“We are not living in a police state”
Tony Blair, asking MPs to support police detention without charge for up to 90 days.
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
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Samizdata quote of the voteNovember 10th, 2005 |
 41 comments to Samizdata quote of the vote |
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Because he has not finished turning it into one!
Seems like in the gotterdammerung of The Great Leader’s regime even his most loyal rats are now carrying out lifeboat drills on the ship. Checking the list on the above BBC link of the ‘rebel’ Labour MP’s one can’t but help notice among the list of abstainers a number of MP’s whom one might presume would back Our Little Tony all the way, most notably Geoffrey Robinson, Ann McKechin and David Drew – the latter two being very much pro OLT and all he ‘stands’ for. Of course it’s refreshing to see the usual mix of authoritarian Tory twats who either failed to make the vote (Nicholas Soames really must get some exercise – that’s twice he’s failed to make a major vote due to dinner engagements) or actually voted with Blair – Sir Peter Tapsell
I shall raise a glass tonight to yet another of OLT’s memorable legacies to the British people being scuppered by his own party. Given his disastrous ‘presidency’ of Europe so far (failed votes on EU constitution, the ‘bra war’ with China etc.) and his monumental failures in most other aspects of his tenure at Number 10, it looks very much like Our Little Tony’s sole lasting legacy will be successfully ensuring the indepence of the Bank of England from the Exchequer. Oh wait … wasn’t that Gordon Brown’s first action as Chancellor though?
It would appear that our drift into a police state is far too slow for most people.
Some of the pole ratings in support of 90 detention without charge were in excess of 80%, and I’ve heard a couple of people last night and today interviewed on radio and TV saying that they are disgusted with the Tories political manoeuvering, and vowing never to vote Tory again.
Even the notion that their freedoms are being taken away, or that Blair and his ilk may not be entirely trustworthy does not seem to have occurred to millions of voters. And even if one trusts Blair, what about the next government, or a government in 50 years time?
Are so many of our people so naive?
Even loyal Tonyite Stephen Pollard has written a column (Link) begging him to resign immediately if not sooner. It warmed the cockles of my heart.
“It would appear that our drift into a police state is far too slow for most people.
Some of the pole ratings in support of 90 detention without charge were in excess of 80%”
Didnt see all the polls, but The Sun asking its readers to call and register support for the 90 days – interestingly there was no number for those aginst the 90 days.
I suspect many answering the polls were thinking of locking only terrorists up, without considering it would be the police power to lock ANYONE up for 90 days.. after all the police wouldnt be that politically motivated or beastly would they ??
What I also find perplexing is why we were not permitted to know why the police wanted a 90 day extension. It is left to Reuters (in India of all places!) to fill us in on these details – it would appear that the police need 90 days to sift through all the detritus and suicide bombers’ personal computers following a terrorist attack.
As regards the famous Sun’s YouGov “anti terrorist opinion poll” [it’s in PDF format] read the second section’s question, i.e.
Yes, most people certainly do feel that the police undoubtedly believe that, but that does not actually mean the public support a 90 day detention without trial extension – even with the ridiculously small 2014 sample questioned in this survey.
“it would appear that the police need 90 days to sift through all the detritus and suicide bombers’ personal computers following a terrorist attack.”
No. From what I read, it is because now, once a suicide twit has his bomb strapped on, he cannot get it off. If he tries, he will blow himself and everyone else in the vicinity up.
Until this new development, the police figured out where a terrorist attack was going to take place, and arrested the suicide shithead and disabled his bomb.
Now this is no longer possible, so the police can no longer wait for a point-of-sale arrest. Once they suspect someone, they have to arrest him in advance, and gather the evidence later. This is what may take the 90 days.
I seem to be alone in feeling equivocal about this. I know if the police get the power, they could use it against anyone. But what is seldom mentioned is, there is a hearing before a High Court judge once every seven days at which the police have to justify continuing to hold this individual. This seems like a reasonable restraint on abuse.
The current 14 days was brought in by New Labour a well, as I remember, from 7 days (the most in any other commn law country). With it now rising to 28 days I would guess the next extension, and there will be another one will be to about 60 days as soon as New Labour gets enough political capital together for another shot.
“What I also find perplexing is why we were not permitted to know why the police wanted a 90 day extension. It is left to Reuters (in India of all places!) to fill us in on these details…”
Yes I did find that bizarre too; though it only takes a little thought to think of reasons why the police want 3 months – and I don’t intend that as a sarcastic comment either. I’d imagine a certain amount of time-consuming deciphering of information is required – perhaps not merely because it is in another language but because it is otherwise encoded.
I am far from being an expert on the technical questions (as I’m sure I will soon be scornfully reminded of) but in the absence of a clear and thorough understanding of the nature of the evidence-collecting problem the police have, I might well have been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, had I been an MP in the Commons debate yesterday. (Though if I had been an MP in the Commons it would have been my duty to acquire such a clear and thorough understanding.)
As to the civil liberties concerns, the problem I see is less to do with the actual period of time proposed to lock people up for (the reputation of an innocent man may be severly damaged whether the detention is for 90 days or 28 days), and more to do with either (a) whether they should be locked up without charge at all, or (b) if so, then on what basis is our confidence that the police will minimize awful errors (like that of the Brazilian guy getting shot on the tube) to be bolstered?
I appreciate that public institutions should be scrutinized with sharp criticism rather than be naively trusted – yet surely some degree of confidence in public institutions is necessary for their effective reform?
“No. From what I read, it is because now, once a suicide twit has his bomb strapped on, he cannot get it off. If he tries, he will blow himself and everyone else in the vicinity up.”
Ah yes, perhaps that’s true – in which case I think I’d want the police to just arrest the bastards straight away and collect the evidence later. Yet how is the figure of three months arrived at – and for that matter, how was the alternative of 28 days cooked up?
Blair has said it was cooked up arbitrarily by those opposed to his bill. This question ought to be answered too, otherwise the ultra cynical view that MPs voted as they did merely to damage Blair would make a certain sense – I mean if you hate and distrust Blair, how much more do you hate and mistrust the far-left in his party?
Further to my earlier comment above…
“I’d imagine a certain amount of time-consuming deciphering of information is required…”
…it seems that a bunch of Labour MPs, lead by Steve McCabe, have taken it upon themselves to enlighten us further (by writing to The Times) as to the nature of the police case for a 90-day detention of suspects without charge:
From Steve McCabe, MP for Birmingham Hall Green (Labour) and 39 others
“Sir, Many newspapers have carried the views of a small number of MPs opposed to a maximum 90-day detention for those arrested in connection with serious terrorist offences. These interviews have been used to convey the impression that many MPs share such views.”
“We are Labour MPs from across the different strands of the party and from a range of parliamentary intakes who believe that the police have produced a compelling case, arguing for more time based on specific examples. The tasks include: making a site safe and collecting forensic samples; analysing thousands of hours of CCTV footage; decoding computer data; unmasking multiple false identities. There are many other things which suggest that much more than three or four weeks is needed if a proper investigation is to be completed.”
“We need a serious maximum period subject to weekly scrutiny by a specialist High Court judge; new requirements to protect the suspect; and regular parliamentary reports on the numbers detained, the reasons and the period of detention. Any other course of action would be a dereliction of our duty as Members of Parliament.”
STEVE McCABE
House of Commons
Presumably the full nature of the police case could not have been published in detail for public scrutiny due to sensitive information that may have been of use to terrorists.
From what I read – and it was in a British publication, although I can’t remember which one, for these post-arrest (because you can’t wait for Mr Splodey to get his bomb on now – see my post above) is, the police have to deal with security services perhaps in several countries in getting the evidence. That means not just codes and encrypted emails have to be sifted through for minute details, but in several languages and through several countries with several different agencies. All this has to be coordinated back and forth and retranslated and leads that have been uncovered then have to be followed up.
The complexity is such that I can believe it could take up to around three months to get enough evidence in place to secure a conviction.
And there was the safeguard that the police have to appear before a High Court judge every seven days to justify holding the suspect for the next seven days.
It would be very difficult, in such circumstances, for a normal British citizen to be held for 90 days because there is no way they could justify it to the High Court judge every week.
I think this is the one thing Tony Blair has ever done right and it was at a time when his party decided to spite him. I think the defeat of this is very dangerous for the country.
Y’know Verity – I actually think we agree with one another.
One reason that makes me ambivilant too is that in the main our police force isn’t very bright, so it may well take three months to prove who the bad guys are.
This “once he gets the bomb on he can’t get it off” is news to me.
Were the 7/7 bunch equipped with such devices? and by whom(someone who obviously didn’t trust them or no need of failsafe devices). If they made the bombs themselves why would they do that? Manouvering rucksacks around public transport for any period of time damn near nessessitates that you have to take them off your back at some point or you are going to stand out like a sore thumb.
Sorry, don’t buy that one.
Other than that , yep it could take 3 months to firm up intel/intersept evidence.
But it’s still too long. We cannot let our freedoms bleed away like this, especially when the Govt is happy to use the Terrorism laws against the heckler of Jack Straw or issue an ASBO on a family who’s Christmas lights are a tad over the top.
As David Davis has pointed out, the 90 days for decrypting computer evidence is a red herring – the person involved could be handed a court order requiring them to provide the password and it could be made an imprisonable offence not to supply it.
In any case, anyone who knows anything about encryption technology (it’s a sideline interest of mine) knows that encryption algorithms exist that are practically impossible to decrypt if used correctly.
Those that think that a longer period of imprisonment without trial is required need to answer the question of why, for example, the limit in Australia is 7 days and the police say that they are perfectly content with this? As The Times points out today the police and Charles Clarke had conceded that 90 days wasn’t really necessary, only to find that Blair decided to try to force it through anyway.
As for the detention having to be justified to a high court judge every seven days – Lord Hutton demonstrated that at least some of these judges aren’t very inclined to question or challenge the government view.
“…the person involved could be handed a court order requiring them to provide the password and it could be made an imprisonable offence not to supply it.”
So why the farce of the opposition voting for a 28 day detainment? Is it not that compliance with court orders is easily delayed/ignored with little repercussion from judges?
Mike: I’m inclined to agree that 28 days is hard to justify.
The charitable view is that had the Tories gone for the more principled option of no change, the vote might have gone the other way (i.e. in favour 90 days) because a relatively small number of MPs (but enough to swing the vote) would have voted differently. Therefore tactically, proposing 28 days was the only way to prevent what would have amounted to six months prison sentences (with parole) without trial.
So these are apparently the arguments
I would be utterly astonished if either of these tasks could take three months and would be most interested if someone could explain how.
The time for this task is proportional to manpower available, more bums on seats maybe?
Again I would suggest another resource issue, more powerful computers maybe, more experts…….
This is straight from those who want to bring in ID cards and is countered by the same argument: that false identitities are not the biggest problem facing anti-terrorist investigators.
Please note I am not suggesting that investigating terrorism is anything but a highly complex operation. I do however believe that evidence that the current 14 day limit is causing serious problems to investigators is very thin on the ground (examples please). Secondly that the arguments presented by Steve McCabe are centred around resource issues and are broadly soluble by managing and increasing those resources. The fact that in this context Blair choses as a first resort to attack personal liberty leads me to believe it is first and foremost an ideological and political maneouvre and that it should be treated as such.
I agree with Verity on this: it can actually take the coppers quite a while to get their hands on the evidence, particularly if foreign countries’ police agencies are involved. The problem for me, though, is that debate about whether the holding period should be 90 days, or 7 days, or one year is besides the point. What matters is how the initial decision to hold people is taken, and once arrested, how frequently said people have access to proper legal advice and whether they can avoid having their lives royally messed up.
Ironic, that this was an issue on which I felt a sliver of sympathy for Blair. The MPs who rebelled on this issue were more than happy to vote like sheep for things like getting rid of the double-jepoardy rule, limiting the right to trial by jury, the oppressive bill on religious speech, the EU arrest warrant, and lord knows what else.
I believe that the splodeys who murdered and maimed the people on London Transport either could not remove their bombs or the bombs were timed to go off at a specific moment – it was almost simultaneous – or both.
No, the person controlling them did not trust them. Of course not! Four young men, and at least one of them with children – you can’t take a chance on them changing their minds. Or dumping the bombs in a park or the Thames and running away.
I believe you, Noel Cooper, are being too dismissive. You are dealing with several government bureaucracies, some of them in Pakistan and other highly inefficient places, you are dealing with their secret services and their contacts in other secret services. And piecing all the minute evidence together to justify a conviction. Teeny weeny bits of wire, a minute trace of explosive in someone’s house in Lahore, CCTV, train tickets, tracking meetings and travel arrangements over the previous months.
I do not think three months is outrageous to solve a crime – or intended – crime of this nature. And everyone is ignoring that there is the safeguard that the police would have had to justify their request for a one-week extension every seven days before a High Court judge.
This is all done on evidence that the police know who is going to try to blow themselves up and where. As I said, they can no longer just track them and then arrest them minutes before they blow themselves up because the bomb would still go off.
I think Labour chose to use this vital bill as a weapon to bugger Tony Blair. But Labour has never been loyal to Britain.
They actually already have this power under the RIP Act, with the threat of up to 2 years in prison if you don’t supply it. RIP also states that it is up to you to prove that you cannot supply the key, which is going to be generally impossible. This kind of makes that government excuse hard to follow, unless (as The Register once commented) they have put in place so many new ‘anti-terrorist’ laws that they have forgotten all the powers that they have given themselves.
Verity says: “I do not think three months is outrageous to solve a crime – or intended – crime of this nature. And everyone is ignoring that there is the safeguard that the police would have had to justify their request for a one-week extension every seven days before a High Court judge”
The point is that there may not be a crime or intended crime – the police may be entirely wrong in their suspicion both of the fact that a crime is intended or that the person they are holding has anything to do with it.
As I’ve pointed out, many high court judges are inclined to do what the government wants them to do. The Hutton whitewash demonstrated this. In any case, if the police had any real evidence, they could charge the person and then ask for bail to be refused, so on what evidence would the judge be agreeing to further detention without charge? The answer is none – they’d just have to take the police’s word for it.
For what it’s worth, I think that MPs voted as they did out of conscience or following the party whip – I don’t think they had other motives.
Verity said
I believe you, Noel Cooper, are being too dismissive.
I can’t help it when faced with the total lack of evidence that the 14 day limit is causing major problems for the security services. I would like actual examples rather than hypothetical situations.
I am not ashamed to oppose this measure when those arguments in it’s favour appear to me to be the police saying we want to take people off the street on the first suspicion of involvement in terrorism and then have plenty of time to do a trawl for evidence to see if we can get a conviction. Yes the idea that we can easily get suspected terrorists banged up rather than gather sufficient evidence first sounds good, I don’t deny. However there is, I reiterate, no evidence it will make a practical difference. In addition it is open to abuse, the principle is likely to be extended to other crimes once the public has been softened up, and lastly, it is shockingly utilitarian.
Sorry Verity,
Still don’t buy it.
The bomb on the number 30 bus went off an hour and a half after the ones on the tubes.
That tells me that the perp had some considerable degree of control over when to detonate.
Eye witnesses said they saw him fumbling with the bag at his feet, not on his back.
Sorry but you just cant go around London Transport acting like Eric Sykes in “The Plank” with your rucksack.People will kill you quicker than you can kill them.
I don’t think it went off an hour and a half later. Central London would have been well closed down by then. People wouldn’t have been boarding buses. I think it went off a few minutes later, that is all, unless you have a reference to the contrary.
Obviously, something went wrong for this splodey. He was supposed to be underground. Even if he couldn’t find the right tube station, any tube station would have done, wouldn’t it? All he had to do was walk towards a London Underground sign. Instead he boarded a bus, where he couldn’t do nearly as much damage. I wonder if he was taking the bus to the tube station he was supposed to be in? Duh. Or had he changed his mind? Was he trying to get to the Thames to throw his rucksack in the river and didn’t know his way round London?
In any event, the timers had been set in Luton. Was he fiddling with his rucksack because he wanted to disable his bomb, possibly by pulling a wire out but was scared to take a chance?
I wish I could remember where I’d read that they are now unable to get away from their bombs or disable them.
Blair even played fast and loose with the facts, quoting 750GB of data as being “66,000 feet of information for the police to check”.
There is no way that I believe that there is 750GB of printed data. Most likely the data is video, which can be checked quickly.
Verity, he’s pretty much right – the first 3 explosions were at t 8:50 a.m. exploding within 50 seconds of each other. The fourth bomb on the bus exploded at 9:47 a.m. in Tavistock Square. They had shut down the whole underground system but didn’t shut down the bus system until after the 4th bomb. I thought the whole thing about these creeps was that they had agreed to all self-checkout at an agreed hour, so how come bomber #4 waited an hour, unless he had control over the detonation of his bomb?
Julian – well, it’s too late to ask him, the slimey little asshole. But I believe the bombs were definitely synchronised and they were all to go off, for effect, at the same minute.
Theory – this splodey was in the tube that had been targetted as his job, but his bomb didn’t go off. The other ones went off and he heard the mayhem and police and fire sirens, but he still had his bomb on his person. For someone who had been confident that by now he’d be lolling around in heaven and getting a personal pat on the back from the big guy, he must have been panicked.
Obviously, a Pakistani with a bomb in his rucksack should not hang around in a tube station, so he went back above ground and, not knowing whether his bomb would activate or not, got on a bus to get away from the area and maybe to dump the bomb somewhere.
That’s why people noticed him nervously fiddling with his rucksack. I think he may have thought he had a dud bomb and didn’t know if it would go off or not. As we know, to our deep regret for all the other people, but not him, it did.
Pedantry overflow.
You can get 750Gb of data from one sheet of printed A4, if you want that level of detail.
Sorry. I appear to be even more lame than usual.
On 14 days (previously 7 days) not being long enough, I would have thought it best to judge this on how serious a problem it has created so far, having taken careful note of whether (in each case) the police had been doing their job with all due diligence.
At this link: http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/2005/11/charles_clarkes_citation_of_t.html
there is information on the cases that the Government and police forces have cited as past problems, in support of the case for 90 days.
Interestingly, as far as I can follow, the only case where there was a problem was the “alleged ricin poison” case, where the police are rather aggrieved than some guy ran off to Algeria, and now they want him back. However, they let him go after only 2 days (rather than the 7 that were then available to them).
Does anyone know of any other cases where the police were really held back in their task by the 14 (previously 7) day limit? That would, for greater certainty, be cases where an arrest warrant has now been issued, after the 7/14 day limit (where the perp was released and went unavailable) and the 90 days sought.
Best regards
No the reason his bomb didn’t go off is because he was not ready to do it.
The idea was for the bombs to form a symbolic cross, a stab at the crusaders.
Trouble was that the Northern Line was closed. So chummy who got on the bus had to go elsewhere.
He wandered out of the tube station and got on the no 30 bus and pondered what to do next.
He knew that his fiends had self immolated cos he wrang them on his mobile phone and got no answer.
Plus the panic coming out of the underground would have clued him.
Now just maybe I’ll agree that some evil mastermind may have built in a trigger switch for quitters, but …. really …. does it seem likely?
As other commenters have pointed out it is dangerous to ask a policeman what powers he would like and then give him them all without question.
Although, I can see that it is difficult and time consuming to complete international investigations presumably the police must have some evidence in order to be able to arrest somebody on a terrorism charge in the first place. Or, do they just plan to arrest people without any evidence and then spend 90 days on a fishing expedition? Remember, the government already has the power to impose control orders. How much more power do these maniacs want?
If the government are serious about putting terrorists behind bars why are they still resisting allow phone intercept evidence to be used in court?
Seven days along with admissibility of phone tap evidence is enough.
Now just maybe I’ll agree that some evil mastermind may have built in a trigger switch for quitters, but …. really …. does it seem likely?
Oh, yes indeedy. Absolutely as likely as flying passenger planes into giant skyscrapers with the little “pilot” dickshits having shaved their bodies just before the flight and leaving notifications that no women were to touch their dead bodies. Before 9/11, I’d sooner have believed that Dorothy could get back from Oz by clicking her ruby shoes than this.
“A trigger switch for quitters?” Yeah. I believe it.
The other point I have a problem with is this – how on earth does a Muslim terrorist, or even four Muslim terrorists, amass 750 Gigabytes of data on their computers. I would imagine that even their abundant collections of camel or goat porn wouldn’t take up that much space, and how many recordingss of ‘Allah Wants Me For a Martyr’ can there possibly be?
HJHJ write: As David Davis has pointed out, the 90 days for decrypting computer evidence is a red herring – the person involved could be handed a court order requiring them to provide the password and it could be made an imprisonable offence not to supply it.
In fact it already is an offense not to hand over an encryption key under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Which surely makes a mockery of the Police and the Government’s argument.
It strikes me that all of the “so-called” arguments for 90 days, not just the already RIP-covered encryption argument, are spurious.
Whilst it may have taken the police 14 days to access the flat where the 7/7 explosives were prepared, it was purely because they had already been able to make a rapid forensic determination that they were dealing with a bomb factory – and therefore they had sufficient evidence to charge and hold a suspect.
I’ve been wracking my brain as to why Tony wanted 90 days, and the only conclusion that I could come up with is that he wants to be able to effectively intern large numbers of people without trial whilst the security services go on speculative fishing expeditions. The so-called protection of going before a judge every 7 days would mitigate the problem to a degree if those interned actually had proper independent legal representation – as this is being specifically denied under the terms of the bill.
As we have seen time and again, the police will always operate up to, and even over, the line of the powers that we give them.
Noel & Nigel, you asked for stats on the Police’s use of the existing 14-day period – The Times carried the data earlier this week:
Doesn’t look like they’ve needed any longer so far.
I’ve been wracking my brain as to why Tony wanted 90 days, and the only conclusion that I could come up with is that he wants to be able to effectively intern large numbers of people without trial whilst the security services go on speculative fishing expeditions.
Charles Clarke implied as much in an interview on Today before the debate, repeatedly talking about gathering “intelligence” rather than “evidence”.
It is not necessary actually to use such powers, note, for them to be useful to the authorities. If nothing more than suspicion is required–which under the Terrorism Act need not even be reasonable suspicion–they become a threat, a punishment that may be imposed for non-cooperation, or “disrespect”.
I’m interested what comments the Government will make about this incident of people being arbitrarily held (for a mere 14 days) on suspicion. A discreet silence, probably, not, “We fully support the decisions of the Iranian security services, who cannot be too careful in dealing with suspicious foreigners.”
The other point I have a problem with is this – how on earth does a Muslim terrorist, or even four Muslim terrorists, amass 750 Gigabytes of data on their computers.
With Tim I suspect, having become quite good at the Home Office dialect of English recently, that they are counting video data and maybe the volume of traffic records grabbed at various ISPs and telcos. Did they actually claim they (or the Black Chamber for them) had had to decrypt data? Or only that, if they had, it might have taken a long time if the relevant organisations had chosen to do it the hard way?
Good point Guy, however I would hope to God that our security services would at least have access to GCHQ (and thus to the NSA’s Fort Meade computers as well). If they can’t analyse 750Gb of data in a few hours then I wouldn’t know who can. I just hope that the Metropolitan Police’s idea of computer forensics does not involve having a number of staff double-clicking MS Word documents on a suspect’s HD to see what’s been written.
Come on, 90-day detention doesn’t make England a police state. Late Soviet Union introduced three-day detention-without-charge rule, but was perfectly police state.
Danny
http://www.SamsonBlinded.org