Random Fact of the Week

Taking Liberties is released on June the 8th 2007.

The first publication of George Orwell's 1984 was on the 8th June 1949.

Go Figure.

The Police State We're In...

Tony Blair has taken a curious approach to the accusations that Britain is drifting towards a Police State, by announcing radically more draconian powers for the Police - powers that not even the police want. At present the police have section 44 powers that enable the police to detain and search whoever they want without any reasonable suspicion. The test case that went to the House of Lords showed that the Police can use these powers arbitrarily and do not have to ever say why they stopped someone - even if it's because they don't like the colour of their skin. The most famous misuse of these poweres was to stop 82 year old Walter Wolfgang from re-entering the Labour Party conference in 2005. Several members of the Taking Liberties team have earned their section 44 wings during the making of the film. Thousands of peaceful protesters have been stopped demonstrating and a massively disproportionate number of Muslim men have been hassled using these powers. In all over 100,000 people have been detained using section 44 in the past 7 years.

The number of terrorists caught? None.

So what does our Tony do? Announce he wants to extend these powers. As this announcement was with the usual tough rhetoric in the Murdoch Press, there's precious little policy detail (this normally gets improvised the night before the bill goes through parliament) but it seems that the police will soon be able to:
-Stop anyone in the street without there being suspicion of a crime.
-Demand to know your name, DOB and address, and see identification.
-Demand to know where you have been and where you are going.
Refusal to comply with any of the above would result in a £5000 fine.

Sounds like a recipe for national harmony, apart from:

1) New Labour repeatedly said, when introducing ID Cards, that they would never be demanded on the spot to create a "papers please!" society.
2) The people who are most likely to be unfairly treated under these powers would be young Muslim men.
3) The Police don't want these powers. Several senior police officers told the Guardian that these new powers are not needed, have not been asked for, and will only make the terrorist problem worse.
4) Even senior New Labour Figures are publicly rubbishing the idea. Peter Hain said that these powers will only serve to radicilise people even further and could end up being the British Equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.

But apart from these little niggles, sounds like a great idea.

Tony says ta-ta to Torture and signs an Oil Deal

Blair's grand farewell just keeps on getting more and more classy. As part of his whistle stop "Giz a Job!" tour to mark the end of his reign, he has spent 5 days mincing round Africa to try and boost his value as an after dinner speaker. Journalists wanting to get on board Tony's Jet (Already nicknamed "Vanity Blair") were being told to stump up £1800 if they wanted to fly with his highness. Most of the Broadsheet Journalists have balked at this, but there is a large delegation from Men's Vogue on board the flight to cover Blair's every move..

The trip has neatly avoided anywhere that has gone to shit during Blair's reign, which is sadly most of the continent, but Blair made sure that he touched down in Libya to spend a few hours with his best pal, Colonel Gadaffi. Despite Libya's horrendous and ongoing human rights record, the nutty Colonel will always have a special place in Blair's heart. New Labour is still doing it's very best to send various unfortunates back to Libya to be Tortured (including Omar deghayes), and Blair is still maintaining that - thanks to his soothing influence - Gadaffi is no longer a bloodthirsty despot, but a cuddly amiable despot who wouldn't hurt a fly. And the fact that BP are signing a multi billion dollar deal with the man is neither here nor there...

Goldsmith Refuses to Publish Iraq Torture Advice

Anyone have a feeling of Deja Vu? Goldsmith's secret filing cabinet must be fit to bursting. Not only is he having to hide away:
-The advice he gave on the Iraq War.
-The Reasons why he dropped the BAE Fraud enquiry.
-Why he still hasn't properly excused himself from any decision making role in the cash for peerages affair.
But poor of Lord "Fag Packet" Goldsmith is now having to hide away the advice he gave about the use of Torture in Iraq by British Soldiers. This all stems from legal advice issued by the flexible Attorney General on whether the Human Rights Act (and in particular the ban on torture) applies when British Soldiers are dealing with Iraqi Civilians. This comes after a spate of incidents where British Soldiers have been blatantly mistreating and torturing Iraqis, which seems to have stemmed from the fact that they were not given clear instructions that hooding and being forced in the stress position is completely illegal. Goldsmith denies that he gave advice that would lead to Torture, but - strangely - is still refusing to publish the advice to put himself in the clear. He's almost certainly going to need a bigger filing cabinet.

Fairford Two Are Cleared

This is an unexpectedly bold move by a British Judge, that has enabled 2 peace activists to be cleared over trying to stop planes taking off from Fairford on the eve of the Iraq War. The pair were caught red handed trying to put the planes out of action, but as their defence they claimed that they were trying to stop a greater crime being committed by the illegal invasion of Iraq. This defence has been tried by numerous protesters and activists, but has, until now, been thrown out before it's heard by a jury. But with the Fairford Two the Judge allowed this defence to be presented, and the Jury found them not guilty. This is the furthest the Judiciary has gone to date in declaring the Iraq War illegal, and could be a crucial step towards bringing some of the perpetrators of the war to book. Geoff Hoon - if you're reading this - they criminal defence lawyers at takelegaladvice.com are very reasonable...

Operation Ore

Nothing gets the tabloid juices flowing quite like child porn so when the police announced that thousands of British residents were being investigated for viewing child pornography after the credit card details of purchasers processed by the US portal site Landslide, the headlines began immediately. People (mostly men) were arrested in a blaze of publicity and many have since been successfully prosecuted. However, Duncan Campell yesterday published an article in the Guardian which shows that the operation may not have been built on the sturdy foundations that we were lead to believe. Firstly, not all of the sites that Landslide processed were child porn sites some were just regular porn. This means that some of the names on the list were merely using the Internet in the traditional way. Secondly, the police didn’t take into account the massive amount of credit card fraud that was going on. So a lot of the people on the list had no idea what was being done in their name.

The stigma of an arrest for child porn is enough to ruin someone’s life and people are often considered guilty whether any charges are actually filed or not. The stigma in this operation has lead to the suicide of 39 men, some of whom had nothing to do with child pornography. For example, Commodore David White was found dead 24 hours after being suspended from the Navy because of an investigation by the police, despite the fact that the police had found no evidence against him.

Investigations into child pornography are essential but the hysteria that surrounds them isn’t. We need to be absolutely sure before branding someone a paedophile because this seems to be an area of the law where innocent until proven guilty does not apply.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2059880,00.html

Government’s policy review of police powers

This actually came out a couple of weeks ago but we have been a bit busy and have only just got round to reading all 102 scintillating pages of it. Mostly it is the usual government speak about rebalancing the system in favour of the victim and focusing on the criminal instead of the crime. It’s a comfort to know that thanks to this review policemen will be out on the street with the certain knowledge that they are hoping to detect and prevent criminals and not crimes (here we were thinking they were supposed to do both – that’s why this sort of review is so useful).

The review shows this government’s usual excitement with any solution that involves a database. It suggests expanding the DNA database to include anyone that the police suspect of committing a crime (why don’t they just admit they want a national database and get it over with), using CCTV with facial, weapon and explosives recognition capabilities (is that a gun in your pocket…sorry it’s a terrible joke but I just couldn’t help myself), using more powerful data analysis of databases (interestingly the identity database is included in the list of databases to be analysed, this was one of the things that Blair promised Parliament would not happen when the Identity bill went through) and providing police officers with access to databases where different levels of confidentiality are currently an issue (goodbye data protection laws then).

The terrorism section is mostly taken up with talking about how we have to embrace our shared values. This always makes me wonder what they are:
- All crises should be immediately followed by the offer of a cup of tea
- Anything is better if you’ve had to queue to get hold of it
- Shorts and a t-shirt should be worn at the slightest sighting of sunshine
- People should always stand on the left of an escalator and walk down the right.
- The breaking of any social rules should be met with some quiet tutting and a steely stare of disapproval. That’ll teach them.

Almost as an afterthought they add that their not entirely comfortable with Article 3 of the ECHR since it stops them sending terror suspects back to countries that might torture them so they are busy thinking of a way round this problem. If anyone can do it New Labour can!