Wednesday, November 21, 2007 

56/8 days dies a further death.

The government's trying to sell more than one kind of cold sick.

Moving on from one abuse of power to a potential other, the plans to extend 28 days must lay even further in tatters following the evidence given to the home affairs select committee by both the director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, and the former attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.

While yesterday saw the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, fresh from predicting new doom to the press having to give evidence in private, believed to have said that it was not his role to comment on whether an extension was needed, which raises the question of why he needed to say such a thing behind closed doors, today's evidence was also expected but no less compulsive for it. Ken Macdonald, who previously made a principled and more than welcome call for the end to the war metaphor when tackling the terrorist threat, one that seems to have been accepted and put into practice, could perhaps have been expected to say that he saw no evidence for a further extension and that the CPS was happy with the current limit.

Lord Goldsmith, on the other hand, the man who rubber-stamped Blair's war through the swift modifying of his legal advice that had previously tied itself in knots, and also gave the OK to the dropping of the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into BAE's slush fund for the Saudis, would have been expected to stay loyal regardless of his departure from government. It's also astounding just because of what else Goldsmith got up to while attorney general, arguably tarnishing the post for good. Why be principled over detention without charge when he has had a hand in the enormous bloodshed in Iraq thanks to our unnecessary joining of the US invasion that his changing of his legal advice permitted? How could he have been prepared to put BAE above suspicion and make the rule of law a laughing stock yet resign over 90 days? Also, in general, to make your point about how you disagree with a government policy if you're a minister is to resign prior before it going before the House of Commons; can Goldsmith really be excused from doing this just because he was a peer? Was he perhaps motivated by the belief that if he did so, and the vote was lost, as everyone expected it would be, that he'd force Blair to resign with him?

It's impossible to know, but his intervention now is still welcome, if only because of the huge embarrassment it will cause Brown, especially at a time when the whole government is under pressure due to its startling incompetence. Revealing also was that he believed he was the only one in cabinet to feel so strongly; an indictment on the illiberal and supine nature of Blair's chosen few, especially those such as Patricia Hewitt and Peter Hain who had backgrounds in campaigning on civil liberties.

The only people now still calling for an extension seems to amount to Sir Ian Blair, a man responsible for the most heinous behaviour dolled out to a man shot dead in an anti-terrorist operation, some chief police officers who previously phoned up MPs' and so annoyed some that they felt they were being lobbied, and the government, with Brown sitting on anyone who betrays a moment's doubt, backed up by the Sun newspaper, the Times, the Express and probably the Mail. Everyone else is completely opposed, although where the public itself stands at large is unknown. In the current climate you can't quite believe that Brown would still attempt to force through the measure, but if all has died down again by next year all bets might once again be off.

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11/21/2007 10:48:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, November 15, 2007 

Great Grauniad articles and yet more on 28/56/58 days.

The Grauniad tends to go in fits and starts. It publishes the barrel-scrapings of Russell Brand, one of the latest wave of comedians that couldn't carry a laugh in a bucket, alongside such titans as Alan Carr and Jimmy Carr (no relation, apart from their inability to be humourous) which are enough to make you want to try and commit suicide using laxatives, then makes up for it by printing two wonderful comment pieces on the same day that follow a similar theme.

Timothy Garton Ash, who can come across as very much the Oxford liberal, but is always brilliantly readable, gets off the fence he often sits on and calls for the rolling back of the surveillance state, while the novelist Hari Kunzru considers the case of the "lyrical terrorist" and wonders if he too could shortly be raided by the police. Rachel also writes a typically lucid piece on how she believes the case for longer than 28-days detention hasn't been made on CiF.

The government can't even make up its mind on the exact time limit; it now appears to be suggesting 58 days, while Lord Carlile, the man picked to review the terror laws, who seems to have gone native after the security services and police have doubtlessly plied him with their most voluminous doom-mongering intelligence on how the sky is dark and we're all going to die believes there will "one or two people" arrested over the next few years for whom longer than 28-days detention will be necessary. His sort of compromise is that there needs to "better judicial scrutiny," which is of little use, as has already been demonstrated. The police can say whatever they like to a judge to justify continuing detention, regardless of the facts, as they seem to have done in the past, having kept two men for 28-days only to then release them without charge. The other latest proposals are that more than 28-days would only be authorised when "multiple plots, or links with multiple countries, or exceptional levels of complexity" are involved." The police already argue that the cases they've had to deal with involved all or one or two of the above; whenever a "new" plot or otherwise is meant to have been foiled, all that would happen would be an instant appeal for the new powers to be implemented, regardless of whether they were really needed or not.

Carlile rightly argues against the use of the Civil Contingencies Act, which can provide another 30-days of detention without charge if invoked, as the equivalent of declaring a national emergency, but both the government's new and old proposals would do exactly the same thing. Putting through legislation that would allow for 56 or 58 days detention without charge would be the final move from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian one. As Timothy Garton Ash argues, we've moved from being the freest society in Europe to being the most watched, and with it, fearful. We may be tolerant, but beneath it we're increasingly anxious, even frightened, especially by the bloodcurdling speeches by the heads of MI5 and the ratcheting up of security which looks increasingly at odds with the actual threat from terrorism that is posed. Blocking and campaigning against any extension to the detention without charge limit ought to be the first move in the fightback.

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11/15/2007 08:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 14, 2007 

The illusion of safety.

We're saved!

Gordon Brown needs our help. Writing in today's Scum, the newspaper of choice when you want to reach out to the nation itself (one person in the comments demands the right to beat the **** out of any burglar, another condemns the notion of bringing back of those with British residency from Guantanamo Bay, while yet another has a shopping list which goes from stopping unjust wars, ending immigration, throwing out preachers of death and withdrawing from the EU) he urges commitment from every community and vigilance from every one of us. Just because you live on the island of Skye don't think that they're aren't bearded lunatics ready to blow themselves up at a moment's notice. Loose lips sink ships.

So commences yet another spasm of panic and doom-mongering on the terrorist threat. This one will involve "stepping up security" everywhere you could possibly think of where a suicidal lunatic with a backpack of explosives or patio gas canisters might consider blowing himself up/setting himself on fire. The government will be sending out advice to "to thousands of cinemas, theatres, restaurants, hotels, sporting venues and commercial centres, as well as all hospitals, schools and places of worship to advise them on how to keep visitors safe against terrorism." You might have thought the government would get its priorities right: shouldn't they be sending out advice to hospitals on how to stop patients from contracting infections while residing on the wards, the number of deaths from which each year vastly outnumber even the worst that the terrorists could throw at us? Bags at the most busy rail stations will now be checked, which will undoubtedly mean ethnic minorities getting repeatedly targeted, as it would be impossible to search anywhere near even a tenth of the numbers that flow through the system without causing enormous delays. Restrictions on baggage on flights will be lifted slightly, with passengers allowed to request permission to carry more than one item of hand luggage, while the ludicrous and idiotic bans on liquids and other large items will remain in place.

All these proposals and more are the result of a review by the ex-admiral "Sir" Alan West (Baron West of Spithead, which is what you should do if you come across him), elevated to the Lords so he could become security minister in Brown's government of no obvious talents, West being the response to Cameron giving a similar job to Lord Stevens, who you can expect to come up with suitably inclusive measures, given his past sectarian rants on how it's all the Muslims' faults. West though is nothing if not self-deprecating. Despite drawing up today's security review, he's in actual fact just "a simple sailor," and nothing more. West's contrition was based on how he told the Today programme, when questioned about the government's view on extending pre-charge detention beyond 28 days, that he himself was "not totally convinced" about the need to do so; two hours later, and after a swift Stalinist re-education at a pre-planning meeting with the Dear Leader, West came out and told everyone that an extension was "absolutely needed" and that he was, despite being not convinced before he entered the dacha, now "convinced that's the case."

Brown, remember, wants to reach a consensus decision over pre-charge detention. It's nothing to do with wanting to prove he can force a measure through that Blair couldn't, no way. In reality, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are opposed to an extension, as is the Telegraph, the Independent and the Grauniad; only the tabloids (I'm unsure over the Mirror's views) and the Times, no doubt similarly instructed by Murdoch as West was by Brown, support the measure. This consensus is so important that the home secretary can conveniently forget just how long is really necessary when questioned about it, as long as she supports the measure, while West's views are quickly corrected when he wonders aloud about the implications for civil liberties. "Liberty" Brown can talk a good game, as evidenced by his speech on liberty, yet when it comes to the existential threat to the nation from takfirists, all such concern goes out the window. Less concern about the undermining of liberty as a whole, more armed police and bag searches at railway stations; the head of MI5 can issue his dire warnings about the kids getting brainwashed by Islamists in public to newspaper editors, but when it comes to giving evidence on whether the pre-charge needs to be extended it has to be done behind closed doors. At least that's a step-up from Manningham-Bullshitter's refusal to even go before the parliamentary human rights committee.

No doubt linked to Jonathan Evans's warning over children being radicalised, Brown will also being setting up a headteachers' forum to protect pupils from "extremist propaganda", despite there being no evidence whatsoever that any radicalisation has been taking place in schools. The British National Party have recently been handing out free CDs at the gates of some schools in the north and Midlands, but that probably won't feature on the itinerary of discussions. The problem of religious schools ghettoising pupils will be miraculously solved by the twinning of different faith schools, and there doesn't seem to be any problem that can't be solved a new body or forum; even outdoor activity sports centres and facilities are going to be advised on how to look for suspicious activity, lest any other wannabe mujahideen play paintball jihad on their premises.

Naturally, nowhere in Brown's statement is there the acknowledgment that government policies might well have heightened the terrorist threat we now face, or that it itself might share some of the blame. Why on earth would they do that when they can present plans for how new buildings can be blast resistant? Anywhere could now apparently be a potential target for a suicide car bomber, so such changes are vital. From some of the proposals you'd almost get the impression that we were facing an Iraq-style insurgency, or if not now, then possibly in the future. If you wanted to be kind, you could say that the government's preparing for the worst and that if the worst doesn't happen, well, at least their heart was in the right place and, after all, as Brown writes in the Scum, protecting the public is the government's number one priority. If you wanted to be realistic, you'd say that the government seems intent on causing unnecessary hassle, coming up with unrealistic and alarmist plans, and at the very worst, doing the the terrorists' jobs for them by continually reducing liberty while making traveling around the country even more stressful than it already is. Why target the transport system or public buildings when you can just go down Oxford Street or in the vicinity of any big football stadium at the weekend and blow yourself up in a crowd where no amount of security will ever stop such a thing from happening? To that, the government simply doesn't have an answer, but the illusion of safety is still a powerful thing.

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11/14/2007 08:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, November 12, 2007 

Liberty, 56 days and all that.

I've been racking my brains, and the only organisation/group that I can honestly think I'm a member of is Liberty, which I joined prior to Blair's attempt to force through 90 day detention without charge. It gives me something erring on pride to know that I might have in some small way contributed to the research behind the study (PDF, summary PDF here) published today by the organisation, and splashed on the front page by the Grauniad, making clear that despite the differences in legal systems, the current 28 day pre-charge detention limit is already by far the longest in any comparable democracy.

The one thing it makes clear is that to extend the current limit in any way, let alone doubling it, which is what most think the government is likely to attempt, would be the equivalent of declaring a permanent state of emergency. Judicial oversight or not, which itself is little use when the police can convincingly claim that if a suspect were to be released he/she would commit a terrorist act, or cover their tracks, and the Magna Carta is often wrongly and inaccurately invoked, but in this case it's more than valid to suggest that if this gets through parliament, we'd be throwing away nearly 800 years of progress, enlightenment and justice, not to mention the moral high ground.

More shocking is the sheer thinness of the case for further extension. The only real remaining justifications are of the complexity of the plots which the police are having to unravel, involving forces around the world, which in other words means they're having to wait for the lazy foreigners to do some of the leg work for them, and the sheer amount of data they're having to sift through. Douglas Murray was holding this up to the audience on last week's Question Time, attempting to blind the public with talks about thousands of gigabytes of data on hard drives, hundreds of CDs and DVDs and all the other assorted related devices. This is one of those helpfully blinding rhetorical flourishes which depends on most of the public not knowing what you're talking about; even mention gigabytes to half of them and they'll go glassy-eyed. Decoded, it means that some of the officers have the excruciating job of going through the arrested guy's DVD collection lest there be any hidden documents on them. They're tricksy, these al-Qaida folk you see, as they tend to hide the damning evidence where the police can't easily find it. The fact they have the best part of a month to do this means even that doesn't hold up to even a modest amount of scrutiny. The other favoured argument is that when they do find it, it tends to be encrypted, but the police have now long had the power to demand the keys to break in, which if refused is itself a chargeable offence. With the post-charge questioning for terrorist suspects likely to go through much easier than any extension of the limit, this would enable the police to forgo the whole charade entirely if they so wanted, which brings up its own worries about abuse of power and the potential for miscarriages of justice.

Let's not pretend then that the primary argument, deployed by all those lobbying for the extension, is anything other than pure fear. Just think of what might happen if they get to 28 days and someone has to be released; imagine the horror and outrage if in the aftermath of an attack the police can't round up those connected to it due to the inadequacy of the limit; look at how many of these mouth breathers are involved in this business, and how they're multiplying and brainwashing our kids; etc, etc.

To quote Melanie Phillips might perhaps be similar to breaking Godwin's law, but in her recent piece on the Spectator website justifying up to 90 days' detention, she lets the cat out of the bag. In her view, the current "threat" does indeed constitute a public emergency. Let that sink in for a second. To declare a state of emergency currently, there has to be a serious threat to the life of the nation. Even Melanie would have problems claiming that the current threat posed to this country by jihadists is so severe that it could destroy the country as we know it. Her flourish at the end of the article, claiming that those who oppose an extension are in effect saying they're prepared to the risk the lives of "untold numbers of innocents", apart from being completely spurious, is as far as the level of threat goes. In the worst case scenario, let's say there are multiple suicide bombings in multiple cities on the same day. If 7/7 was repeated across four cities, with the same number of fatalities, 208 people would be dead. Would such an event constitute a direct threat to the life of the nation? An outrageous shedding of innocent blood by those without an ounce of humanity, but the end of Britain? Surely not.

The other argument, made by police and commentators alike, that we're facing a completely different threat where the terrorists give no warning and want to kill as many as possible is also not as clear cut. We're often told of how the IRA gave warnings, but they certainly didn't give one when they almost succeeded in killing Thatcher in Brighton in 1984. The difficulty in arguing against an extension to the limit is because of the way the debate is framed as in traditional values of liberty against the right not to be blown apart; this is a false dichotomy not just because once someone has been blown apart it's already too late, but also because we all knew too well that the police, if pushed right to the limit, could almost certainly if not always manage to press other more minor charges. In that case, which is more unacceptable? The threat of terrorism potentially forever changing our standards of treatment of those accused of a crime, but not yet charged, or that someone might get a lesser sentence than they actually deserve? It's worth pointing out that also put forward now are new measures to monitor those found guilty of terrorism offences once they are released from prison, which further limit the potential for an outrage after imprisonment.

Finally, there's the embarrassment factor. Can we really say the threat we face from terrorism is so severe we need 56 days when Russia, fast becoming an autocracy, gets by on 5 and has dealt with Islamic extremism from Chechnya for the last 14 or so years? Mel dismisses Shami Chakrabati's suggestion that we can hardly condemn Zimbabwe or Burma when we have such a limit, and has a certain amount of merit to her argument, when the idea of sending a message should not in any way impugn on our own security, but then blots her copy book by laughably comparing the situation now to that during the second world war. Oh, and then there's that one other thing: when we need 56 days to question those arrested and unravel a terrorist plot, I'll happily eat my underwear.

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11/12/2007 07:10:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 

Spin? Under Brown? Say it ain't so.

If we were still suffering under the burden of Blairism, you can bet that the Tories and Lib Dems might have made a little more out of the fact that Jonathan Evans, the new head of MI5, not only delivered the latest speech on the "threat" in front of the society of newspaper editors, ensuring that they knew in no uncertain terms the horror that could be unleashed at a moment's notice on our nation, but that it also came the day before the Queen's speech, where the government was preparing to unveil its latest proposals on how to beat back the extremist scourge. As it turns out, the most controversial measure, the extension from 28 days to 56 days pre-charge detention for "terrorist suspects", which has been long trailed, wasn't unambiguously set out by Brenda, the government preferring to still pretend that it's making its mind up while seeking "consensus". It's hard to believe though that the speech was anything other than a warning, from both the security services and the government, for the press which previously and continues to object to what more or less amounts to the reinstatement of internment.

Most of what Evans sets out is of little difference to Eliza Manningham-Buller's speech of last year. He considers the current "threat" to be the most "immediate and acute [in] peacetime" in the 98-year history of MI5. It's unclear whether he counts the cold war as an actual war, as I somehow find the threat of being vaporised by nuclear weapons more menacing than that from terrorists armed with patio gas canisters and cans of petrol, but that like so much else, doesn't really matter. The current day threat, whatever it is, is always the most deadly and insidious which we have ever faced. The National Union of Mineworkers during the strike in 84/85 was opposed to democracy and wanted to overthrow the Thatcher government. Saddam Hussein in the early 90s was the justification, with Russia descending into the chaos of the Yeltsin years to keep defence spending high.

Predictably, what the papers' picked up on was Evans's claim that

As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country. They are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism.

which the Express distorted into suicide bombers in our schools. This isn't a new message either; last year John Reid warned Muslim parents to look out for the "telltale" signs of radicalisation, and even go so far as to spy on them. Evans's evidence that this is happening is the number of young people now being linked into networks, with Abdul Patel, linked to last year's "liquid bombs" plot being the favourite example. He was found to have a manual meant for the use of American bomb disposal units, which the prosecuting counsel said that "in the wrong hands, the information contained in this manual can have catastrophic consequences, including causing explosions of the most terrifying kind in the UK and abroad." The jury agreed that he was guilty of having the document, but the judge in sentencing him to six months said he was not a "radicalised or politicised Islamist" as the prosecution had claimed.

The young are always going to be targeted; but it's also true that the young are also those who are inevitably going to be the most potentially radical anyway. The inexperience and rebelliousness of youth is going to be a motivating factor, but the evidence is not overwhelming that the young are being systematically radicalised or "brainwashed" as Evans appears to be claiming. Those most likely to be involved in radical takfirist Salafism are usually well-educated, from respectable backgrounds and far removed from poverty. Two of the 7/7 bombers were relatively young, but again they don't fit the profile of coming under the wing of any particular radical preacher or influence. Strangely, unlike the news reports covering Evans's speech, he didn't mention the internet in being a major factor in radicalisation, when we know that it plays an incredibly important role. Most of those becoming radicalised don't gain their knowledge through radical preachers, the favoured bogeyman, but from the internet through their own research. While English language jihadi websites are few and far between, the number of Arabic forums dedicated to discussing the conflicts around the world and the posting of videos by the groups fighting is ever growing.

The other major talking point was the numbers game, with Evans now letting us know that there are 2,000 individuals that MI5 consider a "direct threat to national security and public safety, because of their support for terrorism," up 400 from Buller's speech last year. In addition, he estimates there's enough 2,000 that the service doesn't know about of similar thinking. Like with Buller, he doesn't distinguish between those that are prepared to become suicide bombers and those that are likely to have a role in the funding of such attacks, or those who support the insurgency in Iraq say, but not bombings back home. It doesn't really tell us anything except provide us with a number which seems massive in order to cause concern. If there are after all 2,000 individuals actively supporting terrorism, and if even a quarter of that number were willing to launch either suicide attacks or a bombing campaign, why are the number of plots so apparently low? Isn't Evans slightly contradicted by how Sir Ian Blair recently suggested that the number of active investigations into plots is now lower than previously? Is it that the threat, despite what they're saying, is receding somewhat, or that there are plans being made that we don't know about?

Also questionable was this statement:

"And it is important that we recognise an uncomfortable truth: terrorist attacks we have seen against the UK are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups."

Which seems to indulge the myth that the hand of al-Qaida can be found behind nearly every terrorist plot there is. Was al-Qaida really responsible for the laughable "suicide bombing" at Glasgow airport or the bombs which were "potentially viable" in London? If so, their recruits are getting even weaker and more obsessed with plots next to impossible to pull off but look spectacular and terrifying on paper than ever before. Was al-Qaida involved in the alleged beheading of a British soldier back in Febuary? We know for a fact al-Qaida wasn't involved in the "ricin plot". The danger is that we see al-Qaida as some kind of multi-layered organisation driven from the top down, when the reality is that al-Qaida as it existed in 2001 could collapse entirely tomorrow and we'd still be facing much the same problem of extremist Islamists. The trial of those involved in the Madrid attacks set out where the threat is most likely to come from: those with radical views that need little help from those holed up in Pakistan or wherever but who are influenced by the ideals and ideology behind bin Laden enough to carry out their own attacks in the name of al-Qaida. Evans does sort of recognise this, as he does mention the spread of the al-Qaida brand: the first suicide bombing in Algeria coming after the GSPC pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, changing its name to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. al-Qaida might be conducting a deliberate campaign against us, as Evans says, but those with no real connection to the organisation are doing so also.

Have you noticed however what Evans notably doesn't pay much attention to? Iraq garners just two mentions - to note that al-Qaida in Iraq "aspires to promote terrorist attacks outside Iraq". Nothing about Iraq's undoubted role in helping with the radicalisation process, even if it isn't the only cause, or that the threat is likely to increase once those who've gone to fight in Iraq return, from what the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq has himself described as the "university of terrorism." It's probably true that al-Qaida in Iraq has designs on exporting terrorism, but the state of the insurgency in Iraq has shifted in a remarkably short time. al-Qaida's media wing in Iraq has now not released a new video of its activities for going on a month - an extraordinary length of time signifying how the infighting amongst the insurgency has escalated to such a scale that what happened in Algeria to the Islamic groups there is routinely mentioned. At the moment the emphasis is certainly on what is going on within Iraq itself rather than attacking anywhere else.

One thing Evans certainly does get right is that

"Anything which enables it to claim to be representative of Islam; anything which gives a spurious legitimacy to its twisting of theology will only play into its hands."

As will furthering the victimhood factor by extending the detention without charge period. The one thing this speech seems to have been intended to influence is one of the things that will do most to damage the fight against extremism. How's that for irony?

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11/06/2007 08:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 25, 2007 

An (almost) turning point on civil liberties.

After weeks of dispiriting convergence between the three main political parties, variously swapping and stealing ideas on inheritance tax, the environment and benefit reform, all without any uniting vision to tie them all together, it's to be welcomed that Brown, after promising so much change and so far delivering next to none has set out how he intends to be different to Blair on constitutional issues, civil liberties and further empowering parliament. To go with a cliche, you wait ages for a decent speech on policy and then two come along at once, as while Brown was talking at the University of Westminster on liberty, Jack Straw was in Cambridge delivering the Mackenzie Stuart Lecture on a prospective bill of rights.

Martin Kettle on CiF has already suggested that these were speeches aimed directly at Guardian/Independent readers and those who've been disgusted by the contempt that Labour over the last ten years has shown for civil liberties in general, and he's almost certainly correct. Straw opens his speech with

If you read certain newspapers you might be forgiven for thinking that human rights were an alien imposition foisted upon us by 'the other'. It is a misconception that has regrettably taken root.

and goes on from there. Straw sketches out how the European Convention of Human Rights came into existence, and it makes for grim reading for David Cameron and his ignorant, ahistorical call for a "British" bill of rights, making clear how it's both a legacy of the second world war and also of Churchill himself. Churchill is at times lionised without any regard for his own character flaws, his incipient warmongering and bellicose, first reaction attitude, but his horror at what "total war" inflicted upon Europe led to the protections we now so take for granted and which some want to destroy without any regard for why they were first introduced. It is undoubtedly his second greatest gift to this nation, and Cameron's populist, almost xenophobic policy of scrapping the Human Rights Act is an affront to his memory.

The tabloid press, especially the Sun, is unlikely to take kindly to Straw's speech, especially because it so effortlessly destroys so many of their paper-thin arguments. At times he invites valid ridicule - he talks of how the government would be damned if they "wilfully and knowingly" deported someone to gross ill-treatment and death, without any apparent knowledge that this government is continuing to do just that, whether it's sending "terrorist suspects" back to Algeria, or wanting to deport them to Jordan and other states known to practice torture on the basis of pieces of paper ("memorandums of understanding") from the respective government solemnly promising they won't touch a hair on their heads, or sending "failed" asylum seekers back to states as diverse as Sudan, the Congo, Zimbabwe and Iraq - but his overall message, especially his sneering at the "media uproar around human rights being a terrorists charter" is refreshing compared to what we were used to from Blair, Reid and Clarke, all of whom went out of their way to appease the most basest and baseless of tabloid accusations over human rights. He'll probably be ridiculed as being a soft idiot tomorrow, but it's clear that the corner has been turned. The rules of the game haven't changed after all, remember.

It's a shame then that the remainder of Straw's speech only repeats the nostrums which we've become used to: that there are rights, and with rights come responsbilities. This is the compromise which politicians have been forced into by the tabloid onslaught, the false dichotomy that somehow because we all know our rights we somehow at the same time don't realise that responsibilities come with them. Our rights, whether we're British citizens or not, are indivisible, and the promotion of the belief that somehow when we lose our freedom we also lose those rights is an incredibly dangerous one. Despite spending half of the speech outlining why Cameron's British bill of rights and repealing of the Human Rights Act would never bring justice closer to home or help get rid of current "undesirables", Straw himself believes that there may well be a need for a bill of rights and responsbilities, but he doesn't explain why one is necessary when the HRA is already almost fully comprehensive and the closest we've came to such a charter so far. If we wanted to expand it further, we could have signed up to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, an excellent document which updates and takes the ECHR further, yet that was one of Brown's red lines, again thanks to tabloid pressure. There is possibly a case for a document, set down in law, which does outline what is expected of us all as citizens, but to connect it directly to a bill of rights is an awful sop to those who would have just one rather than both. Such a document would have to be incredibly carefully drafted so as not to be openly patronising as so much of the discussion on responsibilities has been, all horribly reminiscent of those school behaviour contracts which you were ordered to sign and which were ignored afterwards.

Rather than a bill of rights, what we really need is an actual written constitution, yet that seems to be one of the few things that neither Brown or Straw are proposing, although Brown says this is meant to be a "move" towards just that. Dumping the bill of rights and getting on with that instead would be a better idea.

Brown's speech on liberty then is one of the best he's delivered in a long time, although with his recent pedigree that wasn't that much of a challenge. The first half is an excellent historical narrative, from Magna Carta to the HRA, with quotes from Bolingbroke, Voltaire, de Tocqueville, Orwell, Himmelfarb, Stuart Mill, T. H. Green and Hobson; all of it striking in its difference to the former prime minister, who despite his mendacity was undoubtedly a powerful speaker, but one whose speeches sounded good rather than read good. The inevitable disappointment is that so many of the proposals he's putting forward are either tame or subject to drawn-out consultation. The idea that there needs to be any further consultation on whether to lift the ban on demonstrations within a mile of parliament is a joke: the prohibition makes a mockery of our democratic credentials, and all those men he quoted would have been disgusted by it.

Similarly, like with Straw, Brown has to make concessions to the tabloids, in his case appointing his friend Dacre of the Beast to a committee examining whether to lift the "30-year-rule" on access to government documents. Dacre's loyalty and err, brown-nosing has been rewarded remarkably quickly. The farthest he really goes is in rightly abandoning the Blairite plans to further limit the Freedom of Information Act, which he announces are to be dropped immediately, with a view to actually expanding the act further, with private companies bidding for public contracts also being potentially being brought within its scope, which is incredibly welcome and surprising considering Brown's reliance on the hugely wasteful private finance initiative. Whether words will be converted into actuality will be key. He also opens the possibility of the roughly 250 provisions which give access to private homes, increasingly exploited by entirely unaccountable bailiffs, being brought into a single code.

He is however wholly unconvincing on the need for ID cards, on which the objection is not really to the cards themselves but to the database behind them, while the fact that biometrics are being used by companies already is completely irrelevant; just because they are doesn't mean that the government should be. Out of the window at least has gone the argument for ID cards on the basis of preventing terrorism, but the need for them because of identity fraud is just as flimsy, with Brown's claims of parliament having put the relevant safeguards and accountability needed into the legislation simply untrue. He also says how he "is in no doubt about the desirability of a debate over pre-charge detention", yet there's little point in having a debate when both Brown himself and Jacqui Smith have time and again made clear that they favour an increase from 28 days, and when Smith has hinted that the legislation for an increase could come before parliament before Christmas. They don't seem to realise that an increase from 28 days has become the defining issue, the summation of all that has been wrong about Labour's approach to civil liberties. When we potentially have a longer "pre-charge" period than some dictatorships, something is clearly rotten, and no amount of spurious claims from the police or intelligence chiefs that longer "may" be needed are going to convince us otherwise.

The CiF comment thread on Kettle's piece is a good guide to how much further Brown and Straw could have gone. The "dangerous pictures" bill deserves to be withdrawn immediately; control orders are both illiberal and ineffective; those not convicted of any crime subject to removal to countries which are known to practice torture on the grounds that they are "not conducive to the public good" should be tried rather than simply got rid of; and the tightening of the prevention from harassment act to ensure that those engaged in legitimate protest are not prevented from doing so, all could also have been begun to be dealt with. In places Brown also falls into producing the same sort of chutzpah as that of Straw above, claiming that "our abhorrence of torture is and must be unequivocal", which must be a surprise to those who found themselves kidnapped by the CIA and taken to black sites, all with the connivance of a nod and a wink from the British authorities, who knew full well what was going on. Recent allegations have even suggested that there was a black site on Diego Garcia, the islands we kicked the inhabitants off, giving their home to the US military, from which attacks on Iraq have taken place.

Overall though, this was a good start, and an encouraging break from the past 10 years of hardly hidden contempt for the "civil liberties brigade". These words however must precipitate action, otherwise Brown will fall even further into the currently deserved sobriquet of bottling it.

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10/25/2007 08:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, October 10, 2007 

Increase the detention without charge limit or we'll have to shoot you.

Yep, that's Ian Blair, speaking at the "Safer London Foundation".

It's a disturbing thought that a man as tainted as Ian Blair is still currently the head of the Metropolitan police. His force and its handling of the day after the attempted suicide attacks of 21/7 is currently being laid bare in the law courts, where it's laughably being tried under health and safety grounds when it should at the very least be in the dock on manslaughter charges. His own ineptitude and lack of leadership within the force itself was exposed in the second IPCC report into the events of that day, which found that although secretaries knew that an innocent man had been shot dead, he still thought it was a failed suicide bomber until the next morning, as no one had bothered to tell him.

With all of the above in mind, we're supposed to take the man seriously when he appears in front of the home affairs select committee and once again calls for the 28 day without charge detention limit for terrorist suspects to be at the very least doubled. He doesn't have a single shred of evidence to support this further extension, but he does have the power of his own argument:

"At some stage 28 days is not going to be sufficient, and the worst time to debate whether an extension is needed would be in the aftermath of an atrocity."

This is a dubious basis for an extension at the very least. Considering the current threat we face is almost entirely from suicidal Islamic takfirists, who tend to take themselves with the others they murder, it's unlikely that we're going to require an extension should they launch an attack. Even if the attacks that take place aren't suicidal, the example of the patio gas canister bombers suggests that terrorist investigations now move incredibly swiftly; even if some of those apparently responsible for the first failed attacks hadn't decided to go kamikaze at Glasgow airport with only some petrol and a lighter, it seems that the police would have been arresting them within a couple of days, if not hours.

We do have to consider that there are those involved in the plotting of such attacks that don't take part in them, but again all the evidence so far suggests that 28 days is currently a more than sufficient time limit. The trial of Dhiren Barot and his co-conspirators showed that you don't even need to have explosives to be put away for a longer period than some murderers, and that was managed without any such drawn-out interrogation or investigation while the accused are in custody.

Ian Blair's argument is that we've got to prepare for the eventuality even if it never comes. This is a reasonably fair point to make, but it ignores the message it sends both to those already alienated and disenfranchised, that sections of the community are being increasingly labeled as the potential enemy within and that laws which were unnecessary during WW2 are now not just inevitable, but eminently acceptable and reasonable during supposed peace time. It also puts further pressure on the fragile state of civil liberties in this country; when we've got a longer potential detention without charge limit than some dictatorships, we really ought to begin to worry.

Blair also contradicts himself:

Sir Ian said terrorist conspiracies and conspirators were increasing, as was the magnitude of their ambition in terms of destruction and loss of life.

Fewer cases were under investigation but each was more complex in terms of documents, telephones and computers

Taking Blair at his word, the very fact that the conspiracies are increasing in magnitude and ambition of destruction and loss of life isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just shows that the those behind such plots are completely unrealistic, incompetent and naive. Dhiren Barot wanted to build a dirty bomb out of smoke alarms, and bring down buildings with limos packed with gas canisters. The first idea was hilarious, the second proved just as laughable by the failure early in the summer. The "liquid bomb" crew wanted to destroy however many airplanes using materials they were going to construct in flight, something that most scientists who commented on it also regarded as highly dubious. These so-called terrorists have big ideas and big egos, but when put into practice they're doomed to failure.

That fewer cases are also under investigation speaks volumes. What happened to those 30 plots, 2000 conspirators and the sky being dark due to the threat? That the cases are increasingly in complexity is no reason to extend the time limit: the police need to extend themselves to deal with complicated plots, not the time limit with which to do it in.

Most of all though, if there really was solid evidence or intelligence that there was an attack brewing that would need longer than 28 days before those in custody could be charged, would Ian Blair have been told about it? Seeing as everyone other than him seems to be in the know, perhaps it ought to have been his secretary or even his wife in front of the committee.

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10/10/2007 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 27, 2007 

The same old shit, rehashed, reheated and served up for all to devour.

If this week's Labour conference was meant to impress upon us how wonderfully different, changed and confident the government is and how they most certainly deserve to be re-elected, then they've done the equivalent of Darren Murphy and fell flat on their faces. From Brown's dirge on Monday to Miliband's miserable monotony on Tuesday, this is a government not just lacking in new ideas, but just as prepared to clamp down on dissension as the old one was. With the spineless unions acquiescing and deciding that those embarrassing critical motions only brought trouble, the votes have disappeared and so has the passion with it. Blair hasn't just been airbrushed out of the picture as so many others have noted, all his policies have been either been getting a kicking even though they haven't been changed or are even being prepared for change, while the rest have been completely ignored, meaning Iraq and Afghanistan have hardly been mentioned, while the "rules of the gaming are changing" turning point has been rubbished even though the ministers have no intentions of actually going back on what came directly from that speech.

According to Tony McNulty then, the rules of the game haven't changed. One would assume from that that it would mean the end of trying to deport "terrorist suspects" back to countries where torture is endemic, articles of understanding or not, the admittance that we have been involved up to the neck in "extraordinary rendition", despite constant laughable denials, and that such flights will never be used nor allowed to land here again, the instant repealing of the ban on unauthorised protests within 1km of parliament, the declaration that 28 days detention without charge is plenty of time for the police to build a case against "terrorist suspects" and that intercept evidence ought to be made admissible, as long as a thorough review gives the OK. As so often with this government, they can when they think it's useful sweet talk their nominal opponents, even Shami Chakrabati, who supposedly called McNulty's rhetoric "music to my ears". Too bad then that Jacqui Smith today yet again brought up the phantom of "seek[ing] consensus on new measures to counter the threat of terrorism", which in other words means they're going to try to ram through a doubling of the time limit like they've always said they would.

Such double-speak seems to have been the order of the day. Jack Straw's sudden decision to review the laws regarding "have-a-go-heroes" is a classic of the gesture politics genre, broadly comparable to the reviewing last year of whether a "Megan's Law" could be introduced here, to which the predictable answer was no. Prosecutions over someone defending themselves, especially in their own home or place of work are incredibly rare because the law already covers acts that are proportionate and reasonable, which quite rightly doesn't cover shooting burglars that are running away in the back. His talking up of his own experiences in stopping crime, which I'm pretty sure every single one of us have at least one, seems to be an attempt to conjure up a tough man image which he never had while Home Secretary before and isn't going to gain now. Besides, what better way to get the Mail and Scum interested than tell them that they can do whatever the hell they like to an intruder or mugger? It'll come to nothing, but it might help in the short term.

The same logic seems to be behind Jacqui Smith's mentioning of zero tolerance, which was all the rage about a month ago in the tabloids when Rhys Jones' murder predictably caused a session of why-oh-whying and how cracking down on youths' hanging around on corners and spitting on the street will naturally mean that they'll be too scared to shoot one another. She drops in a reference on drug treatment to make it slightly more amenable to the wet liberals like my good self, but it all sounds so laughable when the prisons are full of those unable to get on those programmes, as a result wasting away in cells, stuck in the recidivist cycle. For any sort of zero tolerance to be implemented, prison places would have to vastly extended even further than already proposed, itself unlikely to backed up with the necessary cash from the Treasury, not to mention the overcrowding chaos which is already exacerbating re-offending. Even more draconian sentencing for minor offences will only make the situation worse. Additionally, at a time when we learn that there are over 800,000 DNA profiles from children aged between 10 and 17 on the database, we can only imagine how the rolling out of "mobile fingerprinting devices" will quickly even further extend the database with the data of those who are never actually charged. Smith ought to know better than to ask "what sort of politics is it to incite fear and alarm?" of the Tories, because after all, that's been Labour's job for the last 10 years.

The strength to change Britain, the tagline of this soporific conference, seems to involve all the effort of going to the microwave and heating up a takeaway left over from the night before, drunkenly forgotten about. The reheating of old, forgotten or rightly discarded policies for the on message comrades might be enough, but for the rest of us it's just a reminder of a party that still doesn't know where it wants to stand and is terrified of being denounced for choosing.

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9/27/2007 09:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 30, 2007 

Various things.

First up, Andrew Dismore and the Joint Committee on Human Rights thoroughly eviscerates the government's "case" for doubling the detention without charge period for terrorist suspects.

Sarfraz Manzoor, in his article on British Asians (much discussion of the report underlying it over on Pickled Politics) and success talks of "coconut" as being the British equivalent of the insult "Oreo". It's no doubt a regional thing, but the insult here has always been similarly junk food based, with those thought of trying too hard to fit in being called a "Bounty".

Finally, with the Scum yet again leading on their brilliant expose of how sharks are going to infiltrate our schools and start eating children, Richard Peirce bursts the bubble by suggesting it's far more likely to be either a porbeagle or a mako shark.

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7/30/2007 07:14:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 25, 2007 

It never rains but it pours.

How else to describe the never-ending spectre of the terror threat and the new legislation need to prevent it than as a constant dripping, echoing not just throughout parliament but the country itself, driving everyone slowly crazy with the demands for ever longer periods of detention without charge, continuing crackdowns and the kicking out of anyone who so much puts a foot out of step?

After all the claims that Brown will be doing things differently, that leaks to the press will be a thing of the past and that cabinet discussion will be central, today's Sun draws a line under all of that hype. Splashing his supposed first interview with a newspaper since his ascension on the front page, we're informed of how 4,000 "foreign convicts" will be deported by Christmas. Making promises you can't necessarily keep with the Sun isn't the greatest idea, so Brown must be somewhat confident it can be achieved, even if it means riding roughshod over the rights of those who have no links with their home countries and nowhere to stay. Previous attempts at being tough with "foreign criminals" led to people who had lived here in some cases for decades being picked up by immigration officers, but frankly who cares as it long it adds one to the figures? Brown at least holds firm over the EU reforming treaty, saying he won't sign it if it does any of the things the Scum claims it does, rather than call a referendum. It's the cynical leaking of the exact extension time the government is aiming for that rankles most, however.

Even that's presented in such a way as to try to absolve the PM from himself informing the Scum of his plans. While it mentions the 56 days that the government wishes to extend the time limit to, it pretends that this information, rather than coming from the Scum's interview, was provided by "police sources", presumably the same ones which a couple of Sundays ago were demanding "as long as it takes", as Brown felt that MPs needed to be informed first. So much for that. Quite why they've now settled on 56 days, having been previously pushing for 90 or 45, is uncertain. Why not any similar random figure? 69 days? 82 days and 12 hours? While I suppose we ought to be grateful that it's not the indefinite figure that some were asking for, the strangeness of such a figure illustrates the general lack of any evidence whatsoever for such a expansion of the time limit. As Tim has already pointed out, Jacqui Smith's convoluted attempt at putting forward such a case seem to be an attempt to confuse rather enlighten:
"This all gives us a strong view that the time is right to reconsider whether we should allow longer than 28 days' pre-charge detention," she said. "There is already evidence of us stepping up to the point of 28 days. All of this creates what I would argue is a trend of analysis towards a position where it is legitimate for us to consider again the case for going beyond the current situation of the maximum 28 days. The document will outline what we know about that trend and will contain a discussion of the alternatives, but it will not plump for one solution."

What then is this evidence that more than 28 days is needed? Err, exactly the same mostly specious rhetoric which has been used almost from time immemorial. Huge amount of data to shift through, links across the globe, 200 mobile phones, 400 computers, blah blah etc. As before, this isn't in any way a good enough excuse or justification for those being held to be held longer, it's an argument for the police to be given more resources, or to actually use those they already have, such as to demand encryption keys. The other eyebrow-raising excuse made by Brown is that the alleged "liquid bombs plot" was so complicated that six men were still in custody on the 28th day - what he doesn't say is that three of those were released without charge, with the BBC reporting that two others were charged, so either Brown or the BBC have their numbers wrong somewhere along the line. If this is the supposed smoking gun on why more than 28 days is needed, why did John Reid not come to that conclusion during his own terrorism review earlier in the year? Why did the police themselves not instantly demand longer because of how close they came? Equally disingenuous was Smith's claim yesterday that the failed car bombs of last month were further evidence that pointed to the need for an extension; to my knowledge, all of those arrested have now either been charged or released, way before the current limit was anywhere near being breached.

While the government is most definitely overstating its case, Liberty and Amnesty are not helping themselves by claiming that an extension will turn out to be a "terrorist recruiter's dream". It will doubtless further help to alienate a community which already feels unwelcome and under siege, as well as adding to the grievances of an significant minority, but it's unlikely to directly lead anyone into the arms of jihadists. Liberty's proposal that a state of emergency could be declared if further time was needed is a decent suggestion, but one that would hand terrorists a victory they don't deserve. The last thing we should be proposing as necessary is an emergency when they can't even succeed in setting themselves on fire properly. We should instead be focusing on why this debate keeps going round and round in a circle. Where will it all end? If the threat keeps getting worse before it gets better, as seems likely, are we going to be having this discussion on doubling the detention limit every year? The limit has already been extended over a matter of years, from three to five to seven to fourteen to twenty-eight days, as David Winnick pointed out. Just who is it that keeps demanding the extensions? We need to point out it's the scaremongering belligerents (The Scum, Melanie Philips et al) and those with potentially ulterior motives (the police, the government) that are driving the debate, while all the moderates are almost uniquely on the other side.

The other proposals put forward by Brown are mostly on the cautious side, with both intercept evidence and potential questioning after charge being put forward for a review. The latter certainly needs careful scrutiny if it's not going to be potentially abused. The border force, a policy nicked from the Tories, seems like a decent step at appeasing the tabloids screeching about "terrorists flooding in". More worrying is how within nine months every visa will need to be a biometric one, almost certainly a move towards ID cards being introduced for those of us lucky enough to live here, despite the murmurings that Brown might be about to ditch them.

At the moment it seems that both the Tories and Lib Dems are inclined to oppose any extension past 28 days, although one has to wonder if someone other than David Davis' was shadow home secretary if the policy would be different. If this stays the same way if legislation is introduced, both parties will be worthy of praise, especially considering the loudness of those in favour of the government's position. Brown and Labour need to be told squarely that 28 days is enough. At the weekend, Lord Puttnam and Jonathan Powell's wife were shouting "Stasi!" and "Gestapo!" at the police for daring to turn up on the front door of the fragrant, blameless Ruth Turner at 6 in the morning. Those who have experienced power don't tend to like it when the boot is on the other foot; they ought to wonder what someone entirely innocent will feel like if they're detained for 56 days only to be released without charge.

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7/25/2007 08:28:00 PM | | | links to this post

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