Wonderful, quite wonderful. A terrorist attack and the police ask for, well, have a look:
Police
last night told Tony Blair that they need sweeping new powers to
counter the terrorist threat, including the right to detain a suspect
for up to three months without charge instead of the current 14 days.
Senior
officers also want powers to attack and close down websites, and a new
criminal offence of using the internet to prepare acts of terrorism, to
"suppress inappropriate internet usage".
They
also want to make it a criminal offence for suspects to refuse to
cooperate in giving the police full access to computer files by
refusing to disclose their encryption keys.
Yes, I do understand that we already have different rules about people being held when charged or suspected of terrorist offenses. But three months? What about Habeus Corpus? This really means that you can be banged up, without a lawyer, trial, appeal, even communication with the outside world, just because a policeman doesn’t like the cut of your jilbab. They can’t be serious about this, providing another of the trappings of a police state over the mere threat of bombs.
It gets worse:
Terror suspects to give compulsory answers to questions similar to obligations on company directors in fraud trials;
Abolition of the right to remain silent? Jesu Christe do these people not understand the very basics of our system? That if they accuse someone of something then they have to prove that accusation. There is no requirement that the accused disprove the allegations. How can there be when it is the individual against the entire might of the State?
They are gutting the provisions of the Common Law, that system built up over a millenia to protect us from that most dangerous of things, the State. Bastards.
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