportionality and human rights on the one hand and evidential base and the threshold of evidence on the other.

That is quite a challenge because we are having to say that the nature of what people obtain through the security and intelligence route is different to the evidence gained through the policing route. It needs to be presented in a way that doesn't allow disclosure by any of the parties involved which would destroy your security services.

Lady Kennedy, QC, a Labour peer, compared Mr Blunkett to Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe and described the proposals as "a classic Blunkett tactic".

He really is a shameless authoritarian. We can be confident that many of his colleagues in the Cabinet, including particularly the Attorney General, will sit on this, because it really is an affront to the rule of law.

You suggest all kinds of outrageous and awful things because then you get away with half of them.

Mark Littlewood, the campaigns director of Liberty, said:

Simply introducing more laws, greater powers and stiffer penalties will go a long way to undermining British justice and will not make our country any safer.

Michael Howard, the Tory leader, said:

You have to try and strike the balance between giving the British people the proper protection against terrorism and not depriving innocent people of their liberty.

Massoud Shadjareh, the chairman of the Islam Human Rights Commission, said:

This sort of legislation in Germany led to concentration camps.

Let's hear it for the sharia law solution to terrorism.

The BBC reports that Big Blunkett is proposing to introduce yet more draconian powers to lock up suspected terrorists without a fair trial.

The new proposals are an extension of the current anti-terrorism laws rushed into being after September 11th. Those have already been condemned as creating "Guantanamo Bay in our own back yard".

The new proposals would see British citizens tried partly in secret and denied access to the evidence against them. They would also reduce the burden of proof from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "on the balance of probabilities".

Speaking on the Today programme, Senior lawyer Baroness Kennedy described the proposals as "a disgrace". She went on to say:

"It is as if David Blunkett takes his lessons on jurisprudence from Robert Mugabe"

Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe

I've just done a posting at Samizdata about the phenomenon of excessive regulation, so excessive that even if an organisation wants to obey it, it can't. It's just too voluminous, too complicated, sometimes even too contradictory. (One of the Samizdata commenters told of how his encryption duties seemed to require some sort of infinite regress and were un-obeyable.)

The White Rose Relevance of this is, Cicero apparently said:

Excessive law is no law at all.

Which means that in practice the law becomes whatever those in charge decide to make it. And that is the point at which White Rosers should sit up and notice, because that is when people who make trouble for the authorities by saying things that the authorities disapprove of, get prosecuted not for their wicked sayings (which might be a rather hard charge to make stick and would anyway draw attention to the sayings) but for non-compliance with plumbing regulations, for failure to fill out the proper forms concerning employee sick-leave, for baking bread of the wrong size and shape, etc. The completely we are all likely to be breaking this or that law, the more completely they have us by the proverbials.

T. M. Lucas also commented as Samizdata, drawing the attention of its readers to a series of posts his blog has on these themes.

I went from her to him to this.

Quote of beyond America interest:

The Bush administration’s anti-protester bias proved embarrassing for two American allies with long traditions of raucous free speech, resulting in some of the most repressive restrictions in memory in free countries. When Bush visited Australia in October, Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mark Riley observed, “The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by the US President, George Bush, and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak as much as they like just as long as they can’t be heard.” Demonstrators were shunted to an area away from the Federal Parliament building and prohibited from using any public address system in the area.

For Bush’s recent visit to London, the White House demanded that British police ban all protest marches, close down the center of the city, and impose a "virtual three day shutdown of central London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters," according to Britain’s Evening Standard. But instead of a "free speech zone" – as such areas are labeled in the U.S. – the Bush administration demanded an "exclusion zone" to protect Bush from protesters’ messages.

And the concluding paragraph:

Is the administration seeking to stifle domestic criticism? Absolutely. Is it carrying out a war on dissent? Probably not – yet. But the trend lines in federal attacks on freedom of speech should raise grave concerns to anyone worried about the First Amendment or about how a future liberal Democratic president such as Hillary Clinton might exploit the precedents that Bush is setting.

Precedents hell. I agree with Kim Du Toit. This is already bullshit. Never mind all the bullshit it brings on in the future.

The BBC reports that planned new powers for dealing with a major terrorist attack and other big emergencies are unveiled today. Ministers have already published drafts of the new laws, which were criticised by an influential committee of MPs and peers for putting human rights at risk.

They fear that unless the Civil Contingencies Bill contains suitable constraints its powers could be abused by a future government. Civil rights campaigners want the new powers to be more strictly defined.

Summary of key power in draft bill:

1. Ministers will be able to bypass Parliament to make emergency regulations
   
2. Police will be able to ban public gatherings, impose curfews, seize property
   
3. The Human Rights Act could be suspended

A parliamentary committee set up to look at the plans said they had "potentially dangerous flaws". The Committee chairman Lewis Moonie said his main concern was over human liberty and rights because the terms used in the bill were "too vague".

The basis under which the government could take these powers to itself - the way in which government defines an emergency - I think is the first concern. If they listen to us, as I'm pretty sure they will, they should have changed the terms on which this is done and made it much more explicit how they take these powers in the first place.

Dr Moonie, a former defence minister warns:

We should not put such power into the hands of anybody without suitable constraints.

Truer words are rarely spoken by politicians.

Full text of the civil contingencies bill here (pdf). Via the Guardian.

Here is Liberty's response to the government's civil contingencies bill.

Whenever the authorities try and vote themselves greater powers, there is a need to be cautious and sceptical. By reinstating the courts' powers to consider human right abuses under these laws, the government has made an important concession.

And Statewatch has a detailed commentary on the issue:

The concessions made by the government in no way change the fundamental objections to this Bill. The powers available to the government and state agencies would be truly draconian. Cities could be sealed off, travel bans introduced, all phones cut off, and websites shut down. Demonstrations could be banned and the news media be made subject to censorship. New offences against the state could be "created" by government decree. This is Britain's Patriot Act, at a stroke democracy could be replaced by totalitarianism.

A reader alerted us to an interesting vote happening on the Radio 4 today programme: vote for a law to be submitted to the House of Commons. So far there are five 'Law Ideas' and at No.5 is a bill to allow homeowners to defend their property with any force, by deleting "reasonable" from the phrase "reasonable force".

You can vote by phone or online, if you are registered with BBCi.

Guy Herbert finds this is a bit worrying.

The BBC reports that six people suspected of terror activities have been re-arrested on lesser charges. All six were originally arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act, on suspicion of involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. They were released under terror laws but re-arrested on other matters such as bank fraud and immigration offences.

What's wrong with this picture? Under the Terrorism Act reasonable suspicion is not required to arrest or search. Therefore it has potential to be used for fishing expeditions - police arrest you and search your property without proper cause. Of course, they'll have an actual cause, such as being uncooperative with officials or some such pretext, and give themselves a week to find something on you. Once they have found something on you, their actions are justified in the eyes of the Lawn Order brigade.

Given the state of the criminal law and bureaucratic reach, I sincerely doubt there is anyone in the country who could not be charged with some crime after a week of interrogation and search, even among those whose lawns are in perfect order and believe they have nothing to hide.

ASIO stands for Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and the ASIO is in the news, here, and here:

An international law expert believes the Federal Government's proposed changes to its ASIO laws to extend the questioning time allowed for non-English speakers would be a "clear contravention" of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Associate Professor Donald Rothwell, from the University of Sydney, said amendments expected to be introduced today into Parliament, which would extend the period ASIO could question people who needed interpreters from 24 hours to 48 over a week, would breach Article 26 of the covenant.

… and here:

Labor is expected to agree to key legislative amendments that will provide stiff penalties for unauthorised disclosure of information relating to ASIO's new special questioning and detention powers.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock will introduce the amendments today, with an expectation they will be passed by both chambers before the parliament rises next week for Christmas.

The most contentious aspect of the legislation relates to the disclosure provisions by which the subject of an ASIO warrant or his lawyer or other persons convey information about the course of ASIO's investigations.

Sunday Herald reports that UK wants similar powers to controversial US Patriot Act.

Sweeping new emergency legal powers to deal with the aftermath of a large terrorist attack in Britain are being considered by the government. The measures could potentially outlaw participation in a protest march, such as last week's demonstrations during President Bush's state visit, making it, in effect, a criminal offence to criticise government policy.

In an attempt to give the UK government similar powers to those rushed through in the US after the 9/11 attack on New York in 2001, it is understood that a beefed-up version of current civil contingencies law is being considered. It will allow the government to bypass or suspend key parts of the UK's human rights laws without the authority of parliament.

...

Aware of the current level of scare-mongering following the Istanbul bombing and the threats made by al-Qaeda-linked groups that further suicide attacks were being planned on targets both in the UK and abroad, a source close to the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, last night denied his department were seeking a massive and immediate injection of cash from the Treasury. This would be needed to foot the bill if Britain's streets were to be flooded with armed police in an almost constant level of red alert.

Despite Blunkett saying he was "sick and tired" of people pretending there was not a threat from terrorists and insisting only "very, very good intelligence would save us", the Home Office seems to have no plan to boost security spending this or next year.

If "Fortress Britain" were to be achieved, with countrywide security checks, increased police surveillance and widespread detention of any suspect group or individual, the Home Office's annual budget would rocket.

Hm.

From an unlikely source comes this analysis of the US Patriot Act in the editorial column:

Explaining the reasons why the USA Patriot Act runs counter to the traditional American concept of liberty is a daunting task. Most people - including the members of Congress who voted for it - haven't even read the Act in its entirety, if at all. Those are the uninformed. Then there are the misguided - those who are somewhat familiar with the legislation, but who accept it under the notion that some loss of freedom is inevitable if we're to protect ourselves from the scourge of terrorists.

The article ends with a famous quote attributed to Rev. Martin Neimoller:

First, they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Read the whole thing. Simple and effective.

RFID coverage from ZDNet UK:

A global alliance of opponents to the rollout of radio frequency identification tagging systems are demanding that companies stop deploying them until crucial issues such as privacy are addressed.

Over 30 civil liberties and privacy groups have demanded a suspension to the deployment of radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging systems until a number of issues surrounding the controversial technology have been addressed.

These organisations, including Britain's Foundation for Information Policy Reseach and Privacy International, have backed a position statement on the use of RFID on consumer products that was issued on Thursday.

It claims that RFID, if used improperly, represents a major threat to consumer privacy and civil liberties. This follows earlier protests against RFID by campaigners, and is thought to be the first formal global alliance against the technology.

Despite Michael Howard's reported U-turn, peers have once again thrown out Big Blunkett's discredited Criminal "Justice" Bill. They were particularly concerned by Blunkett's plans to restrict the right to trial by jury, to allow people to be tried twice for the same crime and to allow evidence of "bad character" (i.e. gossip) to be used in trials.

Today is the last day of the parliamentary session, so if the Lords continue to stand up for civil liberties the whole Bill could be lost. The only way for it now to pass would appear to be significant concessions by the Government, a move that would further undermine Blunkett's position.

Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe

The Independent reports that lawyers and civil liberties groups yesterday urged the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, to back down over proposals to limit the right to trial by jury as he prepared for a bitter parliamentary battle to force the proposals into law.

In a letter to The Independent, the Law Society and the Bar Council joined civil liberties groups in urging Mr Blunkett to accept a string of Lords amendments toning down the Criminal Justice Bill.

Ministers will attempt to revive the plans in the Commons today after they were thrown out by a coalition of Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers. They will also try to reverse defeats over proposals to allow juries to be given details of defendants' previous convictions.